Discussion Questions In Hamlet

Students often have a hard time finding any significance in a play such as Hamlet. Sometimes the language Shakespeare uses is too distant from today's speech for students to fully understand and unpack this play. When we are able to look through Shakespeare’s old English, we can see that Hamlet is asking questions that we are usually too afraid to ask. Hamlet asks himself is about death, love, and revenge and shakespeare forces us, as reader, to ask the same questions when analyzing Hamlet. This is why Hamlet is relevant and important hundreds of years after it was written.
Shakespeare asks many questions in Hamlet, but few are as famous as the ones that are asked in Hamlet's soliloquy in act 3 scene 1. Its first line is probably one of the most famous in history: “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” (Shakespeare 96) I believe this line is so famous because it asks a question that is timeless: what is the point of even living? Hamlet feels betrayed by almost everyone he cares about, and he is forced to contemplate death and suicide. Hamlet then suggests that a large reason why we push through pain and sorrow is the fear of what comes after death. Shakespeare wrote: “But that the dread of something after death… Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.”
Hamlet is describing an internal dilemma that people have struggled with throughout
Hamlet describes death as “no more by a sleep to say we end…”(Shakespeare 97). Hamlet makes death sound so peaceful, as if it was no big deal. But death also has a finality to it, Hamlet tells us: “ The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns…” (Shakespeare 98). Once you die, there is no return. This, I feel, adds to our cultures near obsession with death. There is no way to be absolutely certain of what happens after we die. Shakespeare’s ability to make us think about death and describe it so potently makes Hamlet relevant