In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the question of death lingers in Hamlet’s mind, and his attitude towards death changes throughout the play. Hamlet’s character fully revolves around the thought of death and the reason for living. Shakespeare uses various literary devices as well as events in the play to shape Hamlet’s thoughts about death. Hamlet’s interactions with various characters, along with the deaths of others, establish Hamlet’s opinion of death at the end of the play. What starts as an answer to all his questions in an act of suicide, turns into a passion to find what his life is meant to accomplish, and eventually leads to a coming of peace with the killing of others and his own death. The audience’s first encounter with …show more content…
He talks about how useless life seems to him, and how he wishes his “solid flesh would melt”. He then continues to use the imagery of an “unweeded garden” to express how only the ugly and gross things thrive in life. Hamlet’s melancholy tone is very evident through this soliloquy, however his thought about life soon changes at the end of Act 1. In Act 1 Scene 5, Hamlet manages to talk to the ghost that Horatio and the guards had scene in Scene 1. He learns that it is father’s ghost, and he is told the truth about how his father was killed. The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius had murdered him and has now taken his throne. The ghost urges Hamlet …show more content…
The conversation is almost meaningless, especially as Hamlet uses it to play with the less intelligent mind of Polonius, but some of the things Hamlet says give a little insight into his mind. At the end of the conversation Hamlet informs Polonius, “You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal—except my life, except my life, except my life” (2.2.233-235). Compared to the beginning of Act 1, Hamlet’s words now suggest that he does wish to live, and he does no longer want death as a solution to his problems. Hamlet now values his life, at least a little bit more than he did when he talked to Gertrude at the opening of the play. However, Hamlet is not living a happy life, he simply is living to perform the task that was asked of him. After implying to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Denmark is a prison, Rosencrantz replies suggesting the whole world might as well be a prison. Hamlet’s response is that the whole world is “A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o' th' worst” (2.2.264-266). These words tell the audience that Hamlet can still only focus on the evil in the world and the bad in life. His life means nothing to him outside of revenging his father. This causes the audience to question what Hamlet will do after he completes his task. If the world is a prison to him, how could Hamlet
Hamlet is a character that we love to read about and analyze. His character is so realistic, and he is so romantic and idealistic that it is hard not to like him. He is the typical young scholar facing the harsh reality of the real world. In this play, Hamlet has come to a time in his life where he has to see things as they really are. Hamlet is an initiation story. Mordecai Marcus states "some initiations take their protagonists across a threshold of maturity and understanding but leave them enmeshed in a struggle for certainty"(234). And this is what happens to Hamlet.
So much is going on in Hamlet's life, his father's death, his uncle's rise to power, Fortinbras at the ready to strike and invade Denmark, and his relationship with Ophelia, that he is feels helpless and not even in control of his own life. He feels trapped and confined by his situation and therefor not in control of it. Hamlet feels as if the situations that he is in are controlling him rather than he being able to control them and he feels trapped by them, particularly the situation with Claudius. "Hamlet: …What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither? Guildenstern: Prison my lord? Hamlet: Denmark's a prison" (Act 2, Scene 2, verses 242-247) Hamlet even goes so far as to call Denmark a prison because he feels so trapped in his life there and feels so helpless to change his situation, as if he were locked into it like a prison cell.
This famous soliloquy offers a dark and deep contemplation of the nature of life and death. Hamlet’s contemplative, philosophical, and angry tones demonstrate the emotions all people feel throughout their lifetimes.
Firstly, Shakespeare proves that Hamlet’s attitude towards death changes throughout the play because he starts off desiring death. The play begins with the ghost of Hamlet’s father visiting the courtyard while Bernardo and Horatio are there (1.1) Bernardo is the first to notice the ghost, and exclaims “In the same figure, like the King that’s
From the beginning of the movie, until the end Hamlet is furious by the hasty marriage of Gertrude (Hamlets mother) to Claudius (hamlets uncle), especially since his father died only two months ago. Hamlet is quite literally mad, he even thinks about committing suicide and this is known because of the famous soliloquy “to be or not to be, that is the question”. However, hamlet is visited by ghost and is told that he was murdered by his Uncle by having poison poured into his ear and the king’s ghost asks hamlet to avenge the king’s death. Hamlet demonstrates his cleverness when he sets up a play which is very similar to what take place on the day that the king was murdered. Hamlet tells Horatio to observe Claudius’ reaction to the play, and if Claudius seems to be troubled by the play, that will confirm the ghosts accusation. Within all of this chaos, hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius and leaves for France. This causes Ophelia to ...
Hamlet is a conflicted character. He is maddened by his father’s, the King of Denmark, murder and his mother’s, Queen Gertrude, untimely marriage to his uncle, King Claudius, who is also his father’s murderer. It is a tangled web of lies, death, and duplicity that Hamlet lives in. “Denmark [certainly] is a prison” for him (II.2.262). Hamlet becomes withdrawn in the play, no longer having an enthusiastic and playful demeanor. His relationship with his mother is destroyed, he denounces Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Ophelia, and he becomes estranged with society as he feigns insanity. He is the quintessential character for Jean Paul Sartre’s existential principle that “Hell is other people.” Ultimately, Hamlet’s nature completely changes. He states to Guildenstern that as “of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, an...
