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Hamlet's Fear Of Death

1410 Words6 Pages

To Fear, or Not to Fear, Death
“To be, or not to be, that is the question” (Shakespeare 53). This is one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, where Hamlet questions whether he should live or die—to kill himself or not. Yet, Hamlet answers this question himself: he cannot commit suicide because of “the dread of something after death” (Shakespeare 53). According to many religions, killing oneself is a sin, a one-way ticket to a torturous, fiery afterlife. Using this belief, Hamlet appears to be concerned about the fear of death, a common matter that people are anxious about. However, what exactly is the fear of death? What causes it, and what does it cause? Also, is there a solution for it? To answer these questions, it’s important to know first …show more content…

Strangely enough, he didn’t feel a single touch of fear in either experience, but when he had to go under general anaesthetic after the accident, he felt it. Chappell concluded that the fear came from the “animal aversion to being knocked out,” and the “dread of losing control over [his] own consciousness” (Chappell 63). He said that “wanting to remain conscious, and wanting to have some control over what happens to you – these are perfectly reasonable wants, and when their satisfaction is radically threatened, they generate perfectly reasonable fears” (Chappell 64). Hence, the fear of death is the fear of losing control of one’s own body, and the fear of losing this control can be connected to my previous conclusions: having a complete end to control, having no control of divine judgement, and having no control as to when or how death will occur. Finally knowing what the fear of death is, we can now discover its causes. Actually, throughout trying to determine the fear of death, we’ve already found its causes along the way; they are found in the definition itself. To have the fear of death, one must be afraid of the end of bodily control. One must feel danger or pain because fears are caused by being afraid of harm that obstructs survival—in this case, the end of survival itself. In all, it is a person’s scared and grotesque mind that causes him to have the fear of death. Consequently, the effects are also due to an individual’s own

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