Outline and Statement of Intent
How can morality be defined from a personal point of view as illustrated in the Hamlet and Candide?
My topic and Research Question: Literatures include an extensive view of societal issues.
Authors often use literature to influence society by instilling values, advancing opinion and criticizing unethical practices. My research question is “How can morality be defined from a personal point of view as illustrated in the Hamlet and Candide?”
The Text I will use: Hamlet by William Shakespeare and Candide by Voltaire
Overview of the texts
Summaries
Hamlet
Hamlet is a William Shakespeare’s re-known play that is set in Denmark. Hamlet is a young prince set on a quest to revenge for his father’s death. His uncle Claudius kills his father and becomes the king of Denmark.
However, Hamlet is not a heedless revenge seeker that wants to kill the current king to usurp the throne. He engages intellectual reasoning, seeking a moral position while questioning the moral ground for his actions.
However, Claudius sees Hamlet as a threat and sends him to England with two spies intending to kill him. At the end of the play, Hamlet agrees to o fight Laertes. In the due fight, Laertes and Hamlet are fatally wounded but Hamlet kills Claudius before he dies.
Candide
Candide is a satirical novel by Voltaire published in 1759. Voltaire’s Candide work was influenced by the unjust execution of English Admiral John Byng, the seven-year war in the German states, and the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
The novel begins by portraying Candide to be a young and naïve man schooled with optimistic philosophy by Pangloss.
The rest of the novel include multiple moral injustices that Candide and his companion experience during their adventure including war, hanging, theft, rape, slavery, and cannibalism. Although the moral injustices gradually erode Candide’s optimistic view, he displays survival instincts that give him hope.
When Candide and his companions finally retire in a small garden, they discover happiness is to cultivate one garden a practical philosophy that assumes excessive idealism and vague metaphysics.
Conclusion
Although each other has a unique approach to societal morality in their literature work, their strategies create a broad understanding of how to promote morality as a means of advancing humanity.
Statement of intent
My argument: literature has a critical role of exposing the societal pitfalls in different settings, both fictional and real context to warn the society of their negative relations and promote a society that would lead to peaceful coexistence.
The specific social pitfall that I plan to explore is the depiction of molarity from a personal point of view because it has been a guide for human interaction throughout history.
The system of ideas that consider a situation to be morally wrong or right have been evolving and this allows me to explore the historical context and settings of morals from a personal point of view (Dromi and Eva, 354).
How my books contribute to my argument
Hamlet
Hamlet play includes the collision of two moral systems; Christian ethics and the pagan revenge ethics. Hamlet has an internalized Christian world view because he worries about the promise of hell or heaven in the afterlife.
Although Claudius kills his father, his sense of mercy and justice deterred him from immediately seeking revenge on Claudius.
Shakespear’s Hamlet includes a definitive moral order that provides that each crime has to be punished while a morally wrong action must be balanced by that a right one.
Claudius’ evil plots and murders are balanced by Hamlet’s internal struggle to replace the wrongs committed by Claudius with morally right actions.
Hamlet’s procrastination and indecisiveness throughout the play are caused by the moral dilemma of revenge as justice and the death of Claudius and Hamlet implies a balanced end which no side triumphed from the tragedy.
Candide
Candide is the protagonist in Voltaire’s satires, goes on an adventure to seek moral redemption.
Voltaire’s uses the suffering of his character to make a statement of how human’s vulnerability to vice my experience horrific situations but remain optimistic of moral redemption.
The society is presented in different ways as being unjust because Candide and other characters had to suffer in the hands of immoral people.
For example, Candide is expelled for the castle for kissing Cunegode and on his journey, he is brutally flogged with moral justification.
Another example of the unjust society is the presentation of the slaves, where they are treated without mercy by the rich and those in power.
Based on the novel, moral truth is when a good action suppresses the evil committed. For example, Candide saves girls by killing two people.
Also, he purchases the freedom of Cunegode, Pangloss, and the old woman implying that the society believed that a price has to be paid for moral redemption.
Candide’s moral redemption from misfortunes is made possible at the end of the play where he not only gets back his lover, but builds a family, and discovers passion is a farming career.
