Paradox of Disappointment, Essay Example

‘A Tale Told By an Idiot, Full of Sound and Fury’: Shakespeare’s Paradoxes of Disappointment

Human nature encourages risk to achieve the deeper hopes of one’s heart, and- even when a man hides himself away- he risks the death of dreams as surely as though his greatest attempts failed. Every man becomes haunted by ghosts. The literal ghost of Hamlet took the form of his deceased father, but the ghosts of his own wandering nature already pursued him. Never the jovial, carefree prince, Hamlet feels homeless even before he returns to find all of his former life shattered. Yet he foolishly hoped that the pieces would come together as they should for a prince in a time of grief, setting himself up for further disappointment as the expectations he built around himself collapse into chaos and misery and ultimately cause to the deaths of Ophelia, Claudius, and Gertrude. Macbeth becomes haunted by the ghosts of ambition, the specter of the witches’ grand promises and gravest warnings. Each failure successfully secures the readers’ engagement in the morbid heroes Macbeth and Hamlet by confusing them just enough to build the suspense and confusion which resolves itself in two gruesome endings. The illusion of control perpetuates the Shakespearean paradoxes of disappointment, and this clearly shows in his two-sided portrayals of time, death, speech, and self.

Time

In the heat of their obsessions, Hamlet and Macbeth feel the effects of time as it seems to slow down or speed up. A very common phenomenon, this sense of stretching time only adds to the inner turmoil and confusion of these two leading men. Near the end of the play, Macbeth sees the entire number of his days as no more than a long succession of time leading up to his final moments, a trick played upon a fool who rushed through his time eagerly (Macbeth, p. 65). Breuer writes that during the time that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, the concept and keeping of time remained very closely connected to the stars and to the universe (1976, p. 260). It stands to reason that- in addition to the sense of reason and order which Breuer gives to the measurement of time- Shakespeare also acknowledged the role of the heavenly bodies as an astrological system of fate and the ruthless passage of time, changeable though it may seem. The witches meet in adverse weather conditions- a prime setting to reveal their prophecy to Macbeth and secure his doom. In Richard III, Shakespeare writes: “Those who had to shun the eye of heaven, the sun, were ‘thieves and robbers’ who by night ‘range abroad unseen,’ in murders and in outrage”. (Hunt 260)

While the actual act of murdering the king takes place in between scenes, the build-up stretches across the first two acts of the play, as Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Banquo all struggle with the real emotional toll of fulfilling the prophecy. During the planning phase, Macbeth frequently changes his mind about what he must do, adding that if he does commit the murder it should at least be done quickly. Considering the friendliness and loyalty of King Duncan, the reader might wonder why Macbeth chose to focus on the timeliness of the king’s death rather than the painless nature of it.

Time becomes disjointed as their schemes make days fly by and their emotions make moments seem as though they last for days. During Hamlet’s feigned madness he speaks often about old men and how they grow young again. Hunt writes that these allusions imply that Hamlet realizes that he moves his life backwards- away from Ophelia and every happy outcome of his station. (379-380) However, this backward thinking of time also suggests a subtle metaphor of becoming new again in death, which will be discussed in greater detail in the next section of this paper. Still, Hamlet’s obsession with the past produces little reaction in him as those people whom he hoped to be in his future also fell victim to his plans. As long as he pursued his goal of justice for his father, he sees even Ophelia’s death mainly as a casualty of his war. Hunt claims that Hamlet’s speeches, made as though he grew into an old man already, show the depth of the impact of his father’s death and quest for justice but also a sixteenth-century parallel of the earth’s end-of-days. (Hunt 381-383)

In contrast, similar themes in Macbeth The conflict in Macbeth represent the conflict of man with time “on a cosmic scale” because it clarifies the conflict between man and the progression of nature’s time, which man attempts to control through a specific, standard system of measurements. At the time of its penning, times changed and social customs began to shift from the feudal land systems to the enlightened, independent structures which would eventually degrade the importance of birth and class, traditional religion and Protestantism, and changing ideals of honor, duty, and virtue. (Breuer 260-261)

