Dec 13 2008
1.5
Hamlet’s personal reality has many holes in it in regards to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The first four levels of the pyramid have the following holes:
- sex (cannot see Ophelia any longer, soon after play starts)
- security of body (eventually, King wants him to be killed, and then Laertes does too)
- security of morality (brothers killing brothers, a sister in-law marrying her brother in-law)
- security of the family (his father’s brother killed him, his mother weds very soon after her beloved husband dies. His family is very unstable)
- loses the entire level of love/belonging, which is friendship, family, and sexual intimacy (his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are spying on him, his family has disintegrated as shown above, and his lover, Ophelia, has been forced to stop seeing him and goes insane)
- respect of others (the people he looked up to before – his mother, his uncle – have betrayed him. Everyone else is going along with it instead of calling out the betrayal)
Because these levels make up who Hamlet is, and each stable level creates a stable personality/reality, holes wreak havoc on him. What makes this worse is that prior to his father’s death, all his levels were filled and stable. As the betrayals and upheavals occur, certain parts of the pyramid are being removed. Effectively this is like pulling blocks out of a Jenga tower. The more that are pulled out, the less stable Hamlet’s reality and sense of self is.
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