Men with Knowledge but no Action

Recently, in a practice test for the SAT, the prompt for my essay was which did I believe more valuable and important, to have knowledge or to take action.  To that. I responded that there are three types of people. One of those were the ones that had knowledge, and made an opinion on something but took no action. Such is the case of Eliot’s Prufrock and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Hamlet and Prucrock, have a similar behavior, they are men of words but no action. I believe both of them are intelligent because they are able to analyze a problem thoroughly. However, they don’t take action. Since the beginning of the play, Hamlet talks about seeking revenge for his father death. However, every time he is certain he has to kill his uncle and is about to do it, he backs off with any excuse he can find.  The same thing happens with Prufrock. Even though he has a plan for the date and knows exactly what he is going to do, he never does it. They are men of words. No actions.

Both of them have trouble making choices, which feeds their idea of self-pity. They spend most of their time analyzing if the should make something or not. An example of this is Hamlets famous soliloquy, “to be or not to be: that is the question…” In this particular part Hamlet thinks what he should do over and over and at the end finishes not doing anything. Prufrock, keeps thinking what would happen in the future if he asks his lover out or not. He asks himself  “And would it have been worth it after all, would it have been worth while…” showing how indecisive he is. It is as if both of them were afraid to make any decision because they are scared of what the outcome may be.

Another important aspect to analyze is the fact that Prufrock doesn’t want to be compared to Hamlet. He says, “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be” demonstrating that he knows he is indecisive and he is just like Hamlet but he thinks to little of himself to be compared with the main character of the play.

Both of these characters are men of knowledge and opinions, however by not taking action, that knowledge becomes useless. And by over thinking things they end up dead, like both of them did, without achieving what they over analyzed for so long.