Summary Of Shakespeare's Hamlet-To Be Or Not To Be

In this excerpt from Hamlet by William Shakespeare Hamlet is contemplating whether or not to commit suicide.

In the beginning of his monologue Hamlet asks “To be, or not to be” ( ); the antithesis used emphasizes the extremity and importance of this question because it is the crux of this soliloquy- whether to die or live. Hamlet goes on to use a war metaphor of “slings and arrows” to compare life to war’s pain and injuries caused by it. The metaphor compares the physical and mental pain that weapons cause in a war with all of life's hardships and hurdles. Hamlet continues the war metaphor by contemplating whether or not “to take arms against the sea of troubles” ( ) The metaphor “sea of troubles” signifies how human problems keep evolving, changing, coming and going like the choppiness of the ocean.

In sleep, he says one can dream but with death, one can escape all mortal turmoil. But Hamlet questions what happen after death by asking “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come” ( ). “Dreams” are a symbol for the situations that may arise after death because dreams take one to another place in sleep, which is just a smaller death to Hamlet. This section is structured through analogies of sleep and death. Afterwards, Hamlet lists all the horrible things that occur in life from “the law’s delay” ( ) to “pangs of despised love” ( ) and understands one can end it all with something as simple as “a bare bodkin” ( ). The alliteration of the “b” sound emphasizes the fact that a simple knife can end all these complicated problems.

But Hamlet starts to question suicide because death leads to “the undiscover’d country…/[from where] no traveller returns” ( ). The metaphor reinforces the fact that no one knows what and how things happen once someone dies. That where and what happens once someone dies is a mystery to