by Merve Cavus

Created on: August 06, 2008

DEFENSIVE MECHANISMS AS COVER IN HAMLET

One of the aspects of tragedy is that the protagonist faces a great crisis that challenges his human power. In Hamlet, this aspect of tragedy is treated within one of the great tensions of the play which is Hamlet's indecisive attitude towards his main task. He has been given a compelling task to avenge his father's death. His continuous delay in his task creates suspense and suggests Hamlet's tendency to evade this task. His evasion of the task and rationalization of this evasion is covered by various psychological defensive mechanisms: Deep Depression, Hopelessness to the Value of Life, Dread of Death, Self Accusations, and Desperate Attempts to Excuse Procrastination.

The first psychological defensive mechanism to be studied is Deep Depression. Hamlet, having lost his father recently, his mother suddenly marrying his uncle, undergoes a serious depression. Thus, Hamlet is suffering from losing such a perfectly noble father, a king and witnessing the insensitive or incestuous, as Hamlet defines, act of his mother. Early in the play, Hamlet's depression is portrayed through his soliloquy about the futility of life, suicide, death, his nihilistic outlook towards everything. He wishes that committing suicide would not be a blasphemy against God because he cannot see any use or any meaning in his desperate life:
O, that is too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!'
(I, II, 129)

After talking with his father's spirit, his depression increases because now he has the burden of the knowledge that his uncle has killed his father. Sometimes, he shares his deep depression with other people like Guildenstern and Rosencrantz when he says Denmark's a prison' or this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory' ( II, II). Metaphorically, Denmark is a prison to Hamlet which confines his mind and his actions. Moreover, he cannot leave Denmark because he has a task to perform but he cannot perform the task either. In other words, Hamlet's deep depression becomes both the result and cause for his evasion of the task: Hamlet's mind is occupied with his deep depression and he rationalizes his evasion with this occupation. However, his depression worsens as he delays his compelling task given by his respectable noble king.
Another defensive mechanism

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>