Hamlet and Oedipus

At Western Illinois University, I was subjected to this horrible myths class that was all lecture. He made us read Gunter Grass and then Joyce's Ulysses. Ugh! I am an English teacher and I don't think those are everything that the literature professors think they are.

I did have to relate Hamlet to something classical. I chose an analysis of the story of Oedipus from a psychological point of view for further research for myself. I wound up with some huge insights.

Matthew Butcher
English 355
Dr. Jacobs
15 November 1993


Hamlet and the Oedipus Myth

Myths have been used as the basis of many classics in literature. William Shakespeare's Hamlet is no different. Many critics believe it draws upon the influence of Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy. I will relate this parallel between the two plays and analyze its special significance in Hamlet.
First, the story of Oedipus is the foundation for what psychologists have termed the Oedipus complex. In the story, Oedipus inadvertently kills his father, then marries his mother. Psychologists say that at a young age everyone has "sexual" feelings for the parent of the opposite sex.
In Freud's stages of libidinal development, the first three stages are important in shaping an adult's personality. Freud's libido is the energy that moves the individual to seek pleasure and he defines it as a "comprehensive bodily function, having pleasure as its goal" (Freud 67). If the needs in one of these stages are not satisfied, the individual fixates on that stage and continues to look for this kind of satisfaction later in life. One of the stages is the phallic stage which occurs around the ages of five to seven. In the phallic stage, the child is preoccupied with obtaining the exclusive attention of the parent of the opposite sex. In the Oedipus complex, the boy recognizes that his father is a serious rival for his mother's attention, and the child's desire is to possess his mother. The Oedipus

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complex is therefore an undue and unhealthy attachment of a son for his mother which is likely to be suppressed and cause great mental distress.
According to Dr. Ernest Jones, Hamlet goes through this complex during the course of the play. In his monumental work, Hamlet and Oedipus, Dr. Jones goes into detail relating Hamlet's Oedipal desires. The Oedipal conflict is the dynamic formulation for why Hamlet cannot kill Claudius.
Before getting into the details surrounding the Oedipus complex, I must synopsize the story of Hamlet. Old King Hamlet, the King of Denmark, is killed by his brother Claudius. Claudius becomes King and then also marries the Queen, becoming Hamlet's stepfather. This is where Dr. Jones infers the Oedipus complex in Hamlet. Claudius takes on the role of father.
Dr. Jones motivates Hamlet in terms of an unresolved Oedipal conflict. This is why Hamlet cannot kill Claudius. "His uncle incorporates the deepest and most buried part of his own personality, so that he cannot kill him without also killing himself" (Jones 99). Dr. Jones calls Hamlet's identification with Claudius "the jealous detestation of one evil-doer towards his successful fellow" (100).
Claudius takes on the father-figure in Hamlet's Oedipus complex. The father is the rival of Hamlet's repressed desires. "The complete expression of the 'repressed' wish is not only that the son should die, but that the son should then espouse the mother" (79).

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The biggest debate in Hamlet is why our titular character was so hesitant to kill Claudius and thereby avenge his father. "Hamlet's hesitancy was due to some special cause of repugnance for his task and he was unaware of the nature of this repugnance" (85). His entire dilemma has been convincingly interpreted as a symbolic acting out of the Oedipus complex. "Hamlet is able to do anything--except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father's place with his mother; the man shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized" (125).
Polonius, one of Claudius' aides, dies from Hamlet's Oedipal frustrations. Hamlet kills Polonius in his mother's bedroom by running him through with his sword, that takes on a phallic symbolism according to most critics. Admittedly, this murder is purely accidental in the play. However, such accidents, especially in literature, like in dreams, represent symbolic content. In the original Oedipus, Oedipus' murder of his father the King, as well as his marriage to his mother the Queen, were both similarly "accidental."
Claudius is the main father-figure of the play but Polonius acts as a kind of father-surrogate. Hamlet would, after all, expect no one but Claudius to be alone with the Queen in the royal bed-chamber of Denmark. "It doesn't matter who is behind the arras; it is sufficient justification in his state of mind that a person hiding in the Queen's private closet is up to no good. After the deed is done, it is scarcely surprising,

