Hamlet was destined to be damned the moment he was asked to avenge his father, it was his predestined fate. However, Hamlet hesitates when confronted about avenging his father’s death knowing the consequences of killing a King. Throughout the play, Hamlet fluctuates between avenging his father or walking away. Ultimately, Hamlet’s decisions led to his death and the death of others in the play. At the end of Hamlet, was Hamlet’s death predestined or caused by his own free will? At what point is Hamlet responsible for the things that happen to him and when fate step in?
I.iii.20-21
“His greatness weighed, his will is not his own
For he himself is subject to his birth.”
When Ophelia confronts her father, Polonius, about Hamlet’s love towards
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free will. Although not directly stated in the quote, the fate of Ophelia’s death is the Christian burial because she had no control over it and it was bound to happen anyway. As for her willfulness to seek her own salvation, seeing as suicide is a sin, Ophelia’s ghost is the deciding factor on where she will end up going. In this way, as with Hamlet, fate is presented at the beginning and is used to lead up to the ending where free will overpowers the beliefs of …show more content…
If she had gone to the water to drown, it would have been suicide. However, if the water had come to drown her, it would have been an accidental, Christian death. What is quoted is exactly what it means. If a man goes into the waters and drowns himself, it is his own free will to do such a thing. If the water comes to him and he cannot stop it, it is fate that has caused him to drown. The image of Ophelia suicidally “going to the water” compliments Hamlet’s soliloquy of “to be or not to be.” Suicide and dying is a large part of what makes Hamlet a tragedy and is seen multiple times in the play foreshadowing his actual death at the