Harold Bloom states that "Our ideas about what makes the self authentically human owe more to Shakespeare than should be possible..." (15). If this is true, then the Prince of Denmark himself in Shakespeare's Hamlet is the epitome of humanity in his perception of humanity and humanity's inevitable perversion of nature, and in his depiction of the vast uncertainties all inside the human mind. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Hamlet ponders - or, according to Bloom, invents - the concept and definition of man; his basic impression of man's natural being is "noble in reason... in action like an angel, in learning like like a god..." (II, ii, 327-330). Yet in the same soliloquy, Hamlet displays an ungrateful discontent with his "expressive and admirable" fellows (II, ii, 329), a contradiction that endures neither noble reason nor divine apprehension. Shakespeare projects one definition of man through Hamlet's words and another through man himself. It must be assumed that these two ideas, which exist at opposite poles of each other, include all positions in between, since the person who is completely angelic or invariably dissatisfied is rare, if ever. By implying this vague spectrum as a measure of a being's mind, Shakespeare defines man as indefinable. The first of these human conditions, that which describes man as angelic, has been brought from Shakespeare's time to modern philosophy through the work and legacy of John Locke; Hamlet's slightly contradictory but firm view of man as fundamentally good triggers an immediate connection with Locke in current Western thought. Confidence in the "noble reason" and "infinite faculties" of man are also the basis of the American democratic government, established by my men influenced by Locke, whose main philosophical platform closely parallels the reflections of Hamlet. Hamlet's mental and family situations are perversions of the natural human condition he describes: contrary to "noble reason", Hamlet displays madness; he is more obsessed with the goal than with "infinity in the faculties"; his lust for bloody revenge and his uncle's incestuous and murderous tendencies oppose Hamlet's idealized notion of man as "in action as angel-like" (II, ii, 329). To a much greater extent than his praise of humanity, Shakespeare examines the extent to which the natural, good state of human beings is tragically corruptible. Hamlet rebukes his mother's "incestuous" acts: "Oh, such an act / As from the contracting body tears / The soul itself, and sweet religion makes / A rhapsody of words!" (III, iv, 54-57). Hamlet is pressing his mother, the queen, on what he perceives to be a moral argument. He sees her as a perversion of natural being, but later, when she declares the "Alas, he is mad" part (III, iv, 121) of Hamlet, Shakespeare plunges into uncertainty: does the queen really deserve this blame, or has she did the audience blindly assume that mad Hamlet's betrayal was true? In the same scene, Hamlet kills Polonius; the play becomes a bastion of incest, madness, and death, all combining to display a blatant perversion of Hamlet's supposedly "noble" purpose of revenge. Shakespeare reveals not only that moral and psychological flaws are as prevalent in the royal family as they are elsewhere, but also – on a more universal scale – the fragility of meticulously conceived moral structures under the blows of the snares of evil. Hamlet commits the final sin of taking life for what he convinces himself is a purpose.