Essay - The Parent and Child Relationships Within Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' are Primarily...

The parent and child relationships within Shakespeare's "Hamlet" are primarily characterized by the conflict between a child's right to question and pursue his or her own destiny, in contrast to the need of hon**********g the child's *****al directives. The conflict inherent in parent and child is first evidenced, not ***** Hamlet's first meeting with his father, but when Hamlet bemoans "frailty thy name is woman," in h***** first extended speech. Hamlet is angry because h***** mother has married his uncle so quickly, even though he obeys his mother's wishes to stay ***** Denmark. Hamlet thus begins the play in a ***** about how ***** honor both his dead father and his living ***** remarried mother, a conflict that is highlighted by the advancing Norwegian Fortinbras' ***** claim for his dying parent.

This conflict becomes sharpened when ***** is confronted ***** ***** apparent truth of what happened to h***** murdered father. Stephen Greenblatt's book Hamlet in Purgatory advances the *****ory that *****, given ***** the ***** that bears his name was written by Shakespeare in the religious climate early Protestant England, illustrates a country ***** gre*****t moral and religious flux, particularly in the relationship between parents and children. Greenblatt states that for Protestant reformers, ***** Catholic concept of purgatory stood as emblematic of the idea of 'works' rather than the faith sent one to heaven and thus it ***** the evil crux on which the Catholic Church "a v*****t system of pillaging and sexual corruption" depended upon. (Greenblatt 13) Catholicism ***** loyalty to dead parents was contrasted with Protestant's more rational, independent vision. Another way ***** applying ***** theory is to suggest that after being visited ***** the ghost, Hamlet must ask himself if revenge is an appropriate model of behavior for a thinking person ***** *****dopt, and if believing in purgatory and an aveng*****g ***** is w*****e.

At *****, Hamlet says he will swear to uphold what the ghost tells him to do, to revenge. However, soon after, in ***** play's most famous soliloquy that Hamlet muses of the "undiscovered country" from which no traveler returns. (3.1.81; 1706) His "To be or not to be," ***** he presents a vision ***** 'no more' without even a heaven or a hell, ***** ghostly ***** one ***** pay homage to. ***** also worries that the ghost is a devil t*****king a "pleasing shape" that has deceived him. T***** is why he stages a production ***** test Claudius' guilt. (2.2.577; 1704; 3.4.78; 1719) Hamlet's sense of filial honor to his ***** conflicts with his own nature as a thinking individual as well as his loyalty ***** his ***** mother. Hamlet's apparently complete acceptance of the ***** for proper rituals for ***** dead, of "taking the ghost's word [***** ***** ideology it re*****] for a thousand pound" is also deflated by ***** apparent ********** ***** he refuses kill his ***** at prayer. (3.2.264; 1715) T*****re is no way ***** Hamlet to be a perfectly good son and to ***** a perfectly rational man in