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To Be or Not to Be: Analyzing Hamlet's Soliloquy

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The Ultimate Question For my soliloquy I chose Hamlet’s “To be or not be” for me this speaks deeply to me. I also believe this piece speaks specifically to teenagers in this generation. Since many of us deal with that nagging question of why are we here? Is all the pain we endure worth it? Is there going to be a light at the end of the tunnel? This soliloquy obviously does not answer this question, but it makes some good points. In this essay the following points of the soliloquy will be discussed the timing, content, language, and character analysis. The soliloquy appears in the beginning of Act Three with Hamlet being watched by Claudius and Polonius to see what the cause of his insanity is. It is placed perfectly by Shakespeare we know enough about Hamlet’s situation to understand why he would want to die. Who could blame this guy for those kinds of thoughts? His father has died, his uncle has married his mother, and his father’s ghost has told him that his uncle …show more content…

“Or to take arms against a sea of trouble”(3.1.60), this metaphor is to explain how his troubles are like fighting currents of the see. “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns,” (3.1.80-81). He makes this metaphor of comparing death to a travel no one knows about, which is why everyone is terrified of death. People put up with the turmoil life throws at us, because no one knows what death brings. The unknown frightens people more than the known ever would. The entire soliloquy is pessimistic. Hamlet attempts to lighten the mood by comparing death to sleep, “To die-to sleep, no more; and by sleep to say we end”(3.1.61-63). This fails when he then states we do not what dreams may come to, “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come”(3.1.66-67). Overall, this soliloquy brings hope in no such way to the reader or to Hamlet’s

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