As a teacher of English at the community college level, one of the intellectual problems I face is reconciling my love for literature with my strengthening conviction that superstition and irrational thinking are detrimental to modern society.

Novelists, essayists, poets, and playwrights make almost constant reference to religion and spirituality, which implies some level of belief in the supernatural. Sometimes I feel that I am spreading nonsense among my students, reinforcing ridiculous medieval notions that should have long ago been eradicated by the more intense light of reason. I tackle the problem by noting that creative writers are always searching for ways to enhance our mundane existence, and so they often dip into superstition and religion for images that can capture the imagination. In the light of modern science, we can strain what they are doing through a metaphorical sieve and get past the supernatural implications to the heart of what it is to be human.

When Hamlet was about to kill his uncle Claudius to revenge the murder of his father, he hesitated because Claudius was at prayer.

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann’d:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes. (Act 3, Scene 3)

Does one have to believe in an actual heaven and hell to understand what Hamlet is going through? Of course not. But it is helpful to understand one thing: Hamlet is contemplating something so horrible that most of us have trouble comprehending it today, even if we are believers. What we realize about Hamlet is that his desire for revenge is so great and so dire that he puts it off — he doesn’t take his clear shot at killing the king — not because of a momentary attack of scruples, but because he wants to make his revenge manifest not only in this world but in the next! The moral code of Hamlet’s day implied that killing a man to obtain just revenge was one thing, but sending the man’s soul to hell was anathema. So Hamlet is radically going against accepted religious and moral principles in wanting “unnatural” revenge by not only killing Claudius, but also condemning him to everlasting damnation.

What a powerful way Shakespeare chose to express how twisted Hamlet’s mind has become, how a basically good man can become a vengeful destroyer of both body and soul (accepting the concept of dualism here for the sake of argument) when pushed to the outer boundary of his psychological landscape. I can fully appreciate the psychological implications of what is happening to Hamlet without believing in heaven and hell. I happily accept as metaphor what many people take as fact. That Shakespeare believed in the supernatural is questionable; that he used the supernatural as a tool for strong storytelling is indisputable.