Fat Ham

Fat Ham is modeled after William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet. Ijames relies on the primary conflict in which Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, is tasked by his late father’s ghost with avenging his murder. The ghost, Hamlet Senior, tells Hamlet how his brother, Claudius, poured poison into his ear while he was asleep. Claudius’s motive was to usurp his brother’s crown, becoming King of Denmark by marrying his brother’s wife, Gertrude.

Fat Ham features a parallel circumstance: Juicy, a 20-year-old Black man living in the American South, is visited by the ghost of his late father. Pap, Juicy’s father, describes how his brother Rev, a minister, had him killed in prison by a fellow prisoner. Rev goes on to marry Pap’s widow, Tedra, and aspires to take over the family business—a barbecue restaurant.

On its surface, the Fat Ham scenario is a comical update of Hamlet. However, the story is fraught with tension, asking important questions about identity, purpose, and personal responsibility to family, community, and society. Ijames adapts the source play to explore contemporary issues of race and sexual identity, raising questions of what it means to be an “other” in a world that is still reluctant, in many ways, to embrace those who do not fit traditional molds of gender and sexual identity.

Hamlet was written in the year 1600 and is considered by many critics to be Shakespeare’s greatest work. Its protagonist, Hamlet, is an enigmatic and complex character who continues to spark debate. Hamlet’s inner struggles manifest through his soliloquies, which are speeches that illuminate thoughts, desires, and motives. These soliloquies reveal a troubled mind in search of answers to timeless questions, such as the meaning of life, what it means to be human, the definition of goodness, the nature of evil, the utility of religion and the afterlife, and the power of human consciousness and thought.

As Hamlet wrestles with whether to kill Claudius, he becomes increasingly unable to act. His indecision, driven by his inability to obtain convincing proof that Claudius did indeed murder his father, causes him mental angst. As the play unfolds, Hamlet exhibits signs of a mental health condition—or feigns it—to get away with the murder he plans to commit. Critics continue to debate whether Hamlet truly experiences psychosis or merely pretends to do so.

Ijames creates characters who mirror those in the bard’s play. There are three characters at the center of the action—Juicy (who parallels Hamlet), Rev (who parallels Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle), and Tedra (who parallels Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother). Secondary characters—Tio, Rabby, Larry, and Opal—also function in parallel with Hamlet. Rabby emulates Shakespeare’s Polonius, an elderly father who prides himself on raising successful and ethical children but who, in truth, is far from stainless and does not live according to the terms he mandates for his children. Opal is a modern Ophelia, the would-be love interest of Hamlet who dies by suicide. Opal, too, faces inner demons but triumphs where Ophelia does not. Larry parallels Polonius’s son Laertes while Tio, Juicy’s happy-go-lucky and silly cousin, serves as the play’s Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend and confidante and a source of wisdom, support, and guidance.