Activity 1.4

Note: The formatting is clearly whacky in this, I'll hand in a hardcopy if needed. 

Thesis-Was the "Ghost" that contacted Hamlet throughout the play really his fathers "spirit?" (No, because a good father, like Hamlet Sr., would not do what the Ghost did to Hamlet)

Reason-The Ghost causes Hamlet to blacken his soul by innocent killing people

Example- He killed Palinius.

Quote Hamlet: How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! (Act 3 scene 4)

Example- He killed Laertese.

Quote Laertese :He is justly served; 
    It is a poison temper'd by himself. 
    Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet: 
    Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, 
    Nor thine on me. 

    Dies 

(Act V Scene II)

Reason-He Causes Hamlet to (presumebly) to go insane.

Example- he contemplates suicide

Quote Hamlet -"to be or not to be, that is the question;

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream."

(Act III Scene I)

Example-he sees and talks to the ghost when his mother couldnt see it (if it was there she would see it because the gaurds in the beggining of the play could see it)

Quote Gertrude:

"This the very coinage of your brain.
	this bodiless creation ecstasy
	Is very cunning in." (Act III Scene IV)

Reason-He sets in motion a chain of events that causes the end of Hamlet's royal bloodline.

Example-Hamlet is killed

Quote Hamlet: O, I die, Horatio; 

    The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit: 
    I cannot live to hear the news from England; 
    But I do prophesy the election lights 
    On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice; 
    So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, 
    Which have solicited. The rest is silence. 

    Dies 

(Act V Scene II)

Example-Fortinbras takes the Danish throne

Quote Fortinbras: Let us haste to hear it, 

    And call the noblest to the audience. 
    For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune: 
    I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, 
    Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. 

(Act V Scene II)

Conclusion-Restate thesis (The apparation couldn't possibly have been Hamlet Jr.'s father because no good father (like the one that Hamlet Sr. was described as being) would cause what the spirit caused for his "son".