Love Like a House of Cards

Really, it's the Polonius bit that bothered me. When Hamlet ceases to ruminate and follows reckless impulse, he does not lose my sympathy, but he loses my respect. Hamlet is neither villain nor hero, just a typically human mixture of the two, and I can pity him both for his circumstances and their effects on his temperament. However, with his reaction to Polonius' death, it is clear that he has allowed himself to become his vengeance. I can accept the murder itself as a mistake; it is his coldness at the sight of the dead body that marks a turning point. That Hamlet, normally so tossed by the throes of emotion, should not blanch at the sight of his beloved's father slaughtered by his own hand proves that he no longer has a thought for any pain but his own. Perhaps any of us would react the same way under extreme duress, but though his actions can be explained, they cannot be justified.

That said, we must remember that it was not only Hamlet's father that was murdered, but his image of goodness. Murder is almost universally recognized as an injustice, and if Claudius had taken Gertrude against her will, his foulness would have been undiluted. Hamlet's heart may have been broken, but his delineations between good and evil would have remained intact. However, the fact that Claudius' greed combined with Gertrude's insincerity skewed Hamlet's entire conception of love. I think many of us believe true love to be the one unconquerable force in a world of uncertainty, if we believe in it at all. So when we think we have seen love and it is proven fallible, it is as though the fibers of the world begin to unravel.

Several years ago, my family became enamored with a certain minister. What he preached was biblically correct, and he was passionate about it. He looked like a genuine disciple of God, so we aspired to follow his lead. Then we began to see warning signs, discrepancies between words and actions, warped interpretations of scripture. We pulled away from him while remaining close to the rest of his family, trapped and learnedly helpless against a man who turned out to be a manic-depressive narcissist and clinically psychopathic. I suffered minimal personal hurts in the matter, yet I felt for months like I was losing my mind. My faith is my life. It was a man and not God who let me down (and this brought me through it in time), but the experience destroyed my trust in any authority, even my own mind, for quite a while. In fact, a great deal of unwilling resentment fell on my parents. If they, always seeking truth above popular appeal, could be so gullible, who could be trusted to know better? And if they could be wrong in following this man, could they not be as wrong in pulling away? That thought terrified me, for if God was truly on his side, I feared I wanted nothing to do with Him. If I thought my beliefs to be a fortress, I found them then to be a house of cards on a gusty day. I was forced to re-examine them by inches, rebuilding from the ground up.

I am guilty again of a tangent, but I mean to prove a point. To have a fundamental trust disproven is catastrophic to anyone, at least temporarily. Evil that has always been evil is not nearly so terrifying as evil taken once for good. When core beliefs are ripped to shreds, what can remain but madness? And from that madness we must seek something truer or surrender. If indeed a hero, Hamlet would have, perhaps, proven a truer love with Ophelia than his parents had together. Still, that would be much to ask of anyone so quickly. It is unfortunately at the peak of instability that the ghost goads Hamlet to action, for when good is shaken, evil, too, becomes difficult to differentiate. It may not be strange that Hamlet cannot feel remorse for Polonius. At the point that one cannot rationally label a single action as "good" or "bad", numbness becomes a predictable defense.

I do not condone Hamlet's actions, but I become increasingly convinced that he is played upon, that the ghost is not who he says he is (or that Hamlet's is a miserable father). If he had held off his visit a year or two, he may have been avenged without a single unnecessary death added to the tally. It is the timing that makes the story of Hamlet, and that makes it so tragic.