Hamlet's tragic flaw is

Answer 1

He causes the death of every character in the play including himself. He mentally abuses Ophelia, by telling her he doesn't love her, then behaving sexually forward towards her. This begins Ophelia's madness. Hamlet then kills Polonius, a villainous act in itself, however he then carries on in the scene to ignore the dead body and continues to speak with his mother, finally dragging the body out of the room, hiding it, and then speaking in riddles when asked about the where abouts of the body. (The body is under the stairs(weird enough)) The murder of Polonius tips Ophelia over the edge and she kills herself. Her death would not have happened had Hamlet not mentally abused her then killed her father. He then kills Polonius' son, Laertes in a fight, during the fight his Mother, possibly knowning what was in the drink, and saving her son, drinks a poisoned drink meant for Hamlet. Hamlet then stabs Claudius, the only person which he aimed to kill at the start. However he is hurt from the fight and dies himself. Therefore he is a villain because causes all of the deaths, which is clearly not a characteristic of a tragic hero.

The above is an excellent example of how blame for anything can be attached to anyone. Claudius, intending to kill Hamlet, poisons a drink which Gertrude intentionally or unintentionally drinks and dies; Hamlet is to blame for this. That is why it is a pointless endeavor to try to blame people in literary analyses.

What distinguishes a villain from a hero is more probably motivation. Richard III is clearly a villain because he tells us in numerous soliloquys that he is killing people so he will be a king. Macbeth is a villain because whether the Scottish people know it or not, the audience knows that he has murdered a lot of people either to become king or to make himself safe.What are Hamlet's motivations? He kills Claudius to revenge his father's death, Polonius by accident, thinking he was Claudius, and Laertes in self-defence.

The question of whether revenge is a moral or immoral activity was explored by Shakespeare in his early revenge play Titus Andronicus. In that play revenge only leads to more and greater revenges until everyone is dead. In Hamlet the issue is much more ambiguous. Indeed the play is so ambiguous in so many different ways that it would be possible to stage it playing Hamlet as a bloodthirsty young man who has formed an inordinate dislike for his uncle, and who is only held back from killing him right off by his own cowardice and his desire that his revenge should be as complete as possible.

Answer 2

In the technical terms of the time, a tragedy ends in a funeral and a comedy ends in a wedding. Thus, even a play in which Hamlet lives (as in the original version of the story) would count as a tragedy if it ended in Claudius's death. Some versions call it a "tragical history," since it's based on an allegedly true story.

Answer 3

Shakespeare wrote three basic kinds of plays-- some were about history, some were comedies, and some were tragedies. The tragedies usually ended with the lead character either dead or dying, having experienced some extremely painful or difficult experience, often a situation the character caused. In the story of Hamlet, the "melancholy Dane," he was a very unhappy person. He was mistrustful of his girlfriend Ophelia, who really loved him in spite of it all. But mainly, he was depressed that his widowed mother had so quickly remarried, while Hamlet was still in mourning over his father's death.

Hamlet learned from a ghost who appeared to him (and turned out to be the spirit of his late father), that his father was murdered by Claudius, the man Hamlet's mother married. Determined to punish his mother for being disloyal to his father's memory, Hamlet plots revenge. Without telling the entire plot, suffice it to say that while Hamlet does achieve vengeance on his mother and on Claudius, it does not lead to happiness for him; in fact, even though he is able to watch his mother die by poison, and then kill Claudius, the battle between them results in Hamlet's death as well.

Answer 4

The simplest answer is: Hamlet is a tragedy because that is part of its title. In the Second Quarto version of the play, published in 1604 when Shakespeare was around to have a say about it, by his friends and associates, the title is "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." Then when his friends publish an omnibus volume of his plays in 1623, they put Hamlet in with all the other plays they are calling tragedies, again with the title "The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark."
That's the real reason Hamlet is considered a tragedy--it has been called a tragedy since it premiered over 400 years ago. Different people have put forward different definitions or explanations of tragedy over the years, some of them (like that of AC Bradley) fairly strange, but there can be no doubt that if someone came up with a definition of tragedy which excluded Hamlet, everyone and their dog would say that there was something clearly wrong with that definition.

Answer 5

He is destroyed by his own actions, partially due to his own weaknesses.

Answer 6

Hamlet's tragic flaws are indecision and hesitation. Even when he has evidence, he does not decide what to do or if he is going to do anything.

Answer 7

Hamlet's tragic flaw is tendency to over-think. For example, he has an opportunity to kill Claudius when he's praying in church, but he stops to consider this and misses his moment.

Answer 8

A tragic flaw is a defect in the protagonist's character that leads him/her, and often others, to ruin or at least great grief. Hamlet's tragic flaw is his inability to act.