Hamlet Essay

"To be or not to be that is the question," but to be or not to be what exactly? I guess Hamlet doesn't really have a clear point of view of what he's trying to get out from this soliloquy, since he jumps to different places during this reflection. Whether he chooses to live or die is what he is saying from the "to be or not to be" part, but so many questions arise when he makes this bold statement. Hamlet makes a lot of religious innuendos about sins and heaven and hell but still debates ending his life because he cant handle what Claudius and his mother have done to his father and how they've coped with King Hamlet's passing. To be this person he should be or to not be at all are in a way equal at this point of the play. Hamlet has so much on his mind and has endured so much pain and emotions already that the easier choice for him might be to end his life rather than turn into somebody that everybody expects him to be. In this moment for Hamlet he has a very gloomy and questionable tone that leads to a bigger theme between doing what's right or doing what's wrong but no matter which one he chooses they will both have consequences.
Hamlet clearly analyzes taking his own life or staying in his own personal form of hell. He goes into more detail about ending his suffering by saying, "To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks." He is stating that if he chooses to end his life now he will be taken away from this place he once loved that has now taken away the one person he loved the most. His father's death has already cause him enough mentally and emotionally damaging pain, but now with finding out what Claudius is doing to the kingdom and how his mother has dealt with her husband dying has caused him to question the people closet to him. Directly after he says "to die" he says "to sleep" meaning when a person is dead it's like they are sleeping for the rest of their lives but they aren't living. Then he goes onto saying "no more" and "and by a sleep to say we end." By taking his life he would be in a dead sleep but not actually sleeping because a dead person can't sleep so he would end all connection he ever had to life to then end " the heartache and the thousand natural shocks." Hamlet is very emotional at this time because he is saying to end his life he would be gone and end his suffering, but still it wouldn't be morally right for him to commit suicide because of the religious injustice it would do to him.
Throughout the whole soliloquy Hamlet's tone and theme he is trying to get across is pain, suffering and life and death. he continues to restate what life would be like if he ended it. Which he really wouldn't have a life but the after life, and he questions whether killing himself is worth it." But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns." From this phrase in his soliloquy he sort of turns around what he was saying in the beginning about completely ending his life and now he is stating that whatever comes after death might be worse than the life he's living now. "But that the dread of something after death," can be seen in two ways as Hamlet saying that there might be something more after death and he just wants to be gone and done forever or that that whatever after death might not be worth dying for. " The undicover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns," In this phrase "the undicover'd country" is wherever Hamlet would be heading after he kills himself and he says "no traveller returns," meaning that once he commits this sin there is no going back from it so he would have to face the consequences. Hamlet later on in his soliloquy begins to rethink the idea of taking himself out of the world and dealing with his demons on it rather than facing the horror of whatever would be waiting for him.
"Be all my sins remember'd," is the line that Hamlet ends with and it's strange in a way because he gets interrupted by Ophelia and is talking to her at the end. So he doesn't end his soliloquy when she walks in he continues it and includes her in it. He states this, I think because he knows he's a sinner and if he were to kill himself he needs to remembered for all the sins he has committed as well because if he wasn't he would be lying to himself and everybody would be lying to themselves as well. He would be continuing to sin even after he's gone and people would try to paint over the person Hamlet really was, if they didn't remember his sins. Even at the conclusion of his soliloquy he is still emotional and frustrated because he has to face reality and not take the easy way out and die.  Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy gives the audience a more insightful outlook and Hamlet an even more vengeful agenda since he doesn't choose to end his life yet.