Hamlet Santiago a Dialogue Between

Hamlet Santiago

A Dialogue between Santiago and Hamlet Expanded

In the following dialogue, I will attempt to illuminate how the themes of revenge are explored in William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and how they influence the plots of these works. To do so, I will construct a dialogue between the ghosts of Hamlet and Santiago Nasar, both of whom die at the end of their respective texts. The difference in their perspectives -- Hamlet is carrying out a plot of revenge throughout much of the play, whereas Santiago is the unwitting victim of a misplaced revenge -- as well as the other stylistic and contextual differences in these works should allow for a wide-ranging examination of the issue of revenge.

The Dialogue

Hamlet: To be, or not to be, that is question. Whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows

Santiago: Noble? There's nothing noble about suffering. Especially when it comes to suffering from arrows. Well, knives, at least -- I don't have any real experience with arrows -- but sharp things generally hurt. Ignobly.

Ham: Pardon? I didn't realize I'd left the door open...

San: But really, you think there's anything noble in death? In suffering?

Ham: When there is a noble cause behind it. When one dies as a martyr...or kills from revenge, than those are noble deaths. There is a purpose -- an attempt to correct a wrong in the world -- to these deaths, and this purpose is noble.

San: But what if that purpose is wrong? I mean, death isn't something that can be undone. Once we have shuffled off this mortal coil...

Ham: There are certain wrongs that demand redress, even if the guilt is uncertain. Besides, I knew what I was doing when I killed Claudius. The play was the thing wherein I caught the conscience of the king -- that means I knew he was guilty.

San: Even if he was guilty, what did killing him serve? All there was left was a court in total disarray and a lot of dead bodies. You say your revenge had a purpose, but it didn't really. Revenge is only undertaken for personal motives -- being drunk and angry because you think someone took your sister's virginity, for instance. It has nothing to do with anything loftier. Indeed, it is this very perspective which produces the type of collective bloodlust that would seize my life. You have made yourself an executioner, perhaps as mad with assurance of his deeds as were those first committed some wrong.

Ham: That's not true! There was a method to my madness. I needed to make a point -- a very long point -- to the rest of the world that the type of treacherous and traitorous behavior practiced by my uncle wouldn't stand. Mine would be the hand of justice.