Death

Gertrude’s first words after Hamlet’s return prove to set the tone for the most basic aspect of human disappointment: death. After she requests that Hamlet remove his mourning clothes, she says, “Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.” (Hamlet 1.2.70-75) In Macbeth, Laertes observes after receiving the news of Ophelia’s drowning that “Nature her custom holds” (2.5.210-220). Hamlet’s Uncle, King Claudius, dismisses this grief, remarking that all sons lose their fathers, and calls Hamlet’s grief ‘unmanly’. (Hamlet 1.2.98) The realization of personal woes does not always lift the hero out of their sad state and may even deepen this desperation. Bromwich calls this concept ‘tragic self-knowledge.’ (132) King Claudius and Laertes discuss any murderer’s imminent death as justice, sanctified by necessity and a son’s duty to put his father’s spirit at rest, though the king does not know that their conversation has a double-meaning. They calmly discuss the manner in which Claudius will die, mulling over the idea of slitting his throat in church (Hamlet 4.7.135-150). Surely at this point, Hamlet spares a thought for no other possible deaths or for the death of the man he had been. The toll of Hamlet’s pledge is but his first death, one of many which the pages of the play would see before its conclusion. Ironically, the King condones a justified revenge in any setting, cheerfully egging Laertes on and recommending a boundless revenge to show the father that his memory is both echoed and avenged.

Shakespeare utilizes this self-knowledge in his tragedies- despite the very different plot lines and characters included. The hero and heroine of Anthony and Cleopatra see their doom approaching and view a lack of control over their death as worse than the inevitability of death itself. While this examination focuses primarily on Hamlet and Macbeth, this example illustrates that the illusion of control becomes closely tied to a person’s acceptance or rejection of death. In his soliloquy in Act V, Macbeth accepts a more passive vision of death even as his wife died of her mental anguish and exhaustion and as the reports trickle in which confirm the witches’ prophecy of his death. He compares life to a candle, a play, “a walking shadow…then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing”. (Macbeth 65)

Speech

For both Hamlet and Macbeth, who are famous for their wit and their strong speaking skills, their rants occasionally become hard to understand. Hamlet particularly stresses the contrast between speech and other external indicators of feeling and the true nature of the person. While Macbeth and his wife plot against King Duncan behind closed doors, the couple continues on as the loyal servants they had been before Macbeth encountered the witches. Each of Shakespeare’s elements of the paradox of disappointment realizes a certain two-sided edge, but the double-sided nature of the accomplishes more in the way of contributing to the audience’s understanding of foreshadowing, theme, character emotions, etc.  He asks that his friends keep the secret of the ghost, his crazed speeches conceal his plan to expose his uncle, the king, and his final words equate death with the ability to express oneself. When he speaks of silence, the subtle metaphor of speech as a sort of immortality emerges.

In the second scene of Act I of Macbeth, King Duncan comes upon a wounded sergeant and asks him about the battle. After listening to the harrowing account, Duncan comments: “So well thy words become thee as thy wounds”. (5) Duncan, as a man true to himself, recognizes the rare merit of someone speaking their mind, a merit which he will most painfully discover has left his friend Macbeth. In place of his respect for King Duncan and in place of thankfulness for the honors and ‘golden opinions’ given him, Macbeth hungers more for what he does not have- just because he now knows it to be possible and feels the compulsion to see it through. Meanwhile, he and Banquo discuss his death, and Banquo’s first words after King Duncan’s murder urge MacDuff to “say that it is not so”. (25) Although the action of the members of the court literally directs the events the first scene of Macbeth opens with the witches. In the power of their true riddles and schemes lay the course of fate which each man concerned would run. They spoke true and useful words, cleverly disguised, so that even true and useful speeches possessed a two-sided nature. Ironically, both Hamlet and Macbeth make their final speeches on the pointlessness of life and the words of men. Laertes mourns the subtle vanity of speech in the moment of discovery that Ophelia died, his words, his ‘speech of fire’ blazing away while he cannot summon the particular words in light of the folly of the events.

