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Examples Of Suicide In Hamlet

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Sydni Williams Ms. Free AP Literature/Composition 2 February 2017 Suicide & Self-Annihilation Suicide. This word by definition is the act of deliberately killing oneself. The topic of suicide is as old as time itself, even stemming back to biblical days. Even so, suicide is still being used by thousands across the world to cope with various traumatising situations. One can only imagine the mental anguish that a human being must go through to force themselves to such a length. An example of this extreme mental anguish and contemplation over the act of suicide is found in a soliloquy from Act III, Scene I of Hamlet. In this act, Hamlet’s turbulent and ghoulish sentiments are caused by the appearance of his father’s ghost and his mother’s …show more content…

Throughout the soliloquy the Hamlet uses euphemisms in order to make the concept of death seem less scary and more embraceable. He does this by comparing death to sleep, making it more understandable. While the prince accomplishes this in a few lines he ultimately ends up undoing his intentions by over analyzing his previous thoughts. He substitutes death for sleep and manages to find solace for a brief second until he wonders of what dreams are to come during this “sleep”. He goes a step further in lines 23 and 24, “But that the dread of something after death,/The undiscover’d country from whose bourn”. By using the the word “undiscovered”, there is an immediate feeling of anxiety. We as humans fear the unknown. Shared experiences comfort us and help us to not feel completely alone and untethered from each other. In this situation death is the undiscovered country, the thing that no one has been able to experience and come back to share their story. Hamlet’s temporary relief is gone and once again his pessimism counteracts his primal urge to survive; and together the thoughts battle in his soul. William Shakespeare uses conflict(internal), figures of speech and diction to expound upon Hamlet’s cynical and self conflicted nature. The use of these devices push the plot forward and help readers to visualize and interpret Hamlet’s feelings and his decision

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