Hamlet Case

THESIS: In Hamlet, death serves as an equalizer between the characters.

The characters are caught in unbearable or complicated situations in which they want to resort to death or in which death is the only resolution.

Hamlet faces huge internal struggles whether the pain of life is better than death. He considers suicide but is stopped by the uncertainty of the afterlife. He feels his problems are too large and miserable to fix them in life.

Ophelia's life becomes too miserable for her to handle. Although unclear if she kills herself, she doesn't fight against the river, and drowns. Ophelia has come to terms with death. She realizes that death will come at some point or another and she cannot fear the uncertainty, something that takes Hamlet a bit longer to realize.

As for Claudius, he got himself into such a mess that the only real resolution was death.

Hamlet is fascinated with death throughout the play but eventually begins to accept it.

Hamlet's fascination with death runs throughout the play. He struggles to find peace in what happened to his father, what will happen to Claudius, and to himself after death. "To be or not to be..."

Hamlet begins to show his first signs of acceptance when describing where Polonius' body is. He talks of the worms eating the body and then us eating the worms. He seems unaffected and like he has come to terms with death.

"That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once. How that knave jowls it to th' ground as if 'twere Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician which this ass o'er-offices, one that would circumvent God, might it not?" 5.1.74-82.

The gravedigger makes no distinction from one skull to another, stating that they are not men or women, they are dead. Hamlet begins to realize at death all people are equals, it doesn't matter what your status or who you were when you were alive.

"No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it. As thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust. The dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall t'expel the winter's flaw."

Hamlet realizes that death will come no matter what and in the end most of the characters end up dead, equalizing them all.

In the last act, Hamlet is very calm and content with the fact he may die as well as the others.

"Not a whit. We defy augury.