Hamlet
Prompt #16 · Hamlet
Prompt Type: Character Arc
Trace Hamlet's shifting attitudes toward death throughout the play, from his early wish for self-slaughter through his philosophical meditation on suicide to his final acceptance that 'there's a divinity that shapes our ends.' Analyze how this evolution reflects the play's broader exploration of mortality and providence. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“O that this too too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! / Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d / His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God! O God!”
Act I, Scene 2
Argument
This quote represents Hamlet's early baseline attitude toward death—a desperate wish for self-annihilation constrained only by religious prohibition. The metaphor of flesh melting into dew and the alliteration of 'O God! O God!' convey his anguished desire for escape through death, establishing the suicidal despair from which his arc begins.
Quote 2
“To die, to sleep. / To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.”
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
This quote marks a crucial turning point where Hamlet shifts from emotional death-wish to philosophical meditation on suicide. The extended metaphor of death as sleep and the famous phrase 'there's the rub' demonstrate his intellectual paralysis—he now contemplates death analytically rather than emotionally, questioning what lies beyond mortality rather than simply craving oblivion.
Quote 3
“Not a whit, we defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.”
Act V, Scene 2
Argument
This quote represents Hamlet's final state of acceptance and spiritual resolution regarding death. The direct invocation of 'special providence' and the anaphoric structure of 'If it be now... if it be not to come... if it be not now' demonstrate his evolved belief in divine control over mortality, replacing his earlier despair and philosophical doubt with calm submission to fate's timing.
Quote 4
“The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns, puzzles the will, / And makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of?”
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
This quote deepens Hamlet's philosophical turning point by introducing the metaphor of death as 'the undiscover'd country' from which no traveler returns. The spatial imagery of an unknown realm and the verb 'puzzles' demonstrate how intellectual uncertainty about the afterlife paralyzes his will to act, bridging his early emotional despair with his later acceptance of divine providence.
Quote 5
“Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service,—two dishes, but to one table. That's the end.”
Act IV, Scene 3
Argument
This quote represents a middle stage where Hamlet contemplates death with dark, leveling humor rather than despair or acceptance. The grotesque imagery of 'politic worms' as 'emperor for diet' and the metaphor equating 'fat king and lean beggar' as 'two dishes, but to one table' show his evolving view of mortality as the great equalizer, moving beyond suicidal anguish toward a more detached, philosophical understanding of death's universality.