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Hamlet wants to achieve two goals with respect to Gertrude. One is to express his anger against her, which he harbors for essentially the same reasons that he had it for Ophelia. Two is to somehow induce her to stop loving Claudius. This latter development would eliminate the possibility that Hamlet might feel estrangement from motherly love in attempting to kill or from succeeding in killing Claudius. After all, in killing Claudius, Hamlet would not be killing the man his beloved mother loves. Gertrude would also not condemn Hamlet for killing or attempting to kill Claudius if she did not love Claudius.
Thus, Hamlet would have the psychological freedom he would need to kill Claudius and thus relieve him of his obsession Hamlet meets goal one by treating Gertrude angrily, as his feigned insanity permits him to do. However, goal two is decidedly more difficult. One means of achieving it would be for Hamlet to kill his mother or make her go insane, which he has the license to do thanks to his feigned insanity. Thus, she would stop loving Claudius. However, he cannot do so because he harbors a basic psychological inhibition against destroying his own mother. Also, he needs his mother's love much more than he needs Ophelia's love.
While Ophelia's love is self-actualizing since it is a lover's love, Gertrude's love is much more self-actualizing and essential for him since it is that of his mother. (The evidence for this arbitrary reliance on his mother's love comes from his father and Claudius both professing of their powerful need for Gertrude's love and approval. Hamlet, being their blood relative, will likely feel the same). To destroy his mother would be to attack his own identity. Thus, since Hamlet cannot induce his mother to stop loving Claudius by killing her or driving her insane, as he did with Ophelia, he must somehow bring about this stoppage while leaving her alive and sane. He attempts to do this by confronting his mother with the premises of Claudius' crime, in the hopes that she will somehow think about them, realize that Claudius is guilty, and thus stop loving Cladius, all without thinking that Hamlet believes these premises on the inside. Ordinarily, Hamlet would not do this because in confronting her with these premises he would be obliging her to choose between he and Claudius, a decision that would be psychologically disastrous for Hamlet if she chose against him.
However, since Hamlet confronts her with these premises in a state of feigned insanity, she has no reason to believe that the rational Hamlet believes them on the inside. Thus, she will not be obliged to make that difficult choice because the circumstances that would cause that obligation, namely her realization that the rational Hamlet believes in them and that she knows that he knows that she knows he believes in them, don't exist, thanks to Hamlet's feigned insanity. Ultimately, even this attempt fails. Gertrude fails to respond to these premises with recognition of them and a subsequent conclusion that she no longer loves Claudius. What happens next?
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Research essay sample on Hamlet Believes Killing Claudius
