Personally, I don’t think Hamlet is crazy. I can see why others might think he is because he’s listening to the ghost of his father who tells him to kill Claudius as a form of vengeance as Claudius killed his father and married his mother (sounds a little like Oedipus….). How do the readers know the ghost is real? If it’s real, how do we know it’s not lying? This will lead as evidence for Hamlet being daft.
However, I believe that what Hamlet did was follow his instinct. Claudius murdered his father and is taking the throne unjustly. Hamlet believes he needs to seek vengeance as the best solution which is to kill Claudius. This is juxtaposed to Telemachus from the Odysseus. Telemachus feels the need to kill the suitors and protect his mother in order to honor his father.
In this case, Hamlet is doing what his father would have wanted him to do and is acting as any normal son would have done (well, not so much these days). Even before he decides to kill Claudius, he takes several steps to insure that Claudius is the one. Hamlet goes into the trouble of setting up a play that is parallel to what happened to his father and Claudius. Hamlet wants to see Claudius’ reaction; if he reacts then he is the one responsible. In which he does, so Hamlet takes that as a fact. I admit Hamlet is too obsessed with the idea of death esp. to Claudius. During Act III, Scene 4 whilst his mother panics and fears her son and Polonius comes out of hiding. Hamlet thinks him the King and stabs him with his sword. In this act, he feels no remorse and some others might argue once again that Hamlet is mad but I think he’s just so absorbed and obsessed with vengeance that’s he’s becoming blind to reality-not in a daft way but because the environment he is in is changing him. Cause and Effect is what is making him become this way. As if Hamlet is plagued or doomed from the beginning , similar to Oedipus, and fate is unavoidable.
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