G. Wilson Knight: The Embassy of Death. Literature & Language Essay

G. Wilson Knight: Embassy of Death
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G. Wilson Knight: The Embassy of Death
G. Wilson Knight in this text explains the way Hamlet is inhumane and is excessively obsessed with the flaws of other people and ways of justifying his killing of Claudius. Hamlet is described as an inhumane person. In this way, Knight refers to Hamlet as an individual who is very observant and trying to find blemishes and faults in everybody and seeing the evil in other people. Hamlet feels dejected as a result of his insanity of thoughts of suicide and ways of tormenting Claudius.
Personally, I disagree with Knight that Hamlet is inhuman. Knight depicts Hamlet as being inhuman given that Hamlet became an outsider who only watches everybody trying to find flaws in them. Horatio was the only person in the whole play that Hamlet was able to talk to or trust. According to the author, Hamlet “has no friend except Horatio” (Knight 1). Knight also writes “Laertes, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guidenstern league themselves with Claudius: they are of his kind. They sever themselves from Hamlet” (Knight 1). This shows that everyone else in the play related better with King Claudius than they did with Hamlet, thus suggesting that Hamlet was lacking some particular human attributes that made others to distance themselves from him and did not want to see him around; people want him gone.
In my opinion, Hamlet was not really inhuman: he was actually human just like the other characters. Everybody in the play was tempted in some way and succumbed to something. Every person has his/her own weaknesses and nobody is invincible: Claudius succumbed to greed, Ophelia to madness, Gertrude is oblivious, Polonius was stupid, and Hamlet was tempted by violence as well as by the chance of vengeance and because of it he went mad. Although it was overstated, it was totally normal for Hamlet to mourn his father’s death. He became depressed and alienated himself from other people, which is something that depressed people usually do: many people who have depression tend to alienate themselves from others. Hamlet’s feeling of resentment toward Claudius is also very human. In essence, if Hamlet allowed his emotions to get the best of him, that is purely because Hamlet is merely human. Furthermore, Hamlet has lost his father while he is still young: losing your father when you are young and finding out th...