THE CONTRADICTORY NATURE OF THE GHOST IN HAMLET

Abstract

This article explores the contradictory nature of the ghost in Hamlet and shows
how Shakespeare seeks to manipulate the reader’s response in Hamlet by using
contradictions and ambiguities. The article also explores the ways in which the
reader responds to these contradictions and reconstructs a palpable world in the
impalpable world of the text. These contradictions compel the reader to participate
in the composition of the text and make him keep changing his own approach to
the work with the result that the more he reads the play, the deeper he finds himself
entrenched in contradictions. As he fails to grasp the logic of events, the reader
relates his own world to the text instead of relating the events of the text to his
world and recreates his own world. Therefore, he can easily detach himself from
the text and let his imagination run loose as the play proves too vague for him to
comprehend. In reading Hamlet, the imagination runs wild and travels far beyond
the text to an extent where the reader perceives things, which stand not within but
utterly outside the text. Eventually, the reality achieved by the reader in the course
of reading the play is only the reality which dwells in the innermost recesses of his
mind.