Actions Are Reflections

I was supposed to post this blog entry on Thursday. Well, I started it Thursday but I had to leave for a soccer match (which we won 4-1, by the way), and then I was simply too tired to continue. I was able to find the paper with all the notes I took while reading Freud’s and T.S Eliot’s arguments and thesis on Hamlet:

1. Inhibitory … to be limited?
2. Neurasthenia … hmm psychoanalysis I guess
3. Lull
4. Bafflement … Baffle … anger management?
5. Levity … Levitate? Fly? Hahaha

- Energy paralyzed by excessive intellectual activities (Hamlet)
- Sexual aversion (Oedipus complex) … Jocasta-Gertrude (III, iv)
- Creation … Macbeth related… Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…
- Revenge (difficulty of assassinating monarch) Claudius? … Action/Thought
- The Spanish Tragedy … Thomas Kyd related to Hamlet, similar drama… Shakespeare revises this tragedy through Hamlet
- Disgust occasioned by mother (Gertrude)
- Hamlet is repressed
- Hamlet as a work of art
- The play is the primary problem
- Hamlet’s dreams?
- Shakespeare’s son named Hamlet

That’s it. Last week I fell in the curiosity of examining Freud’s analysis of Hamlet as character, and now I contrast it with T.S Elliot’s argument of Hamlet as the play, being the “primary problem.” Personally, I think that, even though Hamlet pilfers the play’s protagonist and the whole scenery, the play itself cannot be descended to a second plane. The play imposes the conditions in which the characters develop, taking for example Hamlet: his actions are direct and indirect results of his father’s death. Now, due to the fact I had already talked about Freud’s ideas on Hamlet in a previous blog, I will try to focus in a different aspect.

In my cellphone, saved as a memo note, I have the following lines from Macbeth:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(V, v, 19-28)

I remember last year we compared this soliloquy to Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. Back then, I just did the writing assignment, in which I said, in simple terms, something like ‘this soliloquy relates to Dawkins’ theory taking into account the fact Macbeth never had children. Therefore, with the death of Lady Macbeth, his genes won’t be able to continue in the gene pool.’ Almost a year later, I fall again into this soliloquy. But in this case, T.S Eliot is enhancing the comparison: “the words of Macbeth on hearing of his wife's death strike us as if, given the sequence of events, these words were automatically released by the last event in the series. The artistic "inevitability" lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet” (Eliot, Hamlet And His Problems). Macbeth’s words of lament not only reflect the same impotence of Hamlet as his father dies, but also illustrate Shakespeare’s consistent drama where the protagonist’s actions are reflections of a loved one’s death.

Too bad Death isn’t listed in the “Characters In The Play” page. Death acts as the protagonist in both tragedies, and is the one who creates the whole drama. That sounds too much like la Celestina, who played with the characters in the play to create the drama of the tragicomedy. Therefore, life is meaningless for both Macbeth and Hamlet. Those words just echo in my head, ‘It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ If death is playing with them, why bother living? They are eventually dying. But the huge difference between both is: Hamlet poses questions to death, is curious about it, and contemplates it. Meanwhile, Macbeth simply defies life’s path and pursuits death. Anyways, actions are reflections of death. The appearance of death upon the stage becomes the moment of anagnorisis of both.