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Contradistinction In Hamlet

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Everyone, at one point or another, ponders the idea of their death and how short life is. In Act V, Scene I of Hamlet, Shakespeare notes that even royalty and nobility struggle with the concept of dying and its impact. In the scene, Hamlet encounters two desensitized gravediggers who have handled so many bodies that they elate the gruesome and morbid conditions of their practice. Originally upset with the gravediggers blasphemy, Hamlet grows more absorbed with the bodies beneath the boneyard. When he stumbles upon the decaying cranium of his jokester from adolescence, Hamlet undergoes an epiphany regarding living and dying. The section (lines 185-206) applies contradistinction between the former behavior and ongoing condition of two contrasting …show more content…

Hamlet opens his passage by initially detailing the psychological facet of Yorick before his death. He characterizes his jokester as someone of “infinite jest” and “excellent fancy,” and reveals Yorick to be amusing and animated (5.1.186-187). Shakespeare’s portrayal of Yorick delineates the jokester to be someone who savored and celebrated his life’s peak. Nonetheless, Hamlet resumes his expression by presenting a sequence of open-ended inquiries in regards to the contradistinction between his jester’s deceased skull and formerly living opposite. He facetiously interrogates Yorick, saying, “Where be your gibes now?” (5.9.191). Through his contemptuous questioning, Hamlet wishes to differentiate his old jester’s prior exuberance and glee with his current aphasic and hollow condition. Even more cases of Hamlet’s contradistinction with the current state of Yorick and his former self surface as he further challenges Yorick on the whereabouts of his emblematic “songs”, “gambols”, and “flashes of merriment” (5.1.191.192). All while this is happening, Hamlet is still handling the dislodged cranium of his jester while questioning Yorick. In context with the situation, Hamlet’s interrogation is designed to clarify the contrasting elements of Yorick’s psyche before and after his death. He construes the vacancy of his jester’s cheerful behavior as confirmation that an underlying transformation took place at the time of Yorick’s cessation of

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