Hamlet's Father Part II -- How Do You Make Hamlet So Boring?

Let's move right along, shall we?

So... when we last left our "hero," Hamlet was being shipped off to school in Heidelberg.  And just to recap -- his father is evil, Claudius and Hamlet are both made of Incorruptible Pure Pureness, and Card has already dropped some blindingly obvious hints that the king of Denmark is a child molester.  Or maybe they're just blindingly obvious to me because I went into the book expecting them, I dunno...

And just like Eden, Hamlet thinks that everything is about him.  At least with Hamlet it's a tiny bit justified, seeing as he's a freaking prince, but it's still obnoxious to read about.

None of the Companions were with him at supper, and Hamlet realized that Father was punishing him.  Even though Hamlet hadn't asked to go anywhere, Father had apparently disapproved of him going, and so he would be barred from saying good-bye to his friends.  - p. 20

Or the Companions (guh, sounds like a bad 50s doo-wop band name) all had obligations at their respective homes... or someone decided a clean break was better than a prolonged goodbye... or they could be planning a special, separate goodbye for you...  There are numerous reasons why they might not be there, stop assuming it's all about you.  Protagonist-Centered Morality -- where the entire universe of the novel seems to revolve around the protagonist's wants, needs, and moral compass -- is present in some degree in most books, which is only natural, but in both Revealing Eden and Hamlet's Father they're both prevalent and very obnoxious.

After supper Hamlet goes up to the battlements and finds Laertes lurking there.  Turns out Hamlet's father did bar the Companions from saying good-bye to Hamlet.  Okay, so Hamlet was right, but my point still stands -- just because the king told them not to show up doesn't mean it was specifically meant to hurt his son.  He could have had other reasons.

Laertes tells him that he's being called into the king's service, and that it's an honor he doesn't want.  Hamlet, instead of sympathizing, whines that he doesn't want to go to Heidelberg.  For being such an impeccably perfect hero, Card's sure made his version of Hamlet completely lacking in empathy.  And while Shakespeare's Hamlet was by no means perfect, at least he wasn't a budding psychopath.

"Sometimes we just have to be patient with inconvenient honors."

Hamlet's tone had been jesting, but the darkness that came upon Laertes' face was almost painful.  "What is it?"

"Hamlet, I beg you, before you go, ask your father to send me away.  To France.  My mother's brother is there, lord of a small holding on the border between Normandy and the Ile-de-France.  Father will never ask -- he's too much the courtier.  But if you ask --" -- p. 21

What is this, #5 now?

Hamlet says his dad won't listen to him and doesn't Laertes' sister, Ophelia, need him to protect her?  Don't get too excited, Ophelia's role has been gutted down to almost nothing in this book...

Finally they go to Hamlet's mother to ask her permission.  And of course Hamlet thinks that his father wanting to send him to school is a terrible thing because it means he doesn't love him, but it's a wonderful thing that his mom wants him to go because it means she cares about his education.  Double standards much?

She apparently had no idea that the Companions (still thinking of white horses here) were being disbanded or that Laertes was being called into the king's service.  Her remarks here are disturbing and telling:

"One would have thought," she said to the boy, "that you served him well enough already." -- p. 22

#6...

"I think that if you bide only a little while, my dear husband will have no further use of you." -- p. 22

#7...

The queen says she'll arrange things so that Laertes is released from the king's service, but suggests he book it to France as soon as he can, because "my dear husband will be in a snappish mood for some months to come."  And here I skeeve out and run to take a shower, because it's bad enough that  Hamlet's father is apparently molesting young boys but the fact that the queen knows and does NOTHING up until this point -- nothing to alert the public, nothing to protect the boys in question, nothing to even tell the king "you touch a kid and I'll cut your junk off" -- makes me instantly lose any and all sympathy for her.  Because I don't care if this is the freaking King of Denmark we're talking about, he's still a pedophile, and you freaking do SOMETHING on the kids' behalf.

Valid reaction to this bit

The queen shoos Laertes off so she can say goodbye to her son, which is something else the king apparently forbids.  Can't forget that the king is EVIL and a JERK, after all...  

"You're a better son than your father and I had any right to hope for," she said.

"It's a well-kept secret from my father."

"You do not know what you do not know," said Mother.  "Your father has loved you better than you think."  -- p. 23

Couldn't decide between Red Flag #8 and Squicked-Out

Starscream... Starscream won out.  Primus almighty...

