One of the two certainties in Life is death

One of the two certainties in Life is death, and it’s ultimately the most final of the two. Death is the predominant theme in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Because of this exposure to death, Hamlet gains an adolescent fascination of it by the end of the play. Hamlet’s depression and madness enables him to cope with death, to become violent and to even kill. Throughout the whole of the play, Hamlet views death differently. From his dour and gloomy brooding at the beginning, to his intriguing madness and desirability about death in the middle to the comfortable, cold killer in the end.

Hamlet’s depression is quite apparent in the beginning of the play. The people closest to him, his mother and stepfather, make notice of this by mentioning “How is that the clouds still hang on you”(1, II, 66) “Do not forever with thy vailed lids/ Thou knowest ‘tis common. All that lives must die.”(1, II, 70-72).

In the scenes following what happened in the battlements, Hamlet’s situation causes him to think more about death. He beings to think about the ghastly, supernatural revelation told to him by the ghostly apparition of his father. He has now become very depressed because of what he has agreed to do, kill Claudius. It is almost as if a bit of Hamlet is dying with each passing moment. In Act 2, Scene II Lines 301-319 Hamlet announces his plea to the universe, saying that he’s fed up with everything around him.

After the murder of Polonius, Hamlet is much more comfortable with death than he’s ever been before. His madness has reached him so much that he doesn’t feel for anyone anymore. When the King confronts Hamlet about the location of Polonius, he simply states “at supper” (4, III, 17) and begins to rave about being eaten by worms. Hamlet points out that everybody ends up dead in the end. At the beginning of Act 5, Hamlet’s conversation with the Gravedigger shows how lightly he views death. The digger and his partner make jokes about the sturdiest builder of all, and then Hamlet joins in and then they casually begin to wisecrack about death. Hamlet actually picks up a thrown human skull from one of the graves and stares at it in amazement. This is a moment of epiphany for him, he is defiantly staring death right in the face.

In the end, Hamlet has gone through a horrible metamorphosis caused by his madness and depression. He began as a soft and brooding young man and became a stern and hardened man.  

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