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Examples Of Suicide In Hamlet

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Sydni Williams Ms. Free AP Literature/Composition 2 February 2017 Suicide & Self-Annihilation Suicide. This word by definition is the act of deliberately killing oneself. The topic of suicide is as old as time itself, even stemming back to biblical days. Even so, suicide is still being used by thousands across the world to cope with various traumatising situations. One can only imagine the mental anguish that a human being must go through to force themselves to such a length. An example of this extreme mental anguish and contemplation over the act of suicide is found in a soliloquy from Act III, Scene I of Hamlet. In this act, Hamlet’s turbulent and ghoulish sentiments are caused by the appearance of his father’s ghost and his mother’s …show more content…

Throughout the soliloquy the Hamlet uses euphemisms in order to make the concept of death seem less scary and more embraceable. He does this by comparing death to sleep, making it more understandable. While the prince accomplishes this in a few lines he ultimately ends up undoing his intentions by over analyzing his previous thoughts. He substitutes death for sleep and manages to find solace for a brief second until he wonders of what dreams are to come during this “sleep”. He goes a step further in lines 23 and 24, “But that the dread of something after death,/The undiscover’d country from whose bourn”. By using the the word “undiscovered”, there is an immediate feeling of anxiety. We as humans fear the unknown. Shared experiences comfort us and help us to not feel completely alone and untethered from each other. In this situation death is the undiscovered country, the thing that no one has been able to experience and come back to share their story. Hamlet’s temporary relief is gone and once again his pessimism counteracts his primal urge to survive; and together the thoughts battle in his soul. William Shakespeare uses conflict(internal), figures of speech and diction to expound upon Hamlet’s cynical and self conflicted nature. The use of these devices push the plot forward and help readers to visualize and interpret Hamlet’s feelings and his decision

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To die,to sleep; No more; And by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, it 's a consummation devoutly to be wished. (Act3 Scene 1 Line 64-71) The speech in Hamlet not only reveals the death but also spreading rot and decay. Hamlet is quite struggling about to live or to die. At the beginning of the play, he is grieved at his father’s death and his mother’s hasty marriage with his uncle.

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When applied correctly, soliloquies successfully allow the reader to experience characters in their most vulnerable state: within their own minds. Hamlet is no exception to this principle, as Shakespeare’s mastery of rhetoric in establishing the main character’s inner conflict provides depth and rawness to his complex character. In this well-known soliloquy, Shakespeare employs logos to acknowledge that death can be both a relief and nightmare due to natural human emotions; accordingly, Hamlet personifies a severe case of teenage depression by simultaneously wishing for an end to suffering yet remaining hesitant to act on his own thoughts due to his fear of the unknown.         Throughout this passage, Hamlet attempts to rationalize ending his life over continuing to endure the painful reality of his existence. The parallelism in this particular soliloquy serves several rhetorical purposes, including the development of an implicit contrast between Hamlet’s mental state and the actual organization of his thoughts.

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Hamlet's views death to be almost like sleeping. Seeing as it puts those alive to rest. shakespeare makes emphasis of this by using repetition. Repeating the phrase ”To die, to sleep,to sleep” hamlet is projecting that death is a sleep, one you cannot wake from and where a being can be at peace. Hamlet simply wants the easy way out of his affairs and would belittle the act of suicide to going to sleep.

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The main character of William Shakespeare’s tragedy is actually a confused person that’s stuck between two choices. Some may argue that he feels guilty for his father’s death and so it’s his duty to avenge it. While others may disagree and conclude that he is just a maniac who is both violent and dangerous. Hamlet passes through the lane of hesitancy, where he hesitates to kill King Claudius. As a matter of fact, the main conflict of Hamlet is that he feels both the need to solve the crime and punish the responsible.

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When his father died, he is in a deep depression, in which he even considers suicide, wishing that his “too too solid flesh would melt”. However, what makes him different from Zhuangzi is that he has a fear of death at the same time. Apart from his fearfulness of spiritual awe because of suicide, he is always in a strange position of both wishing for death and fearing it intensely. In one of Hamlets most thought provoking reflections on death, he concludes that fear is what holds back people from committing suicide, and those who can kill themselves must no longer be afraid of death, and do so to escape the utter in life. It is obviously Hamlet’s uncertainty and fear about the afterlife that stops him from killing himself.

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Hamlet, after being left alone in the hall, begins to argue with himself about whether “To be or not to be?”(III.i.57). Hamlet discusses the topic on whether he should end his life or keep on living. Throughout Hamlet’s soliloquy he comes up with reasons to support each side of his argument. Hamlet’s sanity is still intact at the moment because if someone who had lost their sanity began to contemplate killing themselves they would commit the act right away without even thinking. In addition, Hamlet manages to list reasons on whether he should go through with killing himself or not which an insane person would not do.

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Even though Hamlet is an emotional character, contemplating suicide truly shows the depth of his pain, nothing about it is superficial. Due to the importance of Hamlet’s speech in Act III, Scene I, Hamlet

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In his soliloquy, he is asking himself whether it is better to live or to die, which he is considering to commit suicide. Also, in the soliloquy, Hamlet states that “Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?” (3.1.84-90). He explains that no one would like to live in an exhausting life, unless they don’t know what is going to happen after they die because they are afraid of what their after life is going to be. Both these quotes prove that the death symbol is always surrounded by Hamlet and he has a hard time to choose between life and

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