Then Claudius appears from behind a tapestry in the room -- apparently they were discussing matters of state, but the EVIL king forbids his brother from taking interest in the affairs of the kingdom, so the queen has to get his advice in secret.  I'm not sure if this bit was intended to hint at an affair between the queen and Claudius or just to hammer home how EVIL the king is.  Maybe some of both?  I somehow suspect it's the latter, actually, because Card has been making Claudius out to be PURE and GOOD and NOBLE and making him the queen's boy-toy wouldn't jive with that plan very well, I think.

There's some more banter about how the queen has taught Hamlet about everything pertaining to be a king except war, some talk of religion, and the queen remarks that she and God are "little acquainted as of late."  She also implies that the archbishop might be in the king's pocket, which makes me wonder if there's someone ELSE that knows about the king's deplorable antics.  Seriously, is Hamlet the only freaking character who doesn't know?  And why hasn't anyone done anything yet?  Even if he IS the king, shouldn't someone step in?

"Ever since your father became king, the only teacher I've had is your mother.  But she holds back the juiciest bits of information for herself.  She's afraid we'll become too powerful, if we know what she knows."

"I don't even know what I know," said Mother.  "I don't dare ask myself a single question for fear I'll tell me an answer I can't afford to hear." -- p. 25

I... what?

Hamlet tells his mom he'll make her proud of him, and Claudius says he's already proud of the king he will become.  Hamlet protests, saying his father's still young and that Denmark won't need another king for awhile.  Claudius almost blurts something out, but Hamlet is sure that he's about to say that Denmark needs another king right now.  Having characters guess what someone else is about to say is, in my mind, a sloppy way to get information across.  Humans are unpredictable creatures, and more often than not what you think they're going to say next isn't what's going to come out of their mouths.  Either have Claudius say it outright or find some other way to get the information across.

Hamlet goes back to his room, packs his backs, is off on a ship to Heidelberg the next day, and boom, page break.  Let's press on...

I'm going to summarize this next section a bit, because there's not a whole lot to say about it.  It's basically Hamlet going to school and establishing himself as even more of a Mary Sue, as he defeats everyone he crosses blades with in a sword fight, impresses all his teachers, becomes a star student despite starting off behind most of his classmates, uses his wealth to generously buy expensive books for the school, and soon has everyone loving him and wanting to be his best friend.  *yawn*  Card, perfect characters are BORING, you don't have to make Hamlet the best at absolutely everything he does...

Four years later Hamlet gets a letter that his father has died and he's needed at home.  And instead of any sort of mourning for Hamlet, or even a "oh wow, my father's died, that's a shock," we instead launch into him telling his professors how kings in Denmark are elected, and even though he's the likeliest candidate someone else could be chosen in his stead.  Seriously, he has NO emotional reaction whatsoever to his father's death.  

...okay, pause here.  Story time!

If you don't get the reference or just need a break from

the spork, look up Thomas Sanders' "Narrating People's

Lives" sometime.  It's hysterical.

When I was in junior high, I was a teacher's aid at the elementary school next door, and another student and I would walk to the school together.  He teased me constantly and made a show of walking ten feet away from me because he claimed I stank -- you know, typical junior high stuff.  Late into the school year he died in an accident, and despite the fact that we weren't close at all and didn't interact outside of that three-minute walk every day, hearing he had died was still a huge shock to me.  It wasn't grief, not necessarily, but still a shock.

Most normal people, when they find out a relative (even an estranged or distant one), an acquaintance (even a casual one), or a celebrity (even if it's one they don't particularly like) dies, are going to react somehow, even if it's just a "oh, they died, that's too bad."  For Hamlet to have no reaction at all to his father's death makes him come across as a sociopath.  I don't care if his father ignored him all his life, he should still be feeling SOMETHING here.  Not calmly going off about Denmark's politics to his professor.

The professor tells Hamlet he'll make an excellent king, because we can't forget that Hamlet's perfect in this universe.  He says that Hamlet's reputation as a swordsman had reached them before he did, and that rumor had it he'd "killed half of Denmark, and that's why you were sent here."

"I've never killed a man, sir," said Hamlet.

