Is Love Stronger Than Hatred?

“The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate. Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred...” Franklin D. Roosevelt

        The world around us holds an unseen battle between love and hate, good and evil, right and wrong. Yet we are one in the same. “Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.” Wayne Dyer

     Hamlet is the ideal unanswered question of true hate and undying love. Is Hamlet truly mad with hate or is he sane and understanding of everything he does. Is he working through the love of his father to get revenge on his uncle, the new king, or is he working off his own personal anger towards his “Uncle Dad?”

In Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet, Hamlet is completely torn apart by his mothers new marriage to his uncle so soon after his fathers death. I believe Hamlet’s love for his father is much greater than any hatred he could ever express towards his uncle. Although he is very angry with his mother, he does not hate her but pities her for her ignorance in his fathers murder.
                Hamlet loved his father so much; he honored the very ghost of him. He vowed to take revenge for his father’s murder. For Hamlet, hatred truly came when he realized his uncle had unbelievably killed his own brother and married his wife for the throne. His trust and faith in his father was so great that he risked his reputation, his sanity and his entire existence in order to make things right so his fathers ghost could “move on.” Hamlet was willing to sacrifice his entire being for his father, which included the love of his life. His actions of insanity, and the irreversible murder of Ophelia’s own father, drove even her to the point of which she questioned her own sanity and in turn went mad. 

While Hamlet was away in England with friends who attempt to murder him, Ophelia, having lost her mind, kills herself. When Hamlet returns to find he has lost his one true love forever, he is heart broken. Hamlet remains calm and reasonable and continues to pretend he has in fact lost his mind, which so far has been believable to everyone. Though Hamlets death was dubbed a tragedy, it was all for love. Only the love and compassion he held for his father could have allowed him to create such a well thought out and convincing plan.

If Hamlet had turned straight to hatred and revenge, instead of love and legitimacy, he would have died a painful death on his first attempt to murder is uncle. Hamlet died for a cause. He died for what he believed in. He died for love.

“Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.”
Euripides