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1) Reading Hamlet reminded me of a humorous moment in my life. I was a young soldier in the US Army's Airborne School, preparing to make my first jump out of an airplane. Every logical and rational thought I had was telling me not to do it, but there was also a raw urge pushing me to do it. There was no reason for me to jump, except that it was what I just had to do. Compared to life, this decision was very minor. Many of us are faced with much larger decisions, with very real and permanent consequences. So why do some of us back away from them, while others seem to just plunge right into them? The answer is not as simple as some would believe. (2) Hamlet was faced with a decision upon learning that Claudius murdered his father. Should he believe the ghost, and avenge his father's murder? Or is the ghost evil, trying to coerce him into killing Claudius? Throughout the play, we see Hamlet's struggle with this issue. Many opportunities arise for him to kill Claudius, but he is unable to act because he cannot convince himself to believe the Ghost. Shakespeare uses Laertes and Fortinbras as foils to Hamlet, in order to help us understand why Hamlet acts the way he does. (3) Foils are used in plays so that the readers are better able to understand the major character (Hamlet). In a foil, the minor character is similar in many ways to the main character so that we will compare the two. However, it is through these similarities that we are able to see the more important differences between the two. [Short paragraph] (4) The major foil for Hamlet is Laertes, the son of Polonius. The most obvious similarity is that they are both young men. They also come from relatively similar backgrounds, a Danish aristocratic upbringing. They also both have some college education. This leads us to another similarity; [Semicolons vs. colons] they both have the ability to use logical and rational reasoning. However, they do differ on their applications of logical reasoning. (5) We see this logical and rational reasoning in Hamlet, in Acts 1& 2 when he sets up the "mouse trap" for Claudius, in order to determine if he is guilty of murdering his father. Hamlet's ability to think many moves ahead and predict what the king's reaction will be if he is guilty, shows a type of reasoning beyond a normal person. [Hmmm] In Laertes we see a logical and rational reasoning process when he decides not to kill Claudius, but rather join the king in a plot to kill Hamlet. Laertes is smart enough to listen to the king. However, he could not have known that the king was being deceitful. We can see that both Hamlet and Laertes try to use their wits to solve problems.
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