Essay on Hamlet: Freud and Hamlet Freud believed that Hamlet did not kill Claudius the first time he saw him because Hamlet saw himself as the enemy. That seems like a solid reason to me. Who am I to say it isn't? However, I also find Samuel Taylor Coleridge's reasoning very interesting. He believed that Hamlet did not kill Claudius the first time because he was praying. This seems almost too easy, although very legitimate. Now, I'm not the one to say which interpretation is right, or even to reflect on whether one or the other is right; however, both are credible critics. So, who is right and who is wrong - that is the question? NO? Maybe both are right to some extent. We actually don't know what Shakespeare felt while he was writing Hamlet. This brings me to the point made earlier by Chris Early. I, like Chris, do not believe that works should be investigated only on the surface, but it is difficult to discover every meaning of every aspect of every work. Is there always something bigger and more meaningful than the original words? Sometimes I would say yes, sometimes no. So, this brings me to my next question: How do you know if words mean something bigger or not? I believe there is no actual way to know whether something has a hidden meaning or not; therefore, almost everything is examined as if it were. I'm not trying to make silly excuses; I'm completely serious. Nobody, not even the great critics, knows what is symbolic and what is not; therefore everything is considered symbolic at the beginning, revealing a sort of symbolism. Whether this symbolism is correct, no one will really know. As Chris mentioned, who knows what Shakespeare was thinking when he wrote Hamlet? We can only make educated guesses about what Hamlet was thinking when he backed out of killing Claudius for the first time. These educated guesses come from what the reader thinks, along with what critics have interpreted and written..