How Does Hamlet Live After Death

The path of a human being is set off by many obstacles, yet human beings question what awaits them in their life “beyond the grave.” In the play Hamlet, the author William Shakespeare, portrays the character of Hamlet, who struggles throughout the play to understand the idea whether is it better to live or to die, which leaves the universal question unanswered: “What awaits humans after death?”
Throughout the play, this question plagues Hamlet if he should take his life and if it is morally the right thing to do; in which he utters the phrase “To be or to not be: that is the question; / Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer.” In these lines Hamlet is thinking about being alive or being dead, which he considers life is being in a passive
state, while death being sort of an active state to which he reaches out towards death to end his suffering and melancholy state, but indeed he is still balanced in between life and death. He is still left without an answer of whether the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” can be borne out since life after death is so uncertain. Hamlet thinks about the nature of death and wonders “To sleep: perchance to dream:—ay there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” This is the moment when he realizes his pains, which are the “dreams” being the fears he has about what afterlife might bring him and since there is no hope to relinquish to the positive aspect in his life, that he feels there will be an end to his sufferings through death.
He takes on to account that if he takes his own life he can “sleep” and
withdraw from the struggles and the overwhelming anxiety he is surrounded by, but he wonders what might await him beyond the grave. He fears “the dread of something after death.” Hamlet extents that he should rather choose to stay on in this life instead of taking his life “that we know not of,” concluding that the fear of death and the uncertainty of its aftermath that “makes cowards of us all”.
However, Hamlet’s solution closes upon him in the graveyard when he finds Yorick’s skull, and speaks to it, “Alas, poor Yorick” he says.
The skull itself is a physical reminder of the finality of death and what's to come after death, as Hamlet was able to see death in the eye. Which allows Hamlet to realize that death eliminates the differences between people and the hierarchical structure of society is illusory and ultimately crumbles into “dust”, just like the bones of those long gone. Which he extends towards his soliloquy that “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, / Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth / we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was / converted might they not stop a beer barrel? / Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.” Here, Hamlet denotes that despite of the power and the reputation that both Alexander and Caesar hold, they both are “buried” and their death meets no exception because their bodies will rot, only to be recycled into the earth as generations before them. This denotes that every living thing must come to the earth and return to the earth, when it dies off. This scene exemplifies Hamlet’s character development, as he is able to see through Yorick’s skull and takes a mature outlook onto death, which he shows no sense of madness and he realizes that he must “let be.” Through Yorick's Skull and his soliloquies about Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar; it signifies that
Hamlet sees profoundly that all lives prompt to death, and “the rest is silence.” Hamlet deliberately senses that the day will come when he will die and all the things he believed were really important will mean nothing in the end.
Hamlet poses a great question that is universally applicable, but does not offer the clear way in understanding the answer to what awaits humans after death, rather it reemphasizes the idea that humans have to let happen what is destined to occur. Through Shakespeare's portrayal in Hamlet’s character development witnessed in Yorick’s presence, Hamlet was able to sense the maturity and new outlook on human life and death. Through Shakespeare’s vision Hamlet accepted that “there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow”, which exemplifies that death is a natural phenomenon that never ceases, and there is not a lot that human beings can do, and just “let be” because god has a master plan.