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considering the heavy burden the duty of revenge has been at last accomplished. The tremendous desire wipes out rational thought. There is only the wish that the nightmare be over. 'Is it the king?' he asks, hoping against hope" (Cheney 58). "Hamlet would, after all, expect no one but Claudius to be alone with the Queen in the royal bed-chamber of Denmark" (Williams 12).
The question that now arises is the dynamic formulation of the regression. Why should Hamlet react to severe shock by regressing instead of by promptly murdering Claudius as his father suggests? "The reason is that what the revelation of his father's murder really confirms to his 'prophetic soul' are his suspicions about his mother's murderous role in the marriage" (12). Hamlet even outright accuses his mother of the murder. After he has killed Polonius in the bedroom scene, Hamlet defiantly shouts, "Almost as bad, good mother,/ As kill a king, and marry with his brother." This scene is full of many images of the complex as Hamlet chastises his mother.
The bedroom scene is the crux of the entire neo-Freudian argument. It is here in Act III, scene IV that Hamlet manifests an overwhelming concern about Gertrude's sexual life. Critics find here a Hamlet moved by jealousy due to his unconscious, incestuous love for his mother, rather than an idealistic code of Renaissance family honor. They see Hamlet's hatred of Claudius resulting from the fact that Claudius, rather than Hamlet himself, killed the King.
The neo-Freudians act on this hatred of Claudius. The

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Oedipus complex is a child's desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex. Hamlet wants to keep his mother and dispose of his step-father. In the Oedipus complex, when a boy recognizes potential rivalry with his father, he begins to feel jealousy, even hatred, and an increasingly intense desire to have his mother. The boy's hatred of his father is mixed with castration anxiety, the fear of castration by his father in retaliation for the child's Oedipal feelings.
One main thing that critics work off of is the lack of a significant bad relationship between Hamlet and his father (Heller 414). This "assumption, truly, cannot be supported textually." Critics go on to say that this means that Hamlet regressed to the period of Oedipal conflict rather than never coming to Oedipal maturity. Authorities cite the first meeting of the Ghost and Hamlet as one that shows no indications of a conflicted relationship. "His unthinking, whole-hearted, instant support of his father, 'that I.../ May sweep to my revenge.' I can find nothing in this scene but the non-dependent, supportive love of a mature young man for his father, and the admiration and respect of father for son" (415).
Another main bit of evidence that critics bring forth is one line spoken by Gertrude in the scene where the Ghost comes to remind Hamlet of his promise not to hurt his mother: "To whom do you speak this?" (III,iv,131). "As addressed to the Ghost, these words strongly stress the fact that in Hamlet's regressed state the appearance of his father utterly castrates him." This leads

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critics again to Hamlet's regression to the Oedipal state. In the first meeting, Hamlet was a strong, collected character in speaking and is now different. Hamlet "is no longer the same person whom his father's appearance in the mother's bedroom once again threatens with an old childhood fear" (415).
Critics also present the fact that Hamlet feels an intense hostility towards Gertrude. While Claudius did indeed do the deed, Hamlet, suddenly deprived of the father he had identified with, believes that "it was his mother who essentially murdered his father." But most critics don't believe that Hamlet thinks that Gertrude is an accomplice in the murder. "The words of the Ghost imply a two-fold motive for Claudius: the Queen and the crown" (420).
Getting to the heart of the Oedipal question, Hamlet identifies Claudius as his mother (418). This is based on Hamlet's words: "father and mother is man and wife,/ man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother" (IV,iii,54-5). "This is an attempt to focus on the murderer as the Ghost directed." Hamlet can satisfy his own urges against his mother and appease the Ghost at the same time.
The Oedipal conflict is then easily seen as a regression. "It is an everyday commonness that the death, especially the sudden death, of the parent with whom the child was identified is often interpreted by the child as a murder by the surviving parent toward whom he has long felt hostility" (417).
All in all, Hamlet's desires in the play are of great

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mystery to most critics. The Oedipus complex begins to lay a firm foundation for the reasons of these desires. The Oedipus complex suggests ways to answer the questions of the play in a believable and intelligent manner. Hamlet is the Oedipus complex personified. Hamlet does not even realize his own reasons and motives, being subconscious. The Oedipus complex is a logical reasoning for his questionable actions throughout the play.

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Works cited
Cheney, David R. "Hamlet--Complex Oedipus Complex."
Shakespeare Newsletter 17 (1967): 58.
Freud, S. Sexuality and the Psychology of Love. New York: Carlton, 1905.
Heller, Lora and Abraham Heller. "Hamlet's Parents: The Dynamic Formulation of A Tragedy." American Imago 17 (1960): 413-21.
Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus. New York: Norton, 1949.
Wiliams, George W. "The Complex Oedipus Complex." Shakespeare Newsletter 18 (1968): 12.