Hamlet’s Hamartia

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all combined, to almost literally become his fatal flaw. It is his indecisiveness that almost kills him.
Although from the very opening of the play, Hamlet recognizes that it is his filial duty to avenge the murder of his father by killing the murderer, his uncle, he does not perform this duty until he is actually pressed to it by circumstance, and until it is at the point of death himself. “Now might I do it pat, now he is paying; And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven; And so am I revenged. That would be scanned: A villain kills my father; and for that, I sole son, do the same villain send to heaven” (III, iii, 73-79). Hamlet’s seeming inability to act has been ascribed to various elements of character, and to excessive speculative habits.
Hamlet’s character is most commonly described as a tragic hero. In the play Shakespeare, Hymarx believes that “Hamlet is a heroic tragedy, and the tragic hero is Hamlet (8). A tragic hero is the main character, who at the ...

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