Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Hamlet Quote Essay

"To thine own self, be true" - Polonius

This quote was said directly to Laertes by his father Polonius in Act I, but it relates to more then one character.  It means to be yourself and to follow your own moral compass.  Laertes throughout the play follows his morals of protecting his family.   Although Hamlet is never told this directly it is an inner struggle he deals with through out the entire play. They both stick true to their morals until the very end of the lives.

Laertes was always protective of his family whether it was when he was telling his sister to protect herself from Hamlet, or showing up to the court sword drawn to avenge his father, Laertes kept his morals through all of the trouble he saw as his family died one by one.  As he himself was dieing, he forgave Hamlet, because he found out Hamlet had no intentions to ever hurt Laertes family, which is very ironic as he stabbed both Laertes and Polonius, and sent Ophelia insane after the murder of her father. Yet Laertes morals stood strong through his dying moments he made peace with Hamlet.

Hamlet faces the choices of ignoring all the problems revolving around him or stay to his plan to avenge his father's death and kill King Claudius. He knows what he must do and constant reverts back to questioning if he can truly do this if it is truly him to kill a man. You see this in his main To Be or Not to Be soliloquy.  It after outside forces push on you is when you see what you are made of and that is when Hamlet found himself, he grew the courage to act upon his morals and not entirely on purpose killed the corrupted court officials, like Polonius and Claudius.

Being yourself and sticking to your morals are very valuable traits to find in a person nowadays.  Even though you may be thought to be doing the wrong thing, in the end if you are doing it with the right intentions people will also see it and that is when the light is shown, you come out a good person in the end.

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