Hamlet: The Ultimate Choice

Literary Analysis: The Ultimate Choice In life, there are many choices that everyone must make many times each day. Whether or not it is ever the right choice always depends, but there is always a choice in everything. In the popular play, Hamlet: Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare, The main character, Hamlet, as well as many others face a choice that no one would like to face; “to be or not to be”. The ultimate choice between living, or taking their own life, and the imagery of death are repetitive aspects in this world-renowned play. Suicide and death is presented throughout the entire play; even from the beginning. The evidence shows up in hamlets first soliloquy. “Ten lines about the melting of flesh into dew and the divine prohibition of self-slaughter.” (Lewis). Only in act one, Hamlet has this to say:
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown. (1.2.131-146). “The play Hamlet refers to the thought of suicide and the temptation to give up on the battle of life. Hamlets first soliloquy opens with the lament that the almighty has fixed his cannon ‘gainst self-slaughter.” (Gardner). Already, at the very opening of the play, Hamlet is already debating suicide. The only reason that is staying his hand from the irreversible act of suicide is His religion. Hamlet highly believes in the afterlife and doesn’t want to guarantee his soul to hell, however, that’s not enough to make him drop the idea for good. A little further in the play, Hamlet speaks the most famous words of all time; debating life and death, but is it for only himself, or everyone as a whole: To be, or not to be, that is the question— Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep—
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time, (3.1.56-70).
When Hamlet says "To be, or not to be?" he is asking the question of life or death; the ultimate choice:
Sure you could say that Hamlet is starting to sound like a broken record with the whole suicide thing. But in this later soliloquy, he just might be moving on. Instead of obsessing about whether or not to kill himself, hes exploring the reasons why people in general don’t commit suicide-which might be one reason why he doesn’t use the words “I” or “me” in this whole soliloquy. (shmoop.com).
Instead of focusing on himself, Hamlet is speaking for everyone about why suicide isn't exercised more often; there is a reason. "He fears that if he, or anyone commits suicide, they will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the christian religion's prohibition of suicide." (shmoop.com). One character in Hamlet did make the ultimate choice of suicide; Ophelia. She ended up drowning herself but ironically enough, she was still burried with a full proper christian burial:
FIRST CLOWN: Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?
SECOND CLOWN: I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it
Christian burial.
[…]
Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o'
Christian burial. (5.1.1).
According to the two gravediggers or "Clowns," commiting suicide usually means that you don't get a proper burial. "Luckily, money talks, and Ophelia's family pulled some strings to get her a religious burial. Hamlet thinks that death affects everyone the same, but maybe it doesn't: rich people even get to die differently." (Shmoop.com). The fact that someone who commited the unforgivable sin of suicide still gets a proper christian burial can really effect the outlook of Hamlet's earlier soliloquy. the only aspect that is missing from the information that would make the ultimate choice of suicide alot more open to people of christian faith would be what exactly happends after death? It's one of the many unanswered questions left in Hamlet. Moving away from only suicide, there is much imagery of death that is diplayed throughout the play. One image that reveals itself that can attune to all five senses is polonius' death. After Hamlet mistakingly murders polonius, he has a talk with the new king; Claudius:
KING CLAUDIUS:
Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
HAMLET:
At supper.
KING CLAUDIUS:
At supper! where?
HAMLET:
Not where he eats, but where he 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. (4.3.18-24).
Hamlet tells Claudius that Polonius is "at supper," but what he really means is that Polonius is being eaten for supper. The imagery of death is quite distinct when Hamlet elaborates on Polonius' decaying and rotting body being consumed by parasites. The imagery of death continues to be seen throughout the play. In the last act, Hamlet elaborates about an old skull that he finds that he used to know the former owner to; Yorick.
"That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
Cain's jaw-bone," (5.1.66-68).
Yorick's skull is quite an impacting symbol to one such as Hamlet who is so obsesed with death: Hamlet holds up the unearthed skull of Yorick, a court jester Hamlet knew and loved as a young boy. The skull itself is a physical reminder of the finality of death. After all of Hamlet's brooding and philosophical contemplation of mortality, Hamlet literally looks death directly in the face right here. (shmoop.com)
The image of death is always found by hamlet through objescts and actions, whether it be someone dying, himself contemplating suicide, or an object that solely represnts death; a skull from which he knew the owner of.