Heroic Archetypes: Hamlet, Oedipus, Beckett\'s

Heroic Archetypes: Hamlet, Oedipus, Beckett's Tramps, And The Hero Of The Future

The Shakespearean hero Hamlet is seemingly the paradigmatic tragic hero of what is perhaps the most famous play ever written. Hamlet is nobly born, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remind him, and as Polonius reminds Ophelia when he says that Hamlet is a prince "out of thy star" (2.2). Hamlet's fatal tragic flaw is usually depicted as his indecision in not revenging himself upon Claudius soon enough. Hamlet creates various 'roadblocks' to his goal, such as refusing to kill Claudius at prayer and staging a play to see if his father's ghost is telling the truth while he gauges the king's reaction. Hamlet also shows the characteristics of intelligence and ability to appreciate the irony of his fate like a classic tragic hero.

Hamlet may also be classified as a kind of sub-species of tragic hero, a 'revenge' hero, in which the central character is bound to revenge the death of a loved one. Hamlet engages in an elaborate deception to conceal his motivations. He is ostensibly bound by a supernatural force to take revenge, and must dissemble to achieve his ends of vengeance. The angry, assured, mourning or mad persona Hamlet presents at different times to the court is very different than the sarcastic but honest, doubting self he presents to the audience and Horatio.

But Hamlet is not an ideal type of a tragic hero or a revenge hero. Unlike the typical tragic hero, he does not seem ambitious -- he does not try to kill Claudius until forced to do so by the ghost. When Rosencrantz says: "Why then, your ambition makes it [Denmark] one [a prison]; 'tis too narrow for your mind," Hamlet responds "O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams" (2.2). Internal rather than external states are more important to Hamlet -- he hates hypocrisy and those who "seem" or "smile" but who are really villainous (1.2; 1.5).

Hamlet is angry at the lack of respect shown to his father after death, but he frequently doubts the existence of the supernatural, the plot device on which his heroism depends. His famous monologue "To be or not to be" speaks of the 'perchance' nature of dreaming; his scene in the graveyard, shortly before his own death exhibits his belief that humans return to dust, nothing more (5.1). Thus even though Claudius may be guilty, it is never certain if the ghost is really 'true' given that the ghost is only visible to those sympathetic with Hamlet's cause: revenging himself upon Claudius brings about the destruction of the Danish throne, rather than truly makes the world more just. Horatio says that Hamlet's death has meaning, but it is uncertain if Fortinbras will be able to appreciate what that meaning is, and Hamlet is accused of "treason" by the court before he dies (5.2).

Unlike a tragic hero, Hamlet seems trapped by events, rather than effectively orchestrates the events that bring about the final act of revenge and Claudius' demise. Hamlet's victimization in his society may be more due to his positive characteristics, like his introspection and hatred of hypocrisy and violence, rather than a single, negative flaw of indecision. The Greek protagonist of Oedipus seems more typical of a tragic hero: Oedipus arrogantly believes he can avoid his fate, and in trying to do so, unwittingly embraces it. He kills his father as he flees his home and marries his mother after solving the riddle of the Sphinx. His end is inevitable, but Sophocles clearly shows the role negative character traits play in Oedipus' tragedy, while Hamlet's supposedly negative traits of doubt are not necessarily evil.

Thus Hamlet could be classified as a kind of nascent anti-hero, a man who mourns "the time is out of joint/oh cursed spite/that ever I was born to put it right," and never succeeds in 'putting it right' because society offers him only one, ineffective mechanism for pursuing a brutal type of justice (1.5). The failure of heroism to 'put things right' is manifested starkly in Waiting for Godot, where the heroes famously wait for the final 'solution' of the arrival of the presumably heroic Godot, who never comes. These characters are not so much heroes or even anti-heroes -- rather they displace their desire for heroic qualities upon a fictional person. They still believe in the ability of a savior-hero to deliver the world, but since they know they do not have such characteristics they 'create' Godot. Similarly, another Beckett protagonist, Krapp, displaces desirable heroic qualities within himself onto an external object, since he cannot conceive of himself as a hero. In Krapp's case, the object is a tape recorder. The heroic individual becomes the Krapp of the past, the speaker on the tape. Krapp mocks his old self, but also clearly regrets the qualities present in himself that he has alienated and relegated to the past.

It is often said that we 'moderns' do not believe in heroes like the ancients. Yet even in Oedipus the King, Oedipus is first shown in a heroic fashion, telling the people of Thebes he will save them: only to be revealed to be a plaything of the gods, and the actual cause of the Thebans' misery. Hamlet resists his role as an avenger, even while he despises Claudius. He expresses contempt at the more traditionally heroic characters of the play, like the overly emotional Laertes. He is introspective enough to admit Laertes has the same cause as himself -- ironically, the same filial obligation to kill Hamlet that Hamlet has to kill Claudius (5.1). Hamlet's irony and self-searching nature regarding the moral worth of his quest of revenge is deeply anti-heroic as Beckett's parodies of the impulse to find a hero in nothingness.