Hamlet vs. Oedipus

Comparison Essay # 27760

Drama and Theater
Literature

Hamlet vs. Oedipus

This paper compares and contrasts the main characters from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex".

1,785 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2000 United States

Paper Summary:

A discussion of the characters of Hamlet and Oedipus focusing on how they are both driven to demise through the acts of those they loved the most. The author shows that the main characters are involved in situations involving not only social, but moral pressures as well, and both encountered many obstacles along their journey to find truth.

From the Paper:

"Hamlet suffers from the Oedipus complex- an undue and unhealthy attachment of a son for his mother, which is apt to be morbidly suppressed and cause great mental distress. This theory motivates Hamlet's delay by identifying him with Claudius, though whom he has vicariously accomplished the Oedipal feat of murdering his father and marrying his mother. Hamlet has been classified as the intellectual melancholy type. He appears to be a victim of excessive melancholy. His first appearance and long soliloquy establish him as grief stricken. Moreover, Hamlet himself refers to the melancholy in a way that suggests that it is a debilitating factor. Ordinary grief, of course, is one thing; everyone experiences it. But Hamlet's grief is pathological; it is a destructive thing that causes him to procrastinate and leads to his death."