To Be Or Not To Be: Hamlet Discussion Questions

1. In the beginning of the act, Hamlets asks himself a question. “To be, or not to be—that is the question.” What Hamlet is actually asking is considering if he wants to live or kill himself. Whether he should live in sorrow and accept fate as it is now or if he should fight it and continue to live.
2. Although most people would say that Hamlet is afraid of death that’s why he won’t kill himself. Hamlet isn’t afraid of that at all, he is afraid of what would happen to him after he is dead. The reason he if afraid of what comes after is because no one truly knows what comes after death. It could be another life that we are granted or even worse it could just be the end period.
3. Hamlet is saying that we must put up with a lot of things in
life. Some of the examples of these trails that we must be put up with are the government, stuff others will say about you, slowness of the legal system, love that no longer exists, and many other things including life itself.
4.
There may be many answers to why we put up with these certain things. Hamlet believes that we put up with all these hurtful things in life it because we are afraid. The thing that he says we are afraid of is death, but not death itself; it is what comes after death. The reason we are afraid of it is because no one knows what truly comes after death itself.
5. When I first read the line “Conscience does make cowards of us all” I thought he meant that conscience is what stops us from doing what we truly want to do. An example of this is if someone steals something from a store and they want to go back. The person won’t go back because they feel it is bad if they go back to the store that they stole something from. This is saying that our conscience is making us fear what could happen, which makes us a coward and I fully agree with what Hamlet
says.
Death be not proud
1. In the poem “Death be not proud” John Donne is saying that Death itself shouldn’t be proud for what it is doing. There are many reasons why the Donne says this, but there is one main reason. This main reason is that Death is being mocked by everyone and not many people are as afraid of it as Death wants them to be. Death is a slave to everyone, not just one person, but all the people. Reason for this is because without us, Death would be nothing, although it already is close to it already.
2. In line 5, “From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,” Donne is saying that death itself and sleep are two really close topics to talk about. Donne is saying that sleep and rest is a mire picture of death itself. When I first read this poem, I was trying to figure out what he was saying when I go to this line. I looked it over and finally realized what it meant. When someone is asleep they are kind of in a temporary state of death. Thus meaning death is just a long state of sleep.
3. In the beginning of the poem, Donne was just trying to say that death itself shouldn’t be proud. He thinks that he is all high and mighty, but in reality, no one is afraid of death as he says they are. When you read further into the poem, he is comparing death to something that we do every day. After that Donne is saying that death is a slave to all people, the highest ranking people to the lowest ranking person. Even the nicest thing in the world, a flower, can make us fall asleep; this is going back to line 5 when he compares death to sleep. The last line of the poem, Donne is saying death doesn’t exist anymore; death itself is going to die.
4.
Throughout the whole poem, Donne is trying to tell people that they shouldn’t fear death at all. He is just saying that death is just a fear that we all have to overcome. Death isn’t a hard thing to overcome at all. As long as you have the help to overcome it, death will just be something that you overcame. Once you don’t fear death anymore, it can’t scare you anymore.
5. When you first start to read the poem, Donne’s tone is very defiant. He clearly states that he doesn’t like how death thinks that he is all high and mighty. Death thinks that if it can make people fear, then he can control every move that they make in their lives. There are a couple of words that Donne uses to describe his feeling for death itself. The two main words that I found were both in the same line, Line 2. “Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,” The two words are mighty and dreadfull, the way that Donne uses these words to get his point across.
6. There was one main thing that surprised me when I first started to read this poem. Donne is a really brave to face death and tell death that he isn’t afraid of what it has to bring. To me. Donne is trying to tell death that no matter what is thrown at him, Donne will stand tall and fight whatever he has to. This poem might be a way to tell people that they shouldn’t fear it, they should stand together. If we all stand together on this, we as a community would be able to stand up to anything that comes at
us.
7. I was never really afraid of death when it came to be, but when it was death about other people, that’s when things start to change. For some reason when death was brought up when it concerned other people I was afraid. After reading this poem, I realized that death can’t hurt people if they have other there to help them overcome it. This poem does make death less freighting, I don’t know exactly how but it does. When I was done reading this poem I have a different view on death itself, it isn’t as scary as it used to be.
8. Both Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets are really close to one another. There are 14 lines in each of the people and they both have a rhyme pattern. The rhyme patterns aren’t the same in each of the poems. I personally think that it is a Petrarchan sonnet, only for one reason. In a Shakespearean the last two lines sum up the last twelve lines before it. In Death be not proud, the last two lines don’t really sum up the rest of the poem, thus making it a Petrarchan sonnet not a Shakespearean sonnet.
9. Some people might prefer the semicolon and others might prefer the comma. It all depends on how you read and understand the sonnet. The people who prefer the comma over the semicolon might say that the semicolon is acting as a whole new and different topic, even though they are the same exact topic. Ones who prefer the semicolon might say that it is necessary for one main reason. This reason is that the first part of the line is saying that death shall be no more and the second part of the line is saying that death itself shall die. Although they are the same kind of topics, some might say that you need the semicolon. For those who would prefer the semicolon more, they feel that it sounds more freighting for death if there was a longer pause between the beginning and the end of the line. When there is a pause from the beginning and the end of the line it shows more authority and more anger towards death. If there was a comma it can sound like we aren’t afraid of death as John Donne is saying we are.