Hamlet Essay: Performative Utterance

Topic: Using what you've learned about Hamlet the character and Hamlet the play, evaluate the impact of performative utterance on Hamlet and your own sense of self. How does the way Hamlet speaks constitute action in itself? How does it impact the characters and the plot? How does this compare with your own "self-overhearing"? How does the way you reflect on your experience create a sense of memory, expectation, and real-world results? Use the text, your reading/lecture notes, the experience of memorizing the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, de Boer's paper (and Bloom's/Austin's theoretical frameworks), and the many online and offline discussions we've had.

Hamlet Essay Re-Do

Hamlet, the character is a complex being with even more complex ideas. He is a troubled man trying to deal with life/death but has many worries which ultimately affect the characters and plot of Hamlet. Shakespeare's technique of performative utterance is used as the base of the plot and influences characters to act on others' words. Hamlet's soliloquy "To be, or not to be" and de Boer's, "The Performative Utterance in Hamlet", paper both demonstrate self-utterance and the influence it had on the play.  Self-overhearing was an easy way to detect the direction in which the plot would turn and Hamlet practiced this a lot.

"To be, or not to be" were infamous lines uttered by Hamlet himself. With this soliloquy he reflected on what he believed was the correct way to end the "play". Stating those words aloud described his contemplation of death and murder, while knowing what he would do in the end. He uses performative utterance by describing and stating his desires, making a command to himself to apply his thoughts and turn them into action. Making a decision to follow through with his plans of murder emphasized how he had managed to convince himself to go forth with everything. To finalize this method he ended up implementing his desires and transforming them to realities. 

While achieving what he had set as a goal for himself, Hamlet brought down many of the characters as well. Every spoken word from him had gotten each character closer to their end. Death had traveled from one character to killing off most of them. Had he not convinced himself of performing his revenge, all the characters including himself may have still been alive.

De Boer broke down Hamlet's use of performative utterance in his paper and told us of the reasoning behind the use of this technique. He said, "Those who use performative utterance create new facts in the world in speaking." Just as he said Hamlet allowed his words to become reality. By affecting other characters thoughts as well as his own, Hamlet changed the course of the play. He evolved from an indecisive man to a confident, powerful man by simply stating it out loud. When he said those words to himself he was convinced and ready for anything.

Hamlet expresses his thoughts using self-overhearing, seeming confident and powerful. His self-overhearing impacts what actually occurs in the play, becoming either reality or a failed attempt of it. My idea of self-overhearing however, isn't much of action as it is of pure self-knowledge. Personally, I think self-overhearing isn't about influencing things to occur, but rather learning about yourself. When I express my thoughts aloud, I learn more and more about my attitudes, likes, dislikes, opinions, etc. It's an experience of realizing what I want, but not necessarily anything I will truly end up doing. However, when using it as a technique such as memorizing "to be, or not to be" it would've been the perfect tool. I, on the other hand, find myself feelinguncomfortable with this technique and I failed to use it. I didn't believe at the time that using this method would make any difference. The rare occasions in which I speak to myself, I only analyzed without attempting to make any of my thoughts to reality. 

Both Hamlet and my perspective of self-overhearing have reasoning to support it. It's a matter of how the person decides to view the situation. You may want to create it yourself such as Hamlet tried or just to realize yourself like I tend to do. If you just put your self-overhearing to practice though, you may end up with many consequences that come from the perlocutionary force/effects. The domino theory can be attached to the performative language. With the use of the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary forces a series of events can be created to develop the plot.