From our first introduction to Hamlet following the marriage of his mother Gertrude and his uncle Claudius, we can see he is an outlier to the festivities. While the entirety of Elsinore has glazed over the fact that the marriage immediately followed King Hamlet's death, Hamlet remains distraught. He clings onto his emotions of grief and pain, remarking how his dressing in black (a quality which his mother thinks frivolous) and his despondent attitudes cannot even begin to depict how low he truly feels. When Claudius and Gertrude dismiss his request to return to Wittenburg for school, an attempt to rid himself of the pain he feels, he begins to question not only the unfair and dire nature of the world, but directly begins to question and criticize his mother for her "frail" disposition. He berates her harshly in an attempt to rationalize her behavior, however, finds that his mother has been manipulated by Claudius. Despite releasing all of these accusations and feelings of frustration, recognizing that the marriage cannot result in something good, Hamlet is forced to "hold [his] tongue" (21:52), not only due to Horatio and company entering the room, but perhaps by the societal norms that dictate that one must not speak up against their elders.
Following his soliloquy, Hamlet, when told of the apparent apparition of the king, he, while being enraptured by joy at the possibility of seeing his father, at least in his ghostly form, does not stray from asking questions to confirm that his father's ghost did in fact appear before Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo. He asks about the spirit's location, whether the men spoke to it, how long they watched the apparition, even asking specific questions about the ghost's pallor and the color/form of his beard. However, when Hamlet finally sees The Ghost, he seemingly casts aside all thoughts of logic, perhaps consumed by his emotions, wishing to follow the spirit despite being told not to (likely due to the fear of interacting with the dead as a bad omen), setting his sites on confronting the spirit head-on, to analyze it visually, and to confirm its identity as King Hamlet. Despite his attempt to think logically, Hamlet is swayed by the ghost's story of betrayal and revenge, putting blind faith into it, adamant on revealing Claudius' identity as his father's murderer.
While feigning madness to throw Claudius off and to not be taken as a threat (as we see him observing Hamlet through the two-way mirror), Hamlet questions the point of living, addressing the subject of human mortality (again, to not be seen as a threat by Claudius), something rather taboo to speak of. Within his soliloquy, he thoroughly discusses mortality, and in doing so critiques contemporary ideas and values. He normalizes the tumultuous subject of living by equating it to suffering when in love, and critiques the docile nature of living: letting the will of God dictate one's life instead of taking action and being present. He carefully delineates the humanistic aspects of society, specifically the suffering that individuals have to face on an everyday basis. He questions the conventional norms of thought, norms that focus on the supernatural instead of the concrete. And yet here within the soliloquy itself, and throughout the rest of the play, we see Hamlet consistently divided, caught between action and inaction. Despite wanting to stray from the conventional mindset, Hamlet himself remains fastened to his own mind, fixated on thought.
