Hamlet's View Of Death

Death is a widely explored topic, William Shakespeare, opts to comprehensively scrutinize this complex notion in Hamlet. Shakespeare ingeniously and sometimes shrewdly brings the reader through a corporeal and nonphysical excursion of death through the eyes of the protagonist; Hamlet, who is infatuated with the notion of death, and throughout the development of the play envisions death from multiple perspectives. He contemplates the physical aspects of death. Hamlet also meditates the spiritual aspects of the afterlife in many of his soliloquies. Psychologically Hamlet is always close to death with the in the sense that death surrounds him, and largely dictates his actions for much of the play.
The impression of death is very apparent throughout
In the “to be or not to be” dialogue in Act 3 Scene 1, hamlet goes on about some of the important and confusing questions about the human condition: particularly death and honor and, whether is it wiser to spend life living in peace but shamefully or to face the struggles inherent in one’s life knowing the outcome would be unfavorable. This is one of hamlet’s most memorable and interesting scenes, where he contemplates dying in the pursuit of his beliefs. He has become so conflicted, dealing with grief, anger, while juggling his plan for taking down that he can no longer enjoy life. He has allowed himself to become so occupied with this that he has lost his sense of self. In the end, he chooses to live in order to carry out his agenda. Despite the fact that his only reason for living is to kill someone else, the idea of facing life’s challenges rather than taking the easier path, becomes
Although this is firmly rooted in his character from the beginning, it is can also be seen as product of his grief, as his understanding and towards develops and changes as the play progresses. Hamlet’s most powerful consideration of death comes in Act 4, Scene 3. His almost frightening obsession with the idea is shown when asked by Claudius where he has kept Polonius’ body. He states “At supper ... Not where he eats, but where a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.” Hamlet is crudely defining the cycle of human existence. In Hamlets’ words: we consume in life and we are consumed in death. The fragility of human life haunts Hamlet throughout the play and it’s an idea he returns to in Act 5, Scene 1: the graveyard scene. Grasping Yorick’s skull, he explores the shortness and pointlessness of the human state and the certainty of death, he states “No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it, as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop at a beer-barrel?” This creates the scene for Ophelia’s