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Rhetorical Analysis Of Hamlet's Soliloquy

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Your father has just passed away and your best friend is off to college. To make matters worse your mother remarries extremely fast to your uncle. In the midst of all this, you find yourself lost and and confused. Just like Hamlet was in his soliloquy to be or not to be. Hamlet’s father's ghost appears and ask to avenge his death. Hamlet is torn between killing his uncle or not because it is a sin. Dealing with all this, Hamlet contemplates suicide. Hamlet's choice of diction reveals his tone of uncertainty toward life and death. Hamlet begins with “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”(III.i). The adjective outrageous can sometimes be used to show depth in the connotations of fortune, also of being more than needed. Hamlet feels as if everything is against him no matter what he chooses to do. This goes even more into it by the metaphor “sea of troubles” which compares his problems with the sea and its power. Hamlet's problems are even more revealed by “thousand natural shocks that flesh on heir to”. This is referring to his mother's shocking marriage with Claudius that upset Hamlet, but also the effects of being hurt and aging. Hamlet calls life a “mortal coil” and “calamity”.The choice of words he uses from the start help the readers get a feel of what he is preaching. Each of these examples shows Hamlet’s view on the world, and him trying …show more content…

He starts of using diction that is heavy to show why it is easier for him to choose death, only thinking of himself. He then compares death and sleep to share why it is easier to kill himself. “Thus conscience makes cowards of us all”. This alliteration emphasis Hamlets disappointment in himself. All of this goes together to create vivid diction that leads readers into Hamlet's mind. As the soliloquy ends, Hamlet realizes there is a line that needs to be crossed for him being and not being. This is why death bothers him

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The voice fluctuations go from more intense at some points to soft at others and continue to go back and forth throughout the speech, the intense voice helps to emphasize the tone and different points being made throughout the speech, while the softer tone also helps to emphasis the points being made in the speech but in more of a way in which Hamlet is just now realizing this. Overall the surrounding of Tennet, the tone of the speech is spoken with, and the volume and intensity of Tennet’s voice all help to add clarity to the overall meaning of the speech and give the audience a clear representation of how the speech is intended to be

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When applied correctly, soliloquies successfully allow the reader to experience characters in their most vulnerable state: within their own minds. Hamlet is no exception to this principle, as Shakespeare’s mastery of rhetoric in establishing the main character’s inner conflict provides depth and rawness to his complex character. In this well-known soliloquy, Shakespeare employs logos to acknowledge that death can be both a relief and nightmare due to natural human emotions; accordingly, Hamlet personifies a severe case of teenage depression by simultaneously wishing for an end to suffering yet remaining hesitant to act on his own thoughts due to his fear of the unknown.         Throughout this passage, Hamlet attempts to rationalize ending his life over continuing to endure the painful reality of his existence. The parallelism in this particular soliloquy serves several rhetorical purposes, including the development of an implicit contrast between Hamlet’s mental state and the actual organization of his thoughts.

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His use of the word "fortune" magnifies Hamlet's sorrows about life being misleading and dishonest, as the stressed syllable of "fortune" is composed of a high vowel frequency that conveys happiness and joy. However, Hamlet's "fortune" is the opposite, as it is daunting and frightening. Therefore, the word itself is deceptive. Hamlet then expands on the feeling of avenging a parent's death by saying, "take arms against a sea of troubles," emphasizing his overwhelmed emotional state. The idea of Hamlet being amongst a "sea of troubles" creates an image of him, a young man, drowning in pressure to successfully complete the burden of obtaining revenge for his father's death.

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However, I point this out not to criticize, as much as to ultimately highlight the differing emphases between the two versions as it pertains to who or what Hamlet’s first soliloquy is

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This soliloquy has relations to other soliloquies from the play. When Hamlet becomes a thinker, he calls himself a coward for not taking action. “Even if he depreciates himself sometimes as a coward for not killing Claudius, Hamlet demonstrates his bravery in these two confrontations. ”(De-yan) Just like the soliloquy in Act II, Hamlet beats himself up for not being able to go forth with his actions of killing his uncle, Claudius. “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,”(Act III, Scene 1, Lines 90-92)

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In his soliloquy, he is asking himself whether it is better to live or to die, which he is considering to commit suicide. Also, in the soliloquy, Hamlet states that “Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?” (3.1.84-90). He explains that no one would like to live in an exhausting life, unless they don’t know what is going to happen after they die because they are afraid of what their after life is going to be. Both these quotes prove that the death symbol is always surrounded by Hamlet and he has a hard time to choose between life and

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