"There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough." This quote, I believe, is an anecdote for Hamlet and his situation in Shakespeare's play. Between the disgusting, abnormal marriage between his "uncle" and his mother and the internal emotions he has to endure throughout the disturbing situation, Hamlet has to choose between continuing to live with himself and the trouble caused by the marriage, or to escape it all via suicide. Being an ordinary teenager, Hamlet has a rough time coping with the fact that his very own uncle and mother went behind his back, with a rigid, sizable dagger and forced it right into Hamlet's back.
For any human being, a situation like the one Hamlet is forced to live through would be hurtful and hard to witness and experience. With this said, I do not believe Hamlet is "nuts." Being a teenager who was born into royalty, Hamlet has been taught his whole life how to correctly play life's game, how to treat your family and peers, and also how to behave like royalty. Royalty is not supposed to betray its fellow royalty, instead they are educated to respect the other royalty members and know the boundaries surrounding it. Having his uncle and mother neglect and ignore all the requirements and "rulings" of family and royalty, Hamlet has the right to be upset, angry, resentful, and everything else he feels and portrays throughout the play. Constantly being spied on, followed, questioned, judged, and ridiculed is not an easy thing for a teenager like Hamlet to cope and deal with. In other words, with all of the heartache Hamlet is forced to experience because of his "family," Hamlet is allowed to become enraged and at the least, bitter. ."
Because life is like a rollercoaster, providing its inhabitants with "ups" and "downs", Hamlet's life went from up to down in a blink of an eye. With the devastating death of his father, King Hamlet, to the disturbing marriage of his Back-stabbing uncle and mother, Hamlet's emotions vary greatly. From the satisfaction he feels when Claudius indirectly reveals he murdered Hamlet's father, to hearing the Claudius has been sending his servant-like friends to spy on Hamlet, Hamlet has no reassuring feelings. He is never able to be fully content with his life because he is constantly betrayed by people he though were royal to him. All of the misery and suffering Hamlet faces every second of his life, he begins to question rather or not the sin of suicide will outweigh the negative he faces on an everyday basis. He must decide whether or not he will end his life oblivious to what heaven will have in store for him, or to not take his life and avenge his fathers death. The fear of death and suicide alone, affects the saneness of an individual. Thus, Hamlet, a young, demented boy has become "mad" just by the thought of suicide itself caused by all of the actions of his "family."
Hamlet is forced to hide his feelings because if he does not, he will be providing ammunition for those who are out to destroy him. He is unable to express the way he feels out loud, he is strained to bottle everything up and put on a front to society. "Behind my smile is a hurting heart, behind my laugh I'm falling apart, look closely at me and you will see, the man I am, isn't me." Not only is his external, surrounding environment negative and dark, but so is his internal one. He is constantly battling both himself and others, in search of an escape. His only escape from the terrifying, disturbing reality he is affected by is by either killing those who have done him wrong and avenging his innocent father's death, or to kill his innocent self over other's ignorant actions. Hamlet is given all the right in the world to become and/or feel mad. Who in the right of mind would be okay being surrounded by disloyal, backstabbing family? I know you wouldn't. To be or not to be, is that really the question?
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