things we learn from Hamlet

Freud says that the reason Hamlet can't kill Claudius, the man who killed his father and whom he has been given a divine injunction to dispose of, is because he secretly wants to do the deed. The problem with Hamlet is that he's a very ethical guy. Once desire enters the picture, you can't be sure your actions are completely objective and ethical anymore.

This is the problem with all actions of justice. What other motive might the perpetrator have for wanting to see justice done? Surely we can't all be heaven's "scourge and minister." Some of us must have a private agenda back there somewhere. Most of us do. And since we all know that, proving the lack of an agenda becomes an obsessive interest for those who really are unnerved by injustice.

Freud's got it all wrong as to WHY Hamlet really wants Claudius dead, of course: Freud says it's because of Hamlet's secret repressed wish to have slain his own father and married his mother, blah blah blah. The problem with this reasoning is that it deprives human agency even of the capacity for ethical thinking. Humans are so much more subtle (and so much less repressed) than that. Yes, Hamlet wants Claudius dead. But that's because Claudius is a horrible, menacing, manipulative usurper. Claudius oozes power and danger. And he has Hamlet's mother completely bamboozled, making her betrayal of him and his past complete. Oedipal fantasies have nothing to do with this. It's all about the self and its loyalties.

The satisfaction Hamlet would feel in killing his uncle is disturbing enough in itself as to warrant no other cause for guilt. Why do we feel satisfaction at righting the world? The ones we trust the most are the ones who feel nothing at all--even in the administering of justice. We want Dante's remorseless and pitiless god--a god without love.