The conversation quickly turns into a debate of the imprisonment of Denmark. Hamlet, feeling the confinement of “one o’ the worst” (2.2.265-266) prisons, is adamant about proving his point and seems to be far more emotional about his side of the argument. Hamlet explains how “thinking makes [the prison] so” (2.2.269), enlightening his friends of a reason for his
In Hamlet, William Shakespeare presents the main character Hamlet as a man who is fixated on death. Shakespeare uses this obsession to explore both Hamlet's desire for revenge and his need for assurance. In the process, Shakespeare directs Hamlet to reflect on basic principles such as justice and truth by offering many examples of Hamlet's compulsive behavior; as thoughts of death are never far from his mind. It is apparent that Hamlet is haunted by his father's death. When Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, their conversation raises all kinds of unthinkable questions, for example murder by a brother, unfaithful mother, that triggers Hamlet's obsession. He feels compelled to determine the reliability of the ghost's statements so that he can determine how he must act. Ultimately, it is his obsession with death that leads to Hamlet avenging the death of his father by killing Claudius.
All throughout the play Hamlet mourns the loss of his father, especially since his father is appearing to him as a ghostly figure telling him to avenge his death, and throughout the play it sets the stage and shows us how he is plotting to get back at the assassinator. Such an instance where the ghost appears to Hamlet is when Hamlet and his mother are in her bedchamber where the ghost will make his last appearance. Hamlet tells his mother to look where the ghost appears but she cannot see it because he is the only one who that has the ability to see him.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragic play about murder, betrayal, revenge, madness, and moral corruption. It touches upon philosophical ideas such as existentialism and relativism. Prince Hamlet frequently questions the meaning of life and the degrading of morals as he agonizes over his father’s murder, his mother’s incestuous infidelity, and what he should or shouldn’t do about it. At first, he is just depressed; still mourning the loss of his father as his mother marries his uncle. After he learns about the treachery of his uncle and the adultery of his mother, his already negative countenance declines further. He struggles with the task of killing Claudius, feeling burdened about having been asked to find a solution to a situation that was forced upon him.Death is something he struggles with as an abstract idea and as relative to himself. He is able to reconcile with the idea of death and reality eventually.
Hamlet although he believes that suffering must be endured or battled, he also understands that suffering is optional and that suffering is caused from pain and all pain can be relieved. At times Hamlet no longer sees the point of bearing the huge burden of suffering as he does, but rather to end the burden through suicide. These thoughts are however based or can be linked back to Hamlet’s emotion and how his negative emotions overcome his logical thinking. We see however Hamlet’s ability to think logically and understand the reasoning behind suffering and the preciousness of his life. At this point in the play Hamlet no longer doubts his meaning in life, this is quite pivotal because this then allows him the confidence and power to seek revenge on Claudius.
Death threads its way through the entirety of Hamlet, from the opening scene’s confrontation with a dead man’s ghost to the blood bath of the final scene, which occurs as a result of the disruption of the natural order of Denmark. Hamlet is a man with suicidal tendencies which goes against his Christian beliefs as he is focused on the past rather than the future, which causes him to fall into the trap of inaction on his path of revenge. Hamlet’s moral dilemma stems from the ghost’s appearance as “a spirit of health or a goblin damned”, making Hamlet decide whether it brings with...
In his tragedy Hamlet, William Shakespeare explores and analyzes the concept of mortality and the inevitability of death through the development of Hamlet’s understanding and ideology regarding the purpose for living. Through Hamlet’s obsessive fascination in understanding the purpose for living and whether death is the answer, Shakespeare analyzes and interprets the meaning of different elements of mortality and death: The pain death causes to others, the fading of evidence of existence through death, and the reason for living. While due to the inevitable and unsolvable mystery of the uncertainty of death, as no being will ever empirically experience death and be able to tell the tale, Shakespeare offers an answer to the reason for living through an analysis of Hamlet’s development in understanding death.
Hamlet isn’t a play that ends the conversation of death, but to contemplate it with a greater audience. Hamlet is so multi-faceted that it would be selling it short to call it a specific kind of play that only revolves around the tragedies that unfold throughout the play. The conversations of death go far beyond that of the deaths of individual’s such as King Hamlet, in his death we the audience gets to explore the broader conversation that Shakespeare starts in relation to death. He breaks the barriers that confined the conversation of death to the Church and gives reason to the general populace to explore death in an introspective way. In Hamlet’s hope to find reason in his world full of greed and treachery, we find ourselves on a path to understand, but also to contemplate alongside Hamlet what truly is death and how it does not discriminate. In reading Hamlet with respect to the historical backdrop of Shakespeare’s life we can without stretching the interpretations of the text to our advantages can say Shakespeare drew inspiration by the inherently deceitful practices that the church and state participated in during the renaissance. Shakespeare’s story isn’t setting out to teach a life lesson, or a universal truth, but rather through the addition of his voice on the matters of death and kingship, he subverts the monopoly that the church and those who have royal blood hold on that
Hamlet is one of the most often-performed and studied plays in the English language. The story might have been merely a melodramatic play about murder and revenge, butWilliam Shakespeare imbued his drama with a sensitivity and reflectivity that still fascinates audiences four hundred years after it was first performed. Hamlet is no ordinary young man, raging at the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother and his uncle. Hamlet is cursed with an introspective nature; he cannot decide whether to turn his anger outward or in on himself. The audience sees a young man who would be happiest back at his university, contemplating remote philosophical matters of life and death. Instead, Hamlet is forced to engage death on a visceral level, as an unwelcome and unfathomable figure in his life. He cannot ignore thoughts of death, nor can he grieve and get on with his life, as most people do. He is a melancholy man, and he can see only darkness in his future—if, indeed, he is to have a future at all. Throughout the play, and particularly in his two most famous soliloquies, Hamlet struggles with the competing compulsions to avenge his father’s death or to embrace his own. Hamlet is a man caught in a moral dilemma, and his inability to reach a resolution condemns himself and nearly everyone close to him.