Hamlet's Paradox of Man

Hamlet's Paradox of Man

Shakespeare was a man ahead of his time. He was a man who had an ability to

portray the inner workings of humanity. Throughout his masterful works he was able to

peer into the human psyche and capture emotions like no other writer has been able to do.

He filled every one of his plays, most notably Hamlet, with eternal truths concerning

human emotions. Shakespeare develops the paradox of man and contradictions of

humanity with imagery, ironic siloques, and philosophical rants by Hamlet and Claudius.

No one has ever returned from the dead. Nobody knows exactly what life after

death is like. This is the thesis of Hamlet’s first paradox. The saying that “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” does not hold true when dealing with human life. Life is a struggling, so why do we endure it? Hamlet reminds us that “ . . . in that sleep of death what dreams may come,/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/ Must give us pause” (III.i.67-69). The reason that people do not give up their lives is because they do not know what it is to become of them after they die. Man is trapped in life by the enigma of death---the unknowns. He generally wishes to give his life up for something better; he cannot because there is no knowing whether death is a better alternative or not. Even though a better life is promised to us after death, one cannot get ot that place when taking one’s own life.

Shakespeare notes that the Scri...