Revenge, perhaps swings on the logical fallacy of institutionally established statements such as "Two wrongs make a Right" and "Love thy neighbour as yourself". Nussbaum states of the dimensional aspects of revenge thus,""The primitive sense of the just—remarkably constant from several ancient cultures to modern institutions ...—starts from the notion that a human life ... is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by anther's act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment. It differs from the original act only in the sequence of time and in the fact that it is response rather than original act—a fact frequently obscured if there is a long sequence of acts and counteracts"
The problematic of revenge explicates itself in Shakespeare's great tragedy: the meaning of Hamlet's hesitancy in seeking to obtain revenge for his father's murder- which has been called the sphinx of modern literature.Ulrici was the first critic to detect the internal conflict of Hamlet over the moral legitimacy of challenge. Von Berger saw the conflict arising from a noble mind against a baser world. Foss sets the conflict against a moral conscience. Kohler saw the conflict on ethical planes as a precursor of Law; an observation refuted by Loening through historical consideration. Schipper, gelber and Stoll read the conflict on intellectual lines. Figgs makes a summation by viewing the play as a tragedy of honour; Hamlet's delay being the consequence of a thoughtful mind. Typically Freudian, Ernest Jones,scrutinizes Hamlet with the traditional tools of psychoanalytic psychology and questions the discrepancy between Hamlet's intense sense of duty and his continual evasion of its execution through every possible excuse. Though it is probable that Hamlet was a victim of ethical objection to personal revenge and was unaware of the cause of his repugnance, Jones points out the improbability of the inability of a philosophical mind to indulge in introspection.
Jones's psychoanalytic stance opines that man practices self deception to repress his inner motives. Jones grounds his statement of a specific 'aboulia' in Hamlet upon Sir James Paget's observation that ,"Hamlet's advocates say he cannot do his duty, his detractors say he will not when the truth is that he cannot will." Jones seeks the hidden source of the conflict in his theory that the Oedipus complex is a universal, biological, normal, unavoidable inheritance of the human race. It is clear that an innate desire to kill one's father and possess one's mother runs contrary to the very fabric of our society. The difference between the innate urge and the demands of our civilization is mediated by repression and sublimation.
Jones accounts for Hamlet's source of internal conflict in the incestuous passion Hamlet had repressed under filial piety and educative influences. In reality, his uncle incorporates the deeper and repressed part of Hamlet's personality and caught between the twin crimes of incest and parricide, the sphinx of modern literature remains unsolved.
Jones accounts for Hamlet's source of internal conflict in the incestuous passion Hamlet had repressed under filial piety and educative influences. In reality, his uncle incorporates the deeper and repressed part of Hamlet's personality and caught between the twin crimes of incest and parricide, the sphinx of modern literature remains unsolved.
