The Way To The Goal

Rujian, Zhou

9/11/2016

The Way To The Goal

   “All roads lead to Rome” Like this famous phrase says, there are uncountable ways to achieve a goal. I think it is more important to choose the way than to achieve the goal itself. If a person chose a bloody, evil, unjust way to achieve his goal, then all he will get is the bad end. Just like King Claudius in Hamlet, who chose an evil way to achieve his ambition and die at the end.

   King Claudius is the villain. He is greedy, that he wants to be the King of Denmark; merciless, that he kills the old King with poison; and evil, that he sets up the fencing fight between Hamlet and Laertes. Especially in the last scene, Claudius’ actions show he chose a bloody, evil, unjust way. Claudius sets up a fencing fight between Hamlet and Laertes in order to kill Hamlet. Before the fight, Claudius prepares poisoned wine for Hamlet, even though Laertes also prepares a poisoned sword. After Hamlet wins Laertes the second times, the queen goes up and drinks the poisoned wine. The queen dies, and Claudius’ plan goes wrong. After that, Laertes tells Hamlet, that the poisoned wine is prepared by Claudius in order to kill Hamlet. At the end, the angry Hamlet attacks Claudius and kill him.

   During the last scene, Claudius tries to kill Hamlet because Hamlet knows Claudius kills the old king. At the point, Hamlet is a threat to his power. But Claudius can not just kill Hamlet directly because he has no reasons to justify. Then he uses Laertes as his sword to kill Hamlet. Laertes is very angry about the death of his sister Ophelia and his father Polonius, and he wants to avenge for them. From here, the audience can know that Claudius thinks a lot in his mind. Claudius is not stupid, but he uses his brain in evil ways. For example, he poisoned the old king from the ear, which make the death does not look like murder. Moreover, Claudius knows Laertes has the poisoned sword, but Claudius still prepares the poisoned wine. Claudius want to put Hamlet into a 100% death! All of these, Claudius just want to protect his power. We can see Claudius is such a greedy and brutal person. He can do everything to achieve his goal. Lastly, when the queen drinks the poisoned wine, Claudius does not show his sadness. Even though he tries to stop the queen, but he also knows he can not let other people know about the poisoned wine because he still hopes to kill Hamlet. So Claudius sees the queen drink the wine and dies. What a brutal, ruthless and coldblooded person Claudius is!

For all these things he down in the last scene, he just wants Hamlet to die in order to remain him as a king. Also, Claudius killed Hamlet’s father to become the new king. Claudius’ large goal in the play is to maintain his power. He wants to be the king, who control the countries and millions of people. As a villain in the play, Claudius shows all the dark side of the people. So he chose the bad way to achieve his goal. Neither to poisoned the old king, nor to kill Hamlet is right. These wrong ways harm Claudius and lead him to death.

Claudius gets what he deserves. It is very important to choose the ways, even though people with skills and knows exactly what their goals are, without going through  a right way, they will not succeed. Like “To be or not to be”, choosing the way to the goal is always a question. For Hamlet is the same, if he chose another way to achieve his avenge, a way that has less madness, crazy, struggles, and deaths, will he has a good ending?