Suicide and the images of death in Hamlet - Essay Example

Although he ultimately rejects it as a viable option, suicide is a potential solution and ongoing thought in Hamlet’s mind. Indeed thoughts of deathand suicide are apparent throughout this play. Discuss suicide and the images of death in Hamlet. There is a warning that the theme of death is going to be important in the play Hamlet right from the start because in the first scene a ghostly figure appears and scares the castle guards (Act I, Scene 1). The audience hears about Hamlet for the first time in connection with this ghost, who is in fact the ghost of his father.

When Hamlet himself first appears, he is addressed by King Claudius with the words: “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” (Act I, Scene 2, line 66) which suggests that he is depressed. This suspicion is confirmed when he makes his famous speech wishing that his flesh would “melt,/ Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” (Act I, Scene 2, lines 129-130). He says that the reason he does not kill himself is because God has made laws against “self-slaughter” (Act 1, Scene 2, line 131) but in fact the real reason is probably that he is over-dramatizing his mother’s relationship with his uncle, and he does not have the courage to do this to himself.

The character of Hamlet appears to be very prone to dwelling on sad events, and he also feels weighed down by the pressures of belonging to this royal family. The two young men Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are presented as a sharp contrast to the miserable Hamlet, and while they make jokes about Fortune being a woman, Hamlet just maintains “Then is doomsday near.Denmark’s a prison.” (Act II, Scene 2, lines 236 and 241) He seems to have given up on life because he says “I have of late-but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises.

” (Act II, Scene 2, lines 293-295) He contemplates suicide in another famous speech where he asks himself whether it is better “To be, or not to be.” (Act III, Scene 1, line 56). The image that he has of suicide and death is that of sleeping, and while this tempts him, because he is so tired of all the troubles that weigh him down, he is also afraid: “To die, to sleep-/To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay there’s the rub;/For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” (Act III, Scene 1, lines 64-66).

What he means is that suicide would be an option for him if it would bring him peaceful sleep, but all the ghostly wanderings in the castle make him worry that the afterlife will be full of horrors, just the same as the present life. Hamlet’s attitude to suicide is therefore one of fear: “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” (Act III, Scene 1, line 83) Elsewhere in the play there are a lot of references to evil powers which come out at night such as “Tis now the witching time of night/ when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out/ contagion to the world” (Act III, Scene 3, lines 378-380).

In the last act, Hamlet wanders through a churchyard and reflects on the physical decay of the body, and he makes morbid comments on the bones of dead people, including the skull of his former friend Yorick. (Act V, Scene 1, lines 177-184) At the end of the play, when Hamlet is told that he is poisoned by the tip of a sword, it seems as if he welcomes this turn of events: “The point envenom’d too!/ Then, venom, to thy work.” (Act V, Scene 2, lines 313-314). He ends his life, not in exactly by suicide, but through the poison of his mother, and in a way this is a metaphor for the suicidal depression and madness that she brought into his life by marrying his uncle.

References Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Peter Alexander. London and New York: William Collins and Son, 1951.