Hamlet represents the polar opposite of his uncle/father King Claudius. Claudius personifies the Machiavellian villain: he justifies his wrongdoing by aggrandizing the ends his evil produces. He recognizes his own evil and acknowledges his doomed status. Knowing that he will assuredly descend into Hell makes Claudius no less eager to commit crime after crime in order to keep his ill-won spoils. The desire to resist hating him moves the audience, and the fact that he is so conversant with his inability to seek absolution keeps him from being one-dimensional. Rather than hate him, we root for his conversion, hoping that he will confess and show contrition. He does not, and we become less and less forgiving. Hamlet is Claudius' antithesis. The Prince knows he owes a debt to his father's commands and to the old order which dictates that he must commit a sinful act. But his fear that the action is wrong paralyzes him. Though the end would justify Hamlet's very existence, it would not justify his defiance of the commandment against murder.
Critics argue that Hamlet's inability to make up his mind makes him a tragic figure. Truthfully, however, Hamlet's "wild and whirling words" are the culprits that imprison him. Like other great Shakespearean tragic heroes, Hamlet must find a way to turn his ideas — the persevering words that never allow him silence — to into action. In Macbeth, the hero reverses roles with his wife; she, quick to act, becomes the talker, the thinker, while he becomes the rash one, the man of action. In King Lear, madness robs Lear of his words, forcing him to listen, to recognize reality in order to experience his recognition and reversal. But in Hamlet, the words control the hero to the end — until he knows that he is dead and can end the discussion and finally act. Like a composer who hears music playing incessantly in his head, Hamlet struggles to swim through a constant stream of words to his death, where he sighs that "The rest is silence."
