Saturday, November 19, 2016
Killing yourself
The suicide Motif is frequently brought up in Hamlet with the purpose of showing Hamlet's depressed state and overall outlook on life and other people. His indecision goes back to the thought Motif which causes him to delay in his task of avenging his father. I believe at this time period, suicide was not accepted because the grave diggers wonder if Ophelia should have a Christian burial or not. Hamlet and maybe Shakespeare go against this value by saying that the only reason people don't commit suicide is that they are scared of the unknown afterlife. Hamlet frequently calls himself a coward like this when debating the best time to kill Claudius.
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Hamlet says that everyone needs to kill themselves in order to escape troubles of everyday life. Everyone is a coward for not killing themselves in Hamlets perspective. Life is actually terrible and we all know it's terrible so we should just escape it by killing ourselves. Killing ourselves would be a great option except everybody is scared of what happens to us when we die. Therefore everyone is a coward.
I think Hamlet offers a really different and cool perspective on suicide. Many people would have thought about the Christian post death implications, but here Shakespeare provides a view of suicide that is much more applicable to all of humanity.
I also think that it's weird how most people think of suicide as be cowardly and taking the easy way out, but Hamlet thinks that not killing your self is cowardly. I also think it's weird how he doesn't think of the Christian repercussions especially considering the time period this was written in.
In a way, Hamlets contemplation of suicide is just another way fear is getting in the way of his revenge. Hamlet is afraid to suffer in life and so he contemplates killing himself. But he fears the consequences in the afterlife. His continued contemplation is avoids killing Claudius. He also avoids killing Claudius by making the excuse that if he kills him then he will go to heaven. Instead he continues to wait.
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