Who is up to date with shakespear's hamlet...
Alright well im fucked with this essay due tommorrow im completely loss on how to even structure this, It really just the introduction to this research paper I am in need of assitance of, the problem with this is the topic at hand is hard to find any research... and I really just need some help starting it off if anyone can criticize what ive written so far (which is extremely short) that would be great, once i get the introduction and thesis down i can bang out the main body paragraphs
heres the prompt:
"Mortality-- Death haunts the play from the opening scene. What is Shakespeare's
message about humanity's relationship with death/mortality? What is known and
unknown? What is the effect of such uncertainty?"
Book: Hamlet
what i have written so far:
"Shakespear’s message regarding humanity’s relationship with mortality is shown through a sense of confusion through Hamlet. Death is known to happen to every being that exist, however the journey after is an unknown subject."
I have no idea how to start this off honestly i can't think of a theme of what shakespeare message is..
What is known:
- life is struggle
- everyone dies at one point(which is why in the play when someone dies people aren't to careful about they just act like its an ordianary thing)
- We are cowards to die because we don't know comes next quote: "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all"
What is unkown:
- We dont know what comes next
- quote im using for that : "The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns"
- When king hamlet the ghost comes back even he can't tell what happens, quote "But that i am forbid to tell secrets of my prisoned house" (talking about purgatory)
I was thinking of putting some religion in here because they are heavily based on religion and the evidence for that is:
- The priest can only say certain rights for Ophellia who committed suicide
- Hamlet won't kill claudius while he is praying because he will go to heaven
- it is a sin to commit suicide
I don't know how to Incorporate religion into this theme though.. I really don't know how to start this off for a thesis if someone could give me a pointer or two that would be great
Here is the translated version into modern text of the famous to be or not to be that may inform you guys and really a lot of my support will come from:
Quote:
The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all? Dying, sleeping—that’s all dying is—a sleep that ends all the heartache and shocks that life on earth gives us—that’s an achievement to wish for. To die, to sleep—to sleep, maybe to dream. Ah, but there’s the catch: in death’s sleep who knows what kind of dreams might come, after we’ve put the noise and commotion of life behind us. That’s certainly something to worry about. That’s the consideration that makes us stretch out our sufferings so long. After all, who would put up with all life’s humiliations—the abuse from superiors, the insults of arrogant men, the pangs of unrequited love, the inefficiency of the legal system, the rudeness of people in office, and the mistreatment good people have to take from bad—when you could simply take out your knife and call it quits? Who would choose to grunt and sweat through an exhausting life, unless they were afraid of something dreadful after death, the undiscovered country from which no visitor returns, which we wonder about without getting any answers from and which makes us stick to the evils we know rather than rush off to seek the ones we don’t? Fear of death makes us all cowards, and our natural boldness becomes weak with too much thinking. Actions that should be carried out at once get misdirected, and stop being actions at all. But shh, here comes the beautiful Ophelia. Pretty lady, please remember me when you pray.
Sparknotes on the theme of death
Quote:
The Mystery of Death
In the aftermath of his father’s murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yorick’s skull and the decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality, truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlet’s deepest questions, ending once and for all the problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justice—Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet’s quest for revenge, and Claudius’s death is the end of that quest.
The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not suicide is a morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlet’s grief and misery is such that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he commits suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian religion’s prohibition of suicide. In his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would choose to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear which causes complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.
