Self-respect plays a vital and normative role in the response of an individual to injustice. Literature abounds with examples of this relationship. For example, in Shakespeare's Hamlet a young man learns that his father, the kind, has been murdered by his own brother, who then married the dead man's wife and usurped his throne. Hamlet vows revenge, "Thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter.... I have sworn it" (Shakespeare, 747). His self-respect requires him to respond to this injustice. While today one is less likely to take vengeance into one's own hands, the impulse to see justice done after injustice is directly linked to self-respect, which requires some type of action.
Hamlet's inability to act is important in that it prevent shim from following through on his promise to the ghost of his murdered father. Literary critic John Dover Wilson made the following comment on this inability to act in a timely manner: "Hamlet, unable to accomplish his design, a design long premeditated, necessary for him, for his mother's honor, for his father's honor, for the whole state of Denmark, (is) yet always ready to act upon impulse." Self-respect notwithstanding, the reality for Hamlet is that killing his uncle to avenge his father's murder is a very serious action and one that is difficult to complete, despite his belief that it is just and necessary.
From a personal perspective, I find myself in sympathy with Hamlet's dilemma. On the one hand, he is legitimately angry that his much-loved father has been killed by his uncle. He is equally disturbed that his mother, so recently made a widow, has married the man who took her husband's life. He is also somewhat angry that he, the logical heir to his father's thrown, has been passed over in favor of his murdering uncle. Having loved his father, he believes he must be the instrument of justice that will right a wr...