Pettiness

As much as I loath to admit, missing school actually hurts, at least when you are looking at it from the perspective of me being completely lost when reading Hamlet. I guess I could attempt to act like missing school during the second semester of senior year doesn’t really matter, but what I am trying to get across is that it kind of does, at least in AP Lit. I have tried to read a bit more of Hamlet, and haven’t really understood too much. But, from what we have read in class, one character has struck me in a not so good way. That character is not Hamlet, although his ability and mastery of the English language have led to some quite interesting wordplays, for he has left a good impression on me; the character is Polonius, who seems to be the most petty character I have ever seen in any novel or play.
The first time we see Polonius in the play, he doesn’t seem all that bad besides the fact that he is Claudius’s right hand man. After all, anyone who associates himself with evil, as the play has depicted Claudius to be, must have some not-so-good presence in him. However, what I assumed he lacked in character, at least he made up in loyalty to the present King. Then, he went along and gave his speech to Laertes and my opinion of him began to fall. He essentially told his son to uphold the family name and to not make an embarrassment of himself. Even in attempting to give Laertes sound advice, he came off as being self-centered as his line “to thine own self stay true” can be interpreted as stay true to the family name and don’t embarrass yourself. He even ends up sending a man, Reynaldo, to spy on his own son to make sure he doesn’t do anything embarrassing. Of course, Polonius manages to make himself look worse than normal when giving Reynaldo orders to spy on his son by telling Reynaldo what lines to use when talking Laertes as if Reynaldo is some incompetent peasant. All of this served to show that Polonius is completely obsessed with his image and with being in control of any situation. His love to be in control is accentuated by his plans with Ophelia as he all but forces her to stop seeing Hamlet and then goes back and changes his mind when he has something to gain from the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet. He originally wants to keep Ophelia pure so her image, there I go again using the word, clean, but when Claudius and Gertrude talk about Hamlet’s madness and awkward behavior, Polonius is willing to sacrifice his daughter for his own betterment, the ultimate sign of pettiness. With the characterization given to Polonius, as he is a man completely driven by his image, you could almost compare him to Torvald from A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen. Torvald was also obsessed with image as Nora herself brought up in one of the arguments between the two. Although the comparison may be a stretch, Torvald and Polonius had one very common trait, their ever-present pettiness.