Camilla Castrezzati 4^A LSU English Literature - Hamlet - Personal in-depth study

In this essay I’m going to explain some correlations between Shakespeare’s fundamental
drama, “Hamlet”, and my favourite movie ever, “A Clockwork Orange” by S.Kubrick, inspired
by the most famous novel by Anthony Burgess, which,sadly, I haven’t read yet.
If we only focus on the plot, we can’t note any similarity; however, I tried to observe the
personality development of the main characters of both works and I found some interestings
topics to discuss about.

Firstly, in “Hamlet” we can notice many mental problems inside Hamlet’s mind, such as
suicide, mood changing and Oedipus complex. I’m going to explain the main feature in
Hamlet’s mental illness, or his Bipolar Disorder. In a few words, Bipolar Disorder, or manic
depression, is a severe mental disorder where the patient has high and low changes in his
mood, which can lead to further changes in his thoughts, sleep, energy and behaviours.
Sometimes the patient has very slow mood changes, sometimes very fast. Hamlet seems to
have quick mood swings, even if the storyline lasts from 5 to 9 months. Furthermore, I
believe that a depressive episode in Hamlet’s story is the famous soliloquy “To be or not to
be''; but, had he had a manic episode? Yes, for example when he prepared the play to
observe his uncle’s reaction. In that moment, Hamlet started to feel omnipotent, and his
impulsivity was sky-high. Also, as it’s not unusual in a bipolar patient life, he tried to commit
suicide, which, I believe, as a diagnostic bipolar patient, it’s the lastest concept a person
would think about.
Alex DeLarge, the main character of “A Clockwork Orange”, during his educational training
inside the plot of the novel and the movie, is to be said to have many mental problems, but
the most reliable one is the Antisocial Personality Disorder. This personality disorder, which
isn’t the same concept as the “antisocial behavior”, is characterized by the indifference, or
the violation of rules and rights. To compensate for that, Alex, and many other APD patients,
used to assume substances, such as his favourite form the “Korova Milkbar” , where they
served “Korova Plus”, milk mixed with various drugs. Can we remember that Alex is only 15
at the beginning of the plot? After many adventurous events, Alex tried to commit suicide,
because he recalled, in that precise moment, so much pain from the past.
In both characters, the attempt suicide is caused by past awful memories. They both had
traumatic past, from the loss of a parent, the absent parents, and, of course, the many
intrusive thoughts that their mental illness brings to their suffering mind.

Then, I’d like to write about a confidential theme that I could explain to you all, which is the
revenge theme. In fact, revenge causes someone to act blindly through anger, rather than
having a reason. What do we know about revenge? We could remember the Code of
Hammurabi, the famous “Eye for an eye”. But history changes, every second, and in the
Modern Age the deed of revenge had such a different meaning. For example, F.Bacon
explained that term as “wild justice”.
In “Hamlet”, revenge is necessary to preserve honor, according to Hamlet, therefore,
Hamlet’s actions to choose revenge were justified. Hamlet seeks revenge due to his
existentialism ; if we examine his point of view, we could see he rejects the role of regular
society to dictate morality. Hamlet’s only real obstacle is in his head: he is uncertain what he
should believe and how he should act. By making the obstacles to Hamlet’s revenge
internal, Shakespeare introduces philosophical questions to the revenge tragedy which had
not appeared in the genre before. Can we believe the evidence of our eyes? Is revenge
justified? Can we predict the consequences of our actions? What happens when we die?
These deep questions brought Hamlet to demand himself about his past and future actions,
if they were and will be acceptable or not. Indeed, the drama “Hamlet” emphasizes how a
good and pure spirit becomes destroyed by ambition turning him to evil, the aspiration of
becoming renowned and accepted. So, what’s good or bad? Are we right-minded people?
After watching six times the 1971 movie which I was talking about before, I realized that
Alex DeLarge had an opposite rise than Hamlet: he started being one of the worst boys in
that dystopian world to become a pure mature person, who only wants to be happy and
serene.
Here the revenge is not from the main character, but from a sub-character, an Alex old
victim, a writer, who, after all the star’s personality changes, decided to take care of a
sufferent Alex, which at first he hadn’t recognized. But after the writer heard Alex singing
“Singing in the rain”, which at the beginning of the plot was intoned by himself during the “old
ultra-violence”, he realized everything. Then the writer decided to take his revenge: he forced
Alex to listen to the “Ninth Symphony” by Beethoven, which was at first Alex’s favourite song,
but during the treatment he must have listened to that song too much. Alex suffered a lot,
and took a chance to try to kill himself, throwing himself outside of the window.

Both “Hamlet” and “A Clockwork Orange” have their groundworks in, what I’d like to call,
“aesthetic of violence”. Many times all the arts, from literature, to drawings, to music, use the
violence as an excuse to be noticed, to be famous, but in a good way, sometimes. I admit
that “A Clockwork Orange” is strangely exaggerated, but “Hamlet” uses violence as a
gateway to open people’s minds. Because we should more often consider the atrocity of life
in order to not commit the same in the future. That’s why history exists and is important to
be studied since we were young.