Preview

Family: Hamlet and the Lion in Winter

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
5599 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Family: Hamlet and the Lion in Winter
Sentence Outline

Concept: To survive families require certain familial values. All families must hold respect for each other, be loyal to each other, and support each other.

Thesis: When families hold a majority of these values the family will survive; however, when these values are absent, the family digitigrades

I. Respect within a family is important to build trust that is required in relationships.
A. In Hamlet 's family, there is lack of trust and respect for each other.
1. Gertrude remarries very quickly after the death of her husband. Hamlet finds this very disrespectful to his father.
2. Hamlet constantly tests those around him to see if he can trust them. He goes as far as to test his mother because he thinks she may be conspiring against him.
3. Hamlet disrespects the woman he loves by telling her to go to a whore house.
B. Similarly to Hamlet 's family, Henry II 's family is absent of trust and the respect that comes along with it.
1. Henry shows disrespect to Eleanor.
a) He takes a mistress while still married.
b) He locks his wife in a dungeon.
2. Eleanor sleeps with Henry 's father.
3. Henry shows lack of trust for his sons when he puts them in his dungeon.
4. The family conspires against each other, and as a result, they do not trust each other. Geoffrey takes advantage of John 's foolishness
C. Unlike the other two families, the Undershaft family holds the utmost respect for each other.
1. Stephen shows the respect one would expect a child would give his mother by obeying her commands.
2. When Andrew decides that he wants to become a man and be independent, both of his parents choose to obey his desires.
3. Although they disagree with each others morals, Andrew and Barbara agree to visit each others very different work environment so they can learn more about each other.
II. Besides respect, loyalty to each other and to familial obligations is vital to a healthy family.
A. While Hamlet 's family may lack respect and



Cited: Goldman, James. The Lion in Winter. New York: Rand House Trade Paperbacks, 1981. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Washington Square P, 1992. Shaw, George B. George Bernard Shaw 's Plays. 2nd ed. New York: W.W Norton and Company, 2002. 203-285.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Father Hugh Garner

    • 267 Words
    • 2 Pages

    2. John does not succeed in gaining a closer relationship with his son because he made the mistake of drinking on the night of the banquet. He embarrassed his son which ruined their relationship even more. “The Father” ended in dramatic irony because John didn’t think about how his behavior and actions affected his son. While Johnny was running away, John realized what the problem was all along and he worried if the damage he made was irreparable.…

    • 267 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The irony is that they don’t want to allow any other religion in the church, because it might influence their religion.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    8. What is learned of the action antecedent to this part of the play through Mary Warren? What are Elizabeth’s suspicions regarding Abigail?…

    • 533 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Hamlet's mother Gertrude and Uncle Claudius both betray his trust. The actions of his uncle, Claudius, are the cause of Hamlet's reactions throughout the play which isolates Hamlet from the only family that he…

    • 1587 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Family is the cornerstone of our lives and our society, so most of us consider family is the most important in our lives. Each family has different beliefs, moral standards, and values. The family value in America today consist mainly of acceptance of non-traditional families, such as same-sex marriage, single-parent families, and blended families. My family, compared to the typical American family today, is very different in terms of…

    • 70 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Families Comparison EssayA family is a most precious identity a person can have. An individual from a noble, average or poor family can be distinguished by the character, acts, behavior, and living style. A person spends most of his time in life with the family and thus the family contributes the most in an individuals growth, thinking and behavior. When we think of a western family, the standard nuclear family comes to mind, working father, stay-at-home mom and a flock of children. This is no longer the case, in the past 50 years the family has changed significantly and continues to change. These changes are greatly due to the equalization of women's rights and the massive expansion of available communications technology. In many families nowadays both parents work and when the children are young are put into daycare services that just were not around in the past. It is now worthwhile for both parents to work since many companies provide the aforementioned daycare for free. Women also have greatly increased earning potential since they are just as educated and will now make the same amount of money as men for doing the same job. Women are hired these days to do other jobs than to be secretaries and nurses. The families of 1950s are considered as ideal and are also known as nuclear families. It consists of a working husband, a housewife and their children mostly two in which the elder one is boy and the younger one is girl. The families of 1950s and mine have a lot of differences because of the change of culture in the society. They include the structure, role, values of education and outlook on future.…

    • 1102 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Dignity and worth of a person in a family is respecting other family member regardless of individual differences. Importance of human relationships in a family is sticking together because, it is what keeps a family bond strong and healthy. Integrity in a family is being truthful and acting in a trustworthy manner towards other family members and their personal belongings. Competence in a family is being knowledgeable of family history, being knowledgeable of family skills /strengths, and effectively using all core values. I would use those values as a family guide to aid in revamping and rebuilding the life and bond of families I have…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The character of Hamlet himself is very relatable today especially to young students, the reason that the play still thrives today is due to the universal relevance that his conflicting emotions hold for us. Hamlet being a university student of Wittenberg; intelligently tries like men today to justify his life, as can be seen evident of his quoting of both Aristotle and Boethius. However unable to express himself he runs rampant through his own thoughts creating elaborate wordplay and metaphors such as “get thee to a nunnery” which simultaneously means both a place of chastity as well as slang for a brothel, reflecting Hamlets confusion with female sexuality. He like a teenager is brash and impulsive, for every thoughtful soliloquy “To be or not to be” there is a burst of rage or impulsive remark, in his opening encounter with the ghost in Act i Scene iv he says “I’ll make a ghost of anyone who stands in my way” before running off after the apparition. Throughout the play he not only rages at the antagonist Claudius, but his girlfriend in Act iii Scene i and his mother in Act iii Scene iv of which the latter he stabs Polonius through the curtain without even seeing who was there. He interrupts his own production of the Mousetrap with rude remarks and condemns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death using his father’s signet ring while on route to England. An analysis of Hamlet’s character reveals that he clearly does not know what he wants, his thoughts are universally reflected by those of men today. In Hamlets 2nd soliloquy Act ii Scene ii he…

