TPPM (9): Hamlet and Sloth

[Tim Strzechowski]

"As a topic for fiction, Sloth over the next few centuries after Aquinas had a few big successes, notably Hamlet, but not until arriving on the shores of America did it take the next important step in its evolution." [...]


Personally, I find this erroneous and oversimplified on Pynchon's part.  While the Danish prince is (or "seems") overcome with the "melancholy" of his era, I do not read his character as necessarily slothful.  He may be an obsessive (and ultimately tragic) procrastinator, but he struggles continuously with affecting the proper action and is far from lazy when it comes to avenging the King's death: the conspiracy of "The Mousetrap," the goings-on of his "antic disposition," even his willingness to succumb to Claudius's two plans (i.e., the trip to England and the concluding duel with Laertes) -- though seemingly passive -- demonstrate a certain cunningness on Hamlet's part as he "acts" toward the final vengeance.

In a sort of reverse analogy, I draw upon Northrop Frye's "The Story of All Things," in which he discusses the "act" of Milton's Adam eating the forbidden fruit:

"What happens when Adam eats the forbidden fruit, then, is not an act, but the surrendering of the power to act.  Man is free to lose his freedom, and there, obviously, his freedom stops.  His position is like that of a man on the edge of a precipice -- if he jumps it appears to be an act, but it is really the giving up of the possibility of action, the surrendering of himself to the law of gravitation which will take charge of him for the brief remainder of his life." [...]   (PL Norton Critical Ed., p. 520)

Conversely, Hamlet's passivity has the appearance of inaction (or, perhaps to Pynchon, sloth) but in truth it serves to camouflage his attempt at vengeance, albeit a gradual attempt.

I find his allusion to _Hamlet_ a bit off the mark, given the topic of "sloth."

Tim
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