Hamlet: The Slings And Arrows Of Outrageous Fortune

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The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune
Throughout the play, Hamlet, the main character, Hamlet, is at war within himself. Fighting against two demons: one named insanity, the other, suicide; Insanity, the state in which one is seriously mentally ill, and suicide, the aftermath of being insane. Is it better to live or to die? Is it better to put up with the bad things we know in life than to fall away into a mind full of madness? Hamlet is not only talking to himself but to the audience as well, questioning the existence of humanity. He is no longer fascinated with the thought of death but with the knowledge of mortality. That our world is made of death and decay. If insanity is the cause of suicide Hamlet must find a way to deal with both.
In act one scene two, we start to see a much darker side to Hamlet. His father has now died, his mother promptly remarried, and instantaneously Hamlet emerges into a deep depression. Due to the fact many in shakespearian times believed the human body was made of four elements; one being black bile. Elizabethans believed Hamlet had “melancholy”, having too much black bile in the body. Melancholy is now referred to as “clinical depression”, which may have been the reason Hamlet was perceived as insane. Hamlet states, “o, that this too sullied …show more content…

In Hamlet’s famous soliloquy of Act 3 Scene 1, “To be or not to be: that is the question.” (3.1 634), not only is he contemplating suicide in this moment but he seems to have no moral or religious objections to acting on these thoughts. Death for Hamlet and many others seems like an easy way to escape reality and all of life’s problems, yet no one can tell you first hand what lies on the other side of death. With this in mind, he talks of the sizable amount of people who would kill themselves yet the fear of what lies on the other side is keeping them from going through with their

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