my attempt at the essay final

Written in those precious few moments between classes and interrup—“Dr. Preston, may I please go to the bathroom?”—tions.

People change. 

In literature, characters that change are called dynamic characters.  However art tries to imitate life, though, dynamic characters are artificial creatures of story.  In real life, there is nothing else.  No one is static.  Everyone changes.

Sometimes people change for reasons that observers understand.  The change makes some kind of logical, chronological, or cause-and-effect sense.  More often, people change for reasons that aren’t so obvious.  Something internal drives them: trauma, emotion, or some cruel trick of the forces we call gods when we no longer believe in any.

Whatever the cause, some of the wisest among us have commented that the only constant is change.  Are they right?  Was Hume correct in observing that we never step in the same river twice?  If so, we should to look in the mirror and ask ourselves the question: Are any of us today the people we were just yesterday?  (I read somewhere that even our skin regenerates so quickly that the skin you’re wearing now right now is totally different than the skin you wore just seven years ago.)

This is the genius of Hamlet.  Shakespeare created a character that speaks his innermost thoughts as he decides how to be, how to act, and how to communicate with others around him in ways that will determine his own future and his country’s.  Hamlet gives seven soliloquies – long, individual speeches – and instead of distracting the audience from the action, they actually add to our understanding.

At the beginning of the play, Hamlet meets his father’s ghost.  The ghost confronts Hamlet with the news that Hamlet’s uncle killed his father and slept with his mother.  This hits Hamlet hard—how could it not?  So it makes sense that, after we see Hamlet speak with Claudius and Gertrude, Hamlet gives the first of several soliloquies of the play.  This one starts:, “O, that this too too solid self would melt…”  Hamlet is clearly distraught, and he needs to get himself together if he is to survive and avenge his father’s death.

Some people think Hamlet is a moody young man with a death wish or a decision-making disorder.  I disagree.  True, Hamlet talks about death and wishing he didn’t have to deal with all this madness, but who wouldn’t feel that way under such bizarre circumstances?  From the beginning moments of foreshadowing, it appears clear that Hamlet knows what he has to do.  It’s just that killing someone – especially a king – is a difficult thing to do.

As the plot evolves and the rising action intensifies, Hamlet shares more of his inner thinking.  The ultimate speech is the most quoted; you know the opening by heart even if you’ve never read the play.  “To be or not to be,” says Hamlet, and damned if that isn’t the question.

Let it sink in for a moment.  Every decision we make is our answer to that question.  Who are we?  The person who applies for that job, or talks to that girl/guy, who tries to get an A in that class, or who makes the team, or who… decides to do or not do any of those things, however big or small?  And, in the end, are we not the sum total of all our life’s decisions?

It’s even deeper than that.  Say you are debating whether or not to take a risk.  Whether or not you decide to act, in just a few moments you will no longer be the person who is deciding to act.  You will either be the person who did, or who didn’t, or you will be a person who is still trying to decide.  Hamlet shows this in the scene where he meets the soldiers in the field; he thinks to himself, “Damn, here are these soldiers, fighting for honor and nothing else, while I have my father and my country to fight for, and what am I doing about it?”  We all secretly criticize ourselves for not being better than we are.  What’s interesting about this process, though, is that no matter how we think or how we act, in just a few moments we will be someone slightly different, if only because we will be able to reflect on what we have or have not done.

Try this exercise: think of someone you admire greatly.  Send them a message on social media.  Did you do it yet?  Yes?  No?  How do you feel about yourself as a result?  No matter what you did or did not do, the fact is that a few seconds have elapsed.  And in that few seconds, you have become a different person.  Before you started reading this paragraph, you had no awareness of yourself as a person who would contact your idol or be afraid to do so.  Now that you’re thinking about it, the previous you – the innocent you – is dead (i.e., “not to be”) and the present you is debating whether to take action (i.e., “to be).

Shakespeare’s allusions point to mythology and ancient history in ways that suggest Hamlet is connected to grand stories of the human condition.  In our private moments, I suspect that many of us also connect ourselves to heroic ideals.  In these stories we either find inspiration or grief at the realization we will never measure up.  When Hamlet finally has nothing left to lose and only a few seconds to live, he kills Claudius and undergoes his final transformation.  The royal family becomes food for worms and returns to the earth, like Caesar and Alexander, from greatness to the dirt beneath our feet.

In real life, people sometimes change in ways that are difficult to perceive, even if you think you know someone well.  How many attentive spouses and business partners have been duped by a person they trusted?  These changes didn’t happen overnight, but they were imperceptible in real time, like a snail or a sprinkler that doesn’t move except when you look away and look back, only to discover it’s in a completely different place.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare manipulates time and moves the main character’s thought from silent inner spaces to the spoken words.  In the moments it’s taken you to read this, your old self has died and a new version of you has been born.  What’s the difference?  That is the question.