Hamlet’s Metamorphic View Of Death
Uploaded by mfields on Oct 30, 2004
One of the two certainties in Life is death, and it’s ultimately the most final of the two. Death is the predominant theme in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Because of this exposure to death, Hamlet gains an adolescent fascination of it by the end of the play. Hamlet’s depression and madness enables him to cope with death, to become violent and to even kill. Throughout the whole of the play, Hamlet views death differently. From his dour and gloomy brooding at the beginning, to his intriguing madness and desirability about death in the middle to the comfortable, cold killer in the end.
Hamlet’s depression is quite apparent in the beginning of the play. The people closest to him, his mother and stepfather, make notice of this by mentioning “How is that the clouds still hang on you”(1, II, 66) “Do not forever with thy vailed lids/ Thou knowest ‘tis common. All that lives must die.”(1, II, 70-72) and “cast thy nighted color off” (1, II, 68) referring to the manner in which Hamlet was dressed, all in black. Hamlet broods over the death of his father, the late King Hamlet Sr., who was suddenly taken from him a little over two months before. He is still very angry and bitter over the death his father. Hamlet’s responses to some comments and questions are very sarcastic towards the new King, his Uncle Claudius. He gives witty remarks with the intent of injuring the king and showing his disapproval of the current situation. “A little more than kin, and less than kind” (1, II, 64-65)
In the scenes following what happened in the battlements, Hamlet’s situation causes him to think more about death. He beings to think about the ghastly, supernatural revelation told to him by the ghostly apparition of his father. He has now become very depressed because of what he has agreed to do, kill Claudius. It is almost as if a bit of Hamlet is dying with each passing moment. In Act 2, Scene II Lines 301-319 Hamlet announces his plea to the universe, saying that he’s fed up with everything around him. That there was a time when the beauty of the earth, the sky, and the thoughts and accomplishments of the human race filled him with happiness, but not lately:
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