The Most Important Revenge of the Oedipus Complex in Hamlet A boy's vengeful streak is not always merely Oedipal. Hamlet's revenge, and the situations that stimulate it, are not based on love for his mother, but on the need to avenge his father's death. Although Hamlet is the only one to hear the ghost speak, others experience sight. This shows that he does not unconsciously create the hallucination to free his mother from her new lover. Once he learns that his father was murdered and that no one witnessed his death, Hamlet feels obligated to punish the murderer. Even though the murderer is his mother's new husband, Hamlet acts to avenge his father's death, not out of jealousy towards his mother's partner. Hamlet is very angry at Gertrude, his mother, for marrying so soon after the death of her first husband. His fury is based solely on his mother's sudden marriage and the person she married, not on Hamlet's sexual desires towards his mother. Although Hamlet may love his mother, his vengeful actions are based on the need to avenge old Hamlet's untimely death. The Oedipus complex is a "universal law" that suggests that all boys become their mother's lover in dreams. “Freud believed that in the phallic stage of development every boy becomes his mother's lover in his dreams”(1). This may cause them to try to free the mother from her lover out of jealousy. In Hamlet's case, his revenge is not based on his sexual desires towards his mother but on his need to punish his father's murderer. The spirit of old Hamlet, which was seen by Horatio, Bernardo and Marcellus even before they had access to Hamlet, is not a figment of Hamlet's imagination. Hamlet did not unconsciously create the spirit as a means to create a reason for... middle of paper... revenge for his loyal son. Works cited and consulted: Adelman, Janet. Smothering mothers: fantasies of maternal origin in Shakespeare's works, from "Hamlet" to "The Tempest". London and New York: Routledge. 1992.Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reeseman, and John R. Willingham. A manual of critical approaches to literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.Heilman, Robert B. “The Role We Give to Shakespeare.” Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. Pitt, Angela. "Women in Shakespeare's Tragedies." Readings on tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprinted from Shakespeare's Women. Np: np, 1981.Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The bank of the Shakespeare River. AND. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Haughton Mifflin Company, 1974.