Fear Of Death In Hamlet

Mark Twain once said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Life, its mysteries, its trials, its tribulations, its very purpose, has been the subject of debate amongst the greatest minds who have ever lived. Appearing in science, religion, and literature, the meaning of life has cultivated some of the most intense discourse of all time. In what is arguably the most popular, most famous, and most easily recognized speech ever written, Hamlet delivers this soliloquy about life and death:

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

To die,—to sleep;—

To sleep: perchance to dream:—ay, 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,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,—

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns,—puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of

His thorough discontent with living and all of the hardships brought on by a weary life, he says, could be ended through the ritual of suicide. But suddenly, he seemingly recants his profession of a suicidal solution, deeming it immoral to shun one’s duty to live the life they’ve been given. Hamlet struggles with the moral implications of suicide throughout the entire passage, as is evident in him posing the opening question of, “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?” (3.1.59-62). Of particular interest was his use of the words “slings” and “arrows” to convey exceptionally violent imagery. In doing this, Hamlet, and by default Shakespeare, projects an aura of duty and honor around the situation – almost as a subtle nod to the ritualistic nature of suicide. Ritualism shows up again with the use of the words “consummation” and “devoutly”, in 3.1.65-66, which are extremely symbolic, concurrent with their use within the Christian faith (more specifically Catholocism, of which Hamlet would have been a follower). It is here that we see Hamlet declare suicide “’tis a consummation, devoutly to be wish’d. To die.” In his time the word “consummation” would have been used almost exclusively according to Merriam-Webster’s second definition: “the action of making a marriage or