Literary Critique of Antigone and Hamlet Literature Works

When applying the concept of hamartia to both plays, Antigone and Hamlet, it leaves to question what are the fatal character flaws in both writings that lead to such tragic endings? Antigone is by Sophocles and was performed during the time when the Athens and Greek civilizations were at the peak of their power. (Creon fatal flaw is pride) Hamlet is a work of William Shakespeare around 1599-1601 and is considered one of his greatest works.

Hamlet is a young man motivated to avenge his father, but is unable to actually take action. It could be argued that Hamlet has a few fatal flaws, or hamartia, although one of the largest would be his inability to act. In the beginning of this writing the ghost of Hamlet’s father comes to him telling him of how his uncle, the now king Claudius, murdered him to take the throne and marry Hamlet’s mother the queen, Gertrude.

Ghost: Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.

Hamlet: Speak. I am bound to hear.

Ghost: So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear…

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Hamlet: Murder!

Ghost: Murder most foul, as in the best it s, but this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

Hamlet: Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge. (Hamlet 1.5.10-30)

Throughout this work Hamlet is seen to be spiraling further and further down a road of madness, or craziness. He is often seen speaking like a fool and acting irrational like a mad man. His father’s ghost asks him murder his uncle, the now king, in repayment for his untimely death and to hurt his adulteress wife. While Hamlet greatly desires to right the wrongs done to his father, procrastination appears to be one of his fatal flaws and he is easily distracted in his youthfulness.

When one examines this writing of Shakespeare more critically Hamlet’s inability to act is seen countless times. His inability to commit suicide, his inability to come to terms with killing his mother, putting on a play to delay killing Claudius and the inability to kill Claudius while he is praying. It is seen time and time again that Hamlet chooses not to take action.

Hamlet struggles with his desires to commit suicide as it is forbidden. It is not a Christian act to do. In the following quote it is seen that Hamlet’s life has lost all of it’s meaning but that he just cannot bring himself to sin in the way of suicide. “Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter. O God, God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world! (Hamlet 1.2.131-134) One can see that fear also keeps Hamlet from action. In the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in scene 3, act 1, lines 56-88 Hamlet is debating whether or not to commit suicide, but end the end decides against it due to his fear of the unknown as to what lies on the other side.

If he does not commit suicide, then he must take action. He must move to action in revenge against his father. Due to the fact that he does not want to do either, he once again does not take action and chooses to do nothing for the time. He is also paralyzed by grief due to the loss of his father. He spends most of his time in his emotional spiral, sounding like a crazed mad man, coming up with ludicrous plans and speeches, contemplating revenge and suicide, to murder his mother or to not murder his mother. This grief caused paralysis once again keeps him from action.

Similarly, Antigone has desires to right the wrongs done to her brother, Polyneices. However, the major differences would be that while Hamlet’s desires for vengeance causes him to be paralyzed in fear, Antigone’s desires to right the wrongs throws her into a rash spiral of hurried actions. While her brothers killed one another, only Eteocles was buried with the appropriate burial rights needed to enter the afterlife. The king, Creon, refused to allow Polyneices to be buried and given burial rights, preventing him from entering the afterlife. Antigone is driven by righteous indignation, and in her haste, chooses to deny the kings orders and buries her brother and performs the burial rights in attempts to sending him to the afterlife with her family. Her fatal flaw is her stubbornness that in the end leads to her death and the death of her lover. One can hear her stubbornness and youthful haste in the following:

Antigone:…Be as you choose to be; but for myself I myself will bury him. It will be good to die, so doing. I shall like by his side, loving him as he loved me; I shall be a criminal—but a religious one. The time in which I must please those that are dead is longer than I must please those of this world. For there I shall like forever. You, if you like, can cast dishonor on what the gods have honored.

Ismene: I will put dishonor on them, but to act in defiance of the citizenry, my nature does not vie me means for that.

Antigone: Let that be your excuse. But I will go to heap the earth on the grave of my loved brother. (Antigone 79-94)

Both Hamlet and Antigone end in tragedy, with the main characters dying a tragic death, surrounded by senseless deaths of those around them. Hamlet does murder the king in the end, but he is also murdered. Meanwhile, in the crosshairs of the revenge comes the death of the love of his life, Ophelia, her father, her brother and Hamlet’s mother, the queen. Antigone, is also murdered in the end, but tragedy also surrounds her murder when the love of her life takes his own life, his mother takes hers and the king is destroyed. Both stories go to show how pride is a fatal flaw of the kings, which keeps them from seeing the flaws in their own

Works Cited

“William Shakespeare Hamlet.” Mays, Kelly J. The Norton Introduction to Literature, 13th ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

“Sophocles Antigone.” Mays, Kelly J. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 13th ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2020