Plato defined justice as “the preservation of what is just.” In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, the dilemma of justice, particularly regarding punishment, takes center stage. The characters in the play see justice as a balance that must be preserved and use revenge to preserve it. From Fortinbras, the Prince of Norway's desire to avenge his father's death at the hands of the former King of Denmark by invading Denmark, to the protagonist Hamlet's quest for revenge against his uncle Claudius for killing his father, en passant by the murder of Laertes Hamlet in retaliation for his father Polonius. After death, both protagonists and antagonists recklessly seek to reestablish a balance, fair or not. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay about duty rather than vengeful passion. Hamlet's line, "O cursed spite, that I was born to make things right!" ", indicates that Hamlet is anything but eager to seek justice from his father: he acts instead out of a feeling of loyalty and duty towards his father. This is further established almost incontrovertibly towards the end of Act II, when Hamlet decides to test Claudius in order to ascertain his guilt rather than begin plotting immediately. His hesitation suggests that Hamlet plays an important role in the balance of justice: he is only willing to take revenge if he is sure that punishment will restore the balance, and he is tired of upsetting the balance even further. balance. Although he is wrong to think that shedding more blood would actually restore a balance of justice, he is at least principled and acts more consistently than others on the premise that justice is the preservation of a balance between the beneficial and harmful effects of justice. actions that people take towards each other: a balance that can and must be preserved through gratitude or revenge. He is of course prone to anger, but Hamlet's apparent outbursts of passion must be attributed first to his discomfort with the idea of ​​revenge and his weariness of making things worse, and later to his search for 'a Lex Talionis type of justice, by which he believes that balance can only be restored if it is restored precisely in the way in which it was upset. Hamlet's search for an uncompromising punishment to fit the crime is unexpectedly revealed when he sees his first chance to kill Claudius. Rather than act and avenge his father without risk of failure, Hamlet loses his temper and instead decides to wait for a chance to send Claudius when the latter has a sin in mind, so that he does not have no chance of justifying himself. Ironically, this progression in Hamlet's attitude toward his father's vengeance and his stricter understanding of justice leads him to act irrationally and unjustly when he recklessly kills Lord Polonius a few lines later, taking it upon himself. saying for King Claudius but apparently attacking blindly either way. After realizing that it was Polonius he murdered, Hamlet acknowledges that he has upset the balance and that he may have to do it again in order to finally obtain revenge on his father's behalf, saying, " So the bad begins and the worst remains behind. » This is the first indication that Hamlet's quest for justice is failing - he has further upset the very balance he sought to restore, and his hitherto tragic descent from his goals initially pure suggests that he is right in realizing that little good will come from his future attempts, but is mistaken in hoping that the worst is over. The deterioration of Hamlet's values ​​is an exampletypical of a protagonist's parentage, and the result of Hamlet's character being too weak to prevent the external imbalance regarding his father's unavenged death from unbalancing his own peace of mind. However, he doesn't just focus on killing Claudius and blocking out the rest of the world; when he says "[I] will respond well to the death I gave him", Hamlet demonstrates lucidity: he recognizes that he has further disturbed the balance of justice and further recognizes that he will answer for the death of Polonius as soon as the balance was restored. As Hamlet becomes more and more unpredictable, he decides to be more and more brutal and precise in his revenge. While Hamlet cares little for details and perfect balance shortly after discovering his uncle Claudius' betrayal, he becomes increasingly obsessed with precise punishment and convinced that he too will fall victim to the rebalancing . Shakespeare's details of Hamlet's moral descent, as would probably seem to most people, call into question the validity of a balancing view of justice. As Hamlet's vengeance foments, he only causes more injustice; it invariably demonstrates the old adage that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Shakespeare thus develops the character of Hamlet to suggest that justice cannot exist as a line of balance, that is, as if it were approached and deviated sinusoidally with the countless and unpredictable actions of people. Instead, the implication is that nature is either somehow out of balance, or so incomprehensibly balanced that it is impossible to determine that the balancing effects are related, so that a disruption of the status quo or a change from equilibrium must be somewhat accepted. While it is unjust to completely ignore an offense since turning a blind eye makes no attempt to preserve what is right, Shakespeare certainly indicates that fully restoring the balance is impossible and dangerous, and that preserving what is right is right must be approached in a spirit of general awareness. preservation rather than precise restoration.Keep in mind: this is just a sample.Get a custom paper now from our expert writers.Get a custom essayIn the end, Hamlet's quest for what he perceives how justice is a failure. The fact that he kills Claudius and avenges his father is overshadowed by the general carnage that consumes the viewer at the end of the play. One after the other, the main protagonists and antagonists die, ruining themselves in their defense of false justice or allowing themselves to be drawn into calamity. The killers are all killed; even Ophelia, Hamlet's lover and Laertes' sister, kills her assassin by committing suicide. She is apparently an innocent victim of the passions and misguidedness of others, but her crime is the same. Everyone receives the death penalty that fits their crime of murder, and it's an unsurprising tragic conclusion. Shakespeare suggests, through Hamlet's descendants, that the series of murders he unleashes is unjust; ultimately, “what is right” is not preserved. In fact, it is the opposite that triumphs: death and tragedy, archetypes of what is wrong. The quest for justice which results in total injustice is intended to be ironic, but not paradoxical. Hamlet's tragic flaw, which he shares with Laertes and the others, lies in his simplistic view of what is right: he overlooks the fact that the nature of violence and murder is destructive to society and therefore inherently evil , thinking instead in terms of actions that require equal and opposite reactions. The mutual erasure to which this state leads?