Hamlet was a jerk!

For all intents and purposes, it seems clear that Hamlet was a dick.

Growing up in a household steeped in extravagant wealth and privilege (he was the crown prince of the kingdom of Denmark), Hamlet epitomized what modern progressive thought may label as the “1%.”

His father and mother were the rulers of a European nation. He lived in a glorious castle.

He ate the best food, drank the finest wine, wore the most premium clothing, and had a full-time staff of servants at his beck and call.

Yet, wealth didn’t preclude Hamlet from experiencing tragedy.

In fact, he had to bear witness to the abominable fact that his mother (Gertrude) conspired with his uncle (Claudius) to have Hamlet’s father (the king) murdered in his sleep, so that Claudius (the king’s brother) could take over the royal throne and marry Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother).

Talk about scandalous!

That is some messed-up family drama!

Of course, Hamlet is perturbed by this; anybody would be.

Basically, Hamlet sets out to play psychological warfare against his mother and stepfather, ultimately leading to a brutal and tragic confrontation between them (resulting in, as you guessed, tragedy).

In the meantime, Hamlet is so pissed off by his mother and stepfather’s abhorrent indiscretion, that he mopes around the castle, being a sociopathic asshole to his parents’ most trusted advisor (Polonius); Polonius’ love lorn daughter, who is, in fact, in love with Hamlet (Ophelia); and Ophelia’s protective brother, who gets annoyed with the psychological torment that Hamlet keeps inflicting on his baby sister (Laertes).

Meanwhile, Hamlet’s friends (Horatio, his best friend, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, courtiers of the royal house, but also friends of Hamlet) try to offer emotional support to him, even though he is descending further into madness, as it seems.

I’m sure you know by now what all transpires, as the play progresses:

-Hamlet kills Polonius in a fit of rage when the old man is eavesdropping on a heated conversation between Hamlet and his mother.

-Beset by grief over the loss of her beloved father at the hands of the man she loves, Ophelia commits suicide.

-Hamlet’s stepfather (Claudius) tries to send Hamlet off to England to be executed by the king. While being escorted there on a ship by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet catches wind of this plot and switches the royal letter to the King of England [from Claudius], instead creating a fabricated letter, implicating his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as being marked for execution (they are summarily executed by pirates who attack the ship).

-Hamlet returns to court and is challenged to a duel with Laertes (Ophelia’s brother), who has poison placed on the tip of a sword, so that he can mortally wound Hamlet.

-Claudius has a goblet of wine, with poison placed in it, to give to Hamlet to drink, so that he can kill Hamlet.

-Hamlet mortally wounds one another with the poison on the tip of the sword; Gertrude dies after accidentally ingesting the wine with poison in it, and Hamlet kills Claudius, after Laertes reconciles with Hamlet and confesses to Claudius’s sinister plan.

All in all, it’s a really shitty, tragic story.

A spoiled brat, whose world is turned upside down by the drastic, violent change in the household structure, helps to unleash a series of events that ultimately lead to the suffering and deaths of several people.

What I find interesting about this play is how Hamlet was facing a much more perverse circumstance, but a circumstance that is all too common in modern Western society:

A Broken Home

This was the reality for Hamlet: A dissolution of the familial structure that had been the bedrock of his entire life, up until the point of his father’s untimely death.

Hamlet was experiencing a broken home.

A mischievous version of it, but alas, a broken home.

His father was dead, and his mother married another man.

Of course, the circumstances, regarding the death of this father and his mother’s marriage to his uncle, were far grimmer than most situations involving the dissolution or ending of a marriage.

In a sense, Hamlet was almost like a teenager, lashing out at his mom (and stepfather) for causing his father to leave his life.

Although an incredibly minuscule number of family disintegrations ever reach the level of fanaticism and violence seen in the tale of Hamlet (thank goodness!), it is still a cautionary tale that holds weight, despite being hundreds of years old.

Broken homes happen.

They happen to the rich and the poor alike (although they may be more common in households of lower socioeconomic background).

They have been happening for a long time.

They will continue to happen as time goes on.

Broken homes can really mess up people psychologically.

Hamlet is a cautionary tale of many effects: lust for power, lust for wealth, greed, betrayal, love denied, love taken advantage of, manipulation, madness, suicide, murder, etc., etc.

At the end of the day, I think Hamlet was just nothing more than an angry boy in a man’s body.

Angry at the world for stealing his hero away from him.

Angry at his mother, his human creator, for betraying him.

Angry at his uncle destroying his home and taking what was not his: the king’s wife, the king’s life, and the kingdom itself.

Angry at his friends and courtiers for dismissing him, and his feelings as actions of madness.

Angry, angry, furious.

Hamlet was angry.

Many people are angry at the world for the unwanted events that seem to happen to them.

Perhaps the lesson here is to “roll with the punches.”

Life can give you lemons, but it is up to you whether you make lemonade from them or not.

Situations can be unpleasant, painful, and tragic, yet it is how we respond to them that really matters.

Whether you are the prince of a kingdom or just the child of a plumber, how you respond to unpleasant situations is truly the barometer that defines who you are as a person.

In a sense, no situation is either bad or good.

A situation is just a situation.

It’s how we interpret and respond to it, which labels it in a positive or negative light.

The lesson here is that Hamlet turned to darkness rather than light to deal with the painful loss of his father and family structure.

Embodying love and a little grit could have helped Hamlet reach the other side of this terrible situation.

Instead, he used his cunning and smarts to seek revenge.

That is what ultimately led to his downfall.