Death In Hamlet Essay

1315 Words3 Pages

Ancient Greek and Christianity both have different vision of death. Therefore, the idea of death and the afterlife was contrarily shown in the two texts. Death permeates Hamlet from the beginning of the tragedy through the ghost of king Hamlet. Suicide was desirable way to replace suffering the life but it is forbidden by the Christian religion. Also Hamlet explains how the body return to dust at the end and what happen in the afterlife. However, death in apology by Plato was unknown idea thus Socrates does not fear it. In addition death is an honourable thing for men. For Socrates death is the nonexistence or the transmigration of the soul.

Death pervades Hamlet from the introductory part of the play. The ghost of hamlet the king announces the notion of death and it costs. Hamlet has a young attraction with death; he was advised by his friends that looking for the ghost is a wrong thing because the ghost is an ominous omen for Denmark and the greater subject of the fitness of the entire state. It is a noticeable indication of the rottenness of the state produced by Claudius killing to his brother. However, Hamlet’s fascination with death was excessive, which means that he was ready to lose everything to follow the ghost. Hamlet’s grief was greater than Claudius and his mother and that made him more obsessed about death.
“I am father’s spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night and for the day confined to fast in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away” (Hamlet, act 1 scene 5. P28). These lines show that recent place of the ghost is the purgatory. The ghost clarifies to hamlet that his soul is left wandering on earth because his murdered has been unpunished yet. The image of the ...

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... sharing knowledge about suffering in their life. However, the supposition of the soul transmigration to different place identified as metempsychosis, it may be wrong. Socrates believed that there is only one place where the dead go to but we think logically there might be different places where the souls after death. As Christian belief there is heaven and hell, souls might be transmigrated to one of them according on how bad or good the persons behaviour on earth.

In conclusion, the idea of death in Hamlet was different than the meaning of death in Apology by Plato. What happen after death is clear for Hamlet where the soul goes to heaven or hell and the body decompose and return to dust. On the other hand, death for Socrates is the nonexistence or the transmigration of the soul to another place. Death is the unknowability thus Socrates does not afraid from it.

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