Self

While critics of Shakespeare note the sudden changes of character and plot within his plays as a lapse in the judgment of the writer. The critic seems often to confuse the plot which the story suggests to them with a credibility of the turn of events. Because a reader’s sympathies recommend for or against certain outcomes, readers form an expectation of solution. The insertion of chaos, like the realization of the witches’ unlikely prophesies in Macbeth, only thwarts outcomes which follow human desires and the paradox of disappointment reflected upon the readers as well.  Another reader, who examines these circumstances as part of the paradox of disappointment, may view the confusion as the writer’s own perceptive truth regarding human reaction to such deep and abiding sorrows. A man driven half-mad in the pursuit of justice will not conduct himself in a rational and predictable manner. His words jumble; his moral compass swings; his trust wanes. Today’s readers, unlike the common people of the Elizabethan era, rarely “experience the traumatic situation of having to listen to the furious gabble of a madman.” (Breuer 256) Breuer wrote these words in reference to another great Shakespearean tragedy, Macbeth, and the words easily point out the futile irony of feigning madness in the face of an obsession which produces graver consequences than any mental defect would allow. Obsession becomes the madness of control, and these tragic heroes need not dig deep to connect with a hidden side of himself.

Hamlet’s last words combine his sense of time, death, and self: “[Fortinbras] has my final words… The rest is silence.” (Hamlet 5.2.390-395) Hamlet’s final hours sobered in the face of all that had occurred. Having realized at last that his relentless quest to avenge his father’s death has deprived him of his love, his friends, his family, and his own life, the life of the country’s heir apparent, the haze of his single-minded focus begins to lift enough for him to consider the effects of his actions. Hamlet desires to be remembered as a thoughtful prince and not as a madman who turns into a murderer. His legacy might once have included a royal line of princes, but he spends his final moments clear of his thirst for revenge, feeling the fullness of his pain and isolation at the moment of his death. He hands his life and legacy over to Fortinbras.

A hero’s tragedy promotes his personal growth until he transcends these troubles either in life or afterlife. Bromwich calls this a “counterpoise of enlightenment.” (Bromwich 132) Because Macbeth and his wife could not live through more than the completion of the prophecy, he meets his end accomplished in that mission and righting his wrong through his loss to Malcolm. Hamlet sees the hopelessness of all that he accomplished. Because the conflict of man pits himself against the universe as well, the enlightenment of man often requires his death, as his reunion with the natural order of the universe resolves the inner and outer conflicts which form an integral part of the four paradoxes of disappointment and silences the confusion of time, the fear of death, the vanity of words, and the endless search for the self within the greater fabric of the fates.

Conclusion

This paradox of disappointment resolves in the end- if not always as readers hope. Similarly, Shakespeare’s portrayals of time, death, speech, and self each highlight different aspects of the paradox and remind readers that the paradox exists because, like each of these four aspects of portrayal, disappointment arises from a dualistic separation between what people want and what they have.  Shakespeare, through the mouth of Macbeth, gave resignation to this paradox, describes life as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing”. (Macbeth 65) If readers accept this vision of life, then Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies are in equal danger, and he openly mocked his own talents and the readers who would clamor for more. Shakespeare writes the underhanded bleakness of life, the dark shadows of the day that his readers flinch away from, because in those shadows men and women throughout time may glimpse their own disappointments coming into the light. If Shakespeare serves up some moral reason which justifies such sorrow and death, he does well to hide it within a deeper scheme of plot, because Bromwich implies that this urge to explain a tragedy extends from the writer’s urge to, as Macbeth said, make an idiot of himself on behalf of the play which he conducts for others (132-133).

Works Cited

Breuer, H. “Disintegration of Time in Macbeth’s Soliloquy ‘Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.’” 1976. The Modern Language Review, 71.2: 256-271. JSTOR. Web. 18 April 2014.

Bromwich, David. “What Shakespeare’s Heroes Learn.” 2010. Raritan 29.4: 132-148. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.

Hunt, M. (2004). “Forward Backward” Time And The Apocalypse In “Hamlet.” Comparative Drama 38.4 (2004): 379-399. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. (n.d.) Folger Shakespeare Library. Print.

Shakespeare, William. (2012.) Macbeth. Electronic Series Publication. Retrieved 18 Apr. 2014 from http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/shakesp/macbeth.pdf.