    • 1860 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Betrayal in Hamlet

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Hamlets mother Gertrude betrays her first husband, the first king of Denmark. This betrayal comes in the form of a hasty marriage to the king’s brother Claudius, who we find out later murdered his brother in an attempt to acquire the crown. This is an act of betrayal on Gertrude’s part, because she should be in mourning of the her first husband’s death, but she immediately enters another marriage, with the kings brother. This is a betrayal to Hamlet because his father was killed, and his mother soon marries the man who we find out is responsible for it. We find out that Claudius killed his brother and Hamlets father with poison, we find this out when Hamlet is visited by a ghost in which Horatio cannot identify but shows itself to Hamlet as his father, it is at this time that the ghost tells Hamlet how he really died and who was responsible . When Hamlet learns of this news, he is enraged with the news and he begins looking to get revenge on the murderer Claudius. Hamlet throughout the play begins to doubt his sanity and if he should kill his uncle Claudius or himself “To be or not to be…….” (Hamlet), this is an act of betrayal on Hamlets part.…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Hamlet's Paranoia

    • 2158 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Hamlet, the eponymous hero of Shakespeare’s greatest work, descends swiftly into madness and paranoia after the murder of his father and the realization of his mother’s true, morally reprehensible, nature. As a result of these new responsibilities and extreme circumstances, Hamlet diverges from his usual, logical thinking into paranoia and over analysis, a condition that prevents him from trusting anyone. Hamlet, having been born a prince, is, for the first time, forced to make his own decisions after he learns of the true means of his father’s death. Another contributing factor to his madness is the constant probing of others into Hamlet’s sanity. These factors all contribute to Hamlets delay, and that delay contributes to the tragic downfall of Billy Shakespeare’s most brilliant hero at the hands of a distraught and vengeful Laertes.…

    • 2158 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hamlet Madness

    • 347 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Following the “unnatural” death of his father, King Claudius, and his mother’s consequent adulterous relationship with his uncle, Hamlet descends into an understandable state of despondency, deciding to put on an “antic disposition”.…

    • 347 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Deception in Hamlet

    • 1546 Words
    • 7 Pages

    One must always be weary of the truth because it is quite often manipulated to serve the needs of any person who requires that the truth be on their side. Quite often, the only way to discern the truth from the fiction is by way of a deceptive act, because an act of deception always exposes both its self and the truth to be two quite different things. Nowhere is this more true than in William Shakespeare's, Hamlet. One of the major themes in the play is in fact, deception. This central theme is expressed throughout the play in three major forms: the fear of being deceived, the act of deception, and the ultimate result of the deceptive act.…

    • 1546 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Perhaps family itself was the value that we were missing the most—a sense of togetherness that would unify us much more than anything else could. Yet we never did make that connection. Instead we found it best to try and act as though we knew what a functional family was as though we were doing a bad game of Simon Says. As Gary Soto recalls from his childhood, “I tried to convince them that if we improved the way we looked we might get along better in life” (Soto, 29). That was the way my fake family was. We knew the meaning of values, but in reality we did not put them into practice, whether it be out of laziness or simple antagonism for those we may or may not have viewed as inferior to our bloodline. Seldom attention was given to the values…

    • 428 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Two powerful characters in the play, aging King Lear and the gullible Earl of Gloucester, both betrayed their children unintentionally. Firstly, characters are betrayed due to family assumption. Lear banished his youngest daughter Cordelia because he over estimated how much she loved him. When questioned by her father, she responds with, "I love your Majesty / According to my bond, no more nor less." (I,i, 94-95) Lear assumed that since Cordelia was his daughter, she had to love him in a certain way, but he took this new knowledge and banished her without further thought. Secondly, characters were betrayed because of class. Edmund, the first-born son in the Gloucester family, should have been his father's next of kin. He would have been able to take over the position of Earl upon his father's death if he did not hold the title of a legitimate bastard. In his first soliloquy he says, "Why Bastard? Wherefore base? / When my dimensions are as well compact/ my mind as generous, and my shape as true…" (I,ii, 6-8) Edmund believes he is at least equal, if not more, to his father in body and in mind, but the title that his father regrettably gave to him still lingers. Lastly, characters were betrayed because of family trust. Gloucester trusted his son Edmund when he was told that his other son was trying to kill him. Upon reading the forged letter…

    • 1075 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Hamlet’s relationship with Gertrude is turbulent because Hamlet resents his mother for marrying his uncle. Gertrude reveals no guilt…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays