1. Themes are fundamental and often
universal ideas explored in literary
work
THEMES

2. The impossibility of Certainty
• In Hamlet we can find questions
about the certainty of facts.
– Can we have certain knowledge about
ghosts?
– How can we know for certain the fact
about a crime that has no witness?
• Hamlet has been seen as a play
about indecisiveness.
• Hamlet shows a life of
uncertainties.

3. The complexity of action
• The question of how to act is
affected by:
– Need of certainty
Factors
– Emotional
– Ethical
– Psychological
Hamlet Other characters
- Thinks abstractly - don’t care so much about
about action. how to act.
- His actions are violent. - Their actions are
controlled.
- The result of their
actions leads them to
digrace.

4. The mystery of death
Two perspectives of death :
Spiritual perspective: Death as transcendent
Physical perspective: The decline of the body
cause
Death is of revenge
also consequenc
e
Truth and
uncertainty
Death is related
with Spiritualit is moral or
suicide
y not
in which
despite
The Christian
religion prohibition

5. The nation as a diseased body
welfare
actions
- Denmark is frequently described as ill
body by the moral corruption of the
monarchs.
- At the end, when Fortimbras takes the
power, it is suggested that Denmark will
be strengthen again

6. Motifs are recurrent structures,
contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text
major themes
MOTIFS (recurrent structures)

7. Incest and Incestuous Desire
Gertrude and Claudius Brother in-law and
sister in-law now
married.
Laertes and Ophelia - Laertes speaks to
her in sexual terms.
- He leaps her into her
grave to hold her in
his arms.
Hamlet and Gertrude - hamlet’s fixation on
gertrude’s sex life.
- hamlet’s
preoccupation for
her.

8. Misogyny
• Misogyny occurs
sporadically
throughout the
play.
• Hamlet becomes
cynical about
woman in general.
• there’s a
connection between
female sexuality
and corruption.
• It is an inhibiting
factor in hamlet’s
relationship with
Ophelia and
Gertrude.

9. Ears and hearing
• Words are used to
communicate ideas, but
also they can
– Distort the truth
– Manipulate other people
– Serve as tools in corrupt
quests of power
• The sinister uses of words
are represented by
images of ears and
hearing:
– claudius’s murder of the
king by pouring poison in his
ear

10. Symbols are objects, characters,
figures, or colors to represent
abstract ideas or concepts
SYMBOLS

11. Yorick’s Skull
• hamlet fixates on death’s
inevitability and the
disintegration of the body.
• No one can avoid death.