"And never will, God willing," said the professor. -- p. 30

Subtle, card

They get back to Denmark, and FINALLY we reach the beginning of the play, where Hamlet learns Claudius has been elected king in his stead and married his mother.  31 pages into a 92-page Hamlet adaptation (well, 86 if you count the fact that the story proper doesn't even start until page 7), and we finally get to the beginning of the freaking play.  I really need to read something else by Card and see if he has this sort of pacing problem in his longer works...

And of course, Hamlet doesn't want to be king, because only EVIL people want to be kings in fiction, so it's not being supplanted as king that upsets him (even though he rants for a paragraph about how Claudius is only about ten years older than him and he'll be an old man by the time he gets the throne, and that's IF Claudius doesn't have kids first).  Nope, what upsets him is that his mom got married to Claudius to legitimize the king-ship.  Oh yay, finally, we get some of the conflict that drove Hamlet through the play!  Now he's going to angst about how Mom didn't even wait until the funeral to get married and how morally wrong it is for her to get married to her brother-in-law, right?

Hamlet had never thought of her as ambitious.  She had endured Father's slighting treatment of her for all of Hamlet's life.  He always thought that it was for his sake that she lived; it had never occurred to him that she might have loved being Queen so much that she cared little who sat the throne, as long as she sat beside him. -- p. 32

Oh, for Celestia's sake...

It's been awhile since I've read Hamlet, but I've looked up several interpretations of the play online, and NONE even hint that ambition played a role in the queen's remarriage, or was even mentioned in the play as a factor.  Of all the interpretations you could have gone with, you have to go with the Starscream gambit?  When did we ever see any evidence that Hamlet saw her as ambitious or considers that the main problem with the marriage?  I could buy jealousy, I could buy claims of incest (at the time a widow marrying her brother-in-law was considered incest), I could buy him being upset that she barley waited a month before getting married, but I don't buy her being so grasping for the throne that she'd do anything to keep it.

Also, Hamlet, if you don't want the throne, what do you care if someone else wants it?  Besides, maybe the queen DOES love Claudius (see earlier in the chapter for evidence), or maybe she's just doing what she thinks is best to make sure Denmark's government stays stable.  Don't assume she's just a power-monger.

Hamlet also muses that he doesn't know Claudius that well, and worries that he might see his nephew as a threat to the throne.  Understandable, I suppose... though his solution is a weird one.  He decides that acting sullen and distraught will prove he's a threat to the throne, but that acting cheerful will make people think he's hiding something... so he's going to pretend to mourn his father instead.  Great, so any and all mourning and grief we saw in the play is apparently an act?  Card, did you MEAN to make your character such a sociopath?

So yeah, Hamlet gives a dramatic speech to his guards saying that he's grieving for his father, despite admitting to himself he doesn't even miss his father and thinks Denmark is better off without him.  They believe him, and Hamlet is suddenly all happy that he won't have to take the throne and he can go back to school once the funeral's over.  Seriously???  Where's our brooding hero from the play?  Dang-nabbit, Card, when you said you were shredding the play I didn't think you'd grind the blasted thing into powder...

He would not even begrudge Mother and Uncle Claudius their happiness.  There was no blood relation between Claudius and Mother, after all.  And didn't the Bible command that a man take his brother's widow to wife, to raise up progeny to his brother? -- p. 34

HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGH...  Okay, Card, stop.  Just stop.  You're tearing away absolutely everything that made the original play interesting.  You're depriving Hamlet of all the conflict and introspection that made HIM interesting.  And may I remind you that the whole marrying-your-brother's-wife was not only controversial during this time period, but the Bible itself is contradictory on the matter?  You're a religious man, you should know this...

It was not a matter of legalisms.  God had taken Father away from Denmark, away from Mother, away from them all.  Whatever dark and brooding spirit had kept Father from showing genuine love to him or Mother, he was gone now, and with him the shadows he had cast in their lives.  They were all free, and Hamlet most of all, for instead of having to bear the royal burden Father had borne so badly all these years, he could live his life as he saw fit. -- p. 34

And with that, we get started on the actual story of the play.  And instead of setting the stage for a great psychological drama that grapples with complex moral issues (ones pertinent to the time period but that still resonate and are discussed today), we're going to start off with a Mary Sue character who manages to be both bland and an apparent sociopath, and a story that seems to have no conflict whatsoever.  Ugh... 

There's a page break here, and even though I was hoping to get further than this, I'm gonna stop here.  I may have to renew this sucker at least once...