Mental Resilience in William Shakespeare's Hamlet Essay Example

Everyone aspires to have resilience. It maintains our composure and gives us the willpower and strength to work for improvement. Hamlet and Oedipus are both resilient characters. They both carry toughness and the ability to bounce back and face their mistakes. In both plays, each character has their own driven motive. Oedipus seeks kingship while Hamlet searches for revenge and respect from his deceased father. While getting a better analysis of each character, it is clear that Hamlet is much more resilient, as he doesn’t run away from his problems but faces them till the very end. Hamlet's character shows robustness in mental resilience, personal strength, and determination. While Oedipus shows selfishness and narcissism. 

Mental resilience is the quality of being able to face one's mental health issues and take responsibility for one's actions. Given his drive and optimism, Hamlet demonstrates great qualities of mental resilience. He shows mental resilience by overcoming personal setbacks and discovering solutions to his flood of problems. In the play, Hamlet faces many problems. One is the accidental killing of Polonius, his girlfriend's father. This leaves Hamlet with a mental detour as he’s lost and feels rotten inside following the incident. His twisted perspective drives him down the wrong path in response to his father's ghost's request for revenge. As the play progresses, he eventually admits to his wrongdoings, showing signs of resilience and character growth;

Give me your pardon, sir. I've done you wrong; But pardon't as you are a gentleman/ This presence knows — and you must needs have heard/ How I am punished with a sore distraction / What I have done That might your nature, honor, and exception Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness / Was't Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet. If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not / Hamlet denies it/ Who does it then? His madness. If't be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged/ His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy/ Sir, in this audience, Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts That I have shot my arrow o'er the house And hurt my brother (Shakesphere 5.2 165-183) 

This quotation marks the final words before his passing. Hamlet pleads for forgiveness and confesses to his wrongful doings. In addition to the confession of murdering Polonius, he also confesses to driving Ophelia to her own death through his arrogance and selfishness. Hamlet’s final words show resilience as he’s confronting his wrongful doings and implying that he can learn from his mistakes and be a better person. On the other hand, Oedipus does the opposite of owning up to his mistakes. He avoids personal problems and looks to fleeing as a solution. In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is incredibly adamant and neglects the opinions of others. His neglectful attitude leads him to murder his father and marry his own mother. Following finding out about his mistakes, Oedipus decides to run away from his past and start a new life with his daughters, where his troubles finally catch up to him and lead to his death. This shows that Oedipus hasn’t learned from his mistakes and hasn’t developed as a character to benefit himself, which is the opposite of being resilient. 

Similarly, both characters have a strong sense of will. Both of them have established vows and are confident they will achieve them. Oedipus vows he’ll find the murderer of the former king of Thebes, King Laius, and bring him to justice, while Hamlet vows he’ll avenge his father. Through Oedipus's quest to find the murderer of King Laius, he gets referred to speak to a blind prophet, Tiresias. Tiresias confirms that King Laius was murdered by Oedipus himself. Oedipus reacts to the information through shock and confusion as he doesn’t recall murdering the king. Towards the end of the play, Oedipus begins to realize that he actually did murder King Lauis through an interaction years prior. He also then figures out that he married his own mother and had children with her. He decides to deceive himself by gauging out his own eyes. His actions of gauging out his own eyes show he’s not ready to face the truth so that he can improve himself. 

So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this,

You with your precious eyes,

you’re blind to the corruption of your life,

to the house you live in, those you live with. ( ADD QUOTATION) 

In this quotation, Tiresias, the blind prophet, claims that even though Oedipus has two precious eyes to see the real world, he’s still blind to the corruption in his life. He doesn’t seem to accept the truth and only wants what’s best for himself. This doesn’t show shades of resilience as he isn’t able to accept his wrongdoing and build off of his mistakes. Instead, he flees from his mistakes as they stack up over time, leaving him helpless. In addition to the theme of strength, Hamlet's character demonstrates strong indicators of inner strength by dismissing others so that he can concentrate on his goal of exacting revenge on his father. When on the verge of exacting revenge on his father, Ophelia, Hamlet's girlfriend, throws him off course, so he pretends to be insane to get away from her. She ultimately commits suicide as a result of how skillfully he pulls off this plot. Hamlet's strategy demonstrates resiliency as he makes use of his intellect to analyze the circumstances and come up with a solution to his dilemma.