Sunday, April 15, 2012

The Issue of Remembering and Forgetting in Hamlet

     The play of Hamlet is generally based on remembering and forgetting. The first basic example is Ophelia. She is associated with the need to remember. Laertes and Polonius always force her to remember things about Hamlet. Laertes urges her to "remember well" his cautions about Hamlet. 

    There are two terms named "Erinnerung" and "Gedachtnis" that means memory and revenge. The ghost always says "Remember me", "Do not forget" to Hamlet. With this repetation, Hamlet memorizes those commands, he does not forget them and he makes the revenge. But Hamlet needs to do is, not to remember, but to forget. At first, Hamlet had Erinnerung, the consciousness of loss, but then it turns into Gedachtnis. 

Burcu

5 comments:

  1. Hamlet understands his role in life after he sees his father's ghost. He believes that his destiny is avenging his father. Those ''Remember me'' and ''Do not forget'' stuff is for us I think. To make us remember that Hamlet has to take revenge and Shakespeare warns us to get ready to see a big massacre.

    Batuhan

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  2. Hamlet also says that he will erase "all trivial fond records" from his mind after hearing the ghost's command, so it could be argued that his change of behaviour after seeing the ghost is not so much madness but the reaction to what he understands as a firm order from his father, that is "Remember me." The only way he can remember this command at all times is by placing it in the centre of his life and creating a sort of seperate identity around it, that of a son seeking vengeance. This could also be the reason that he can never bring himself to act, because it's only a certain part of his identity that wants revenge, he is just about literally torn in two in terms of making decisions. At the last appearance of the ghost, Hamlet is worried that he'll forget his purpose and accept "tears, perchance for blood." (That is, Claudius's repentance would be enough), I think that shows that there is a certain part of him that doesn't even want to kill Claudius.

    I hope that made some sense!

    -- Idil

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  3. So Hamlet acquires knowledge from the Ghost, and in the rest of the play he's interrogating this knowledge, using it, and trying to forget it, but it just won't let him alone? Do we have a theme here?

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  4. Gedächtnis does not mean revenge. It means memory as in "h6afiza" dear Burcu. It is highly recommendable to double check such terms of German origin.

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  5. Gedächtnis does not mean revenge. It means memory as in "hafiza" dear Burcu. It is highly recommendable to double check such terms of German origin.

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