Hamlet's View On Life example essay topic

While mining over abundant quotes, sonnets in a seemingly different language, and soliloquies with enough meter and meaning to write a doctorate, the main thing I'm left wondering is: What exactly was Shakespeare's intent in writing Hamlet? He too, like the readers of today, was a mortal being. He too felt feelings of revenge and purposelessness, and questioned being and capability. As any other human has strived to comprehend at some point in their humble lives, I believe that this is one of Shakespeare's attempts to justify the life given to man, or more fittingly, to comprehend man's purpose in life.

Hamlet is a pessimistic view of life that deems any man's attempt at change, futile. Several times within the play, Hamlet talks of man's unused "capability and god-like reason" (259). He is distressed by "what a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties!" (217). Man has a seemingly infinite range of action and it distresses the hero of this play that he, as well as mankind, does not utilize it. I imparts a guilt within him and he asks, "why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,' / Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means to do't".

(260). I believe this worry rings true more now than ever. Today's society is driven by time-management and efficiency. If you can do something, well we are taught we must do it.

High school students are reared to be exceptional scholars, recruited athletes, multi-talented, upstanding citizens, and somehow volunteer, too. Free time is a waste of time is the message I've been getting, and Hamlet is battling this issue as well. Besides being torn over the discrepancy between his capability and actions of avenging his father's death, Hamlet is also concerned that thinking over the matter too much yield no action and therefore makes him "a coward" (225). He states that by turning something over and over in one's mind and not coming to an immediate action "conscience does make cowards of us all" (228) and that "a thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward" (260).

Does he mean to have action without thought? Is acting, or the act of being, the essence of man? By Hamlet's saying "the readiness is all" (289) I feel that he is saying that by having fulfilled one's potential to act, it can be done without thinking. I wouldn't call that man. I personally, would refer to such a thought process (or lack there of) as a machine.

Is machinery more of a man under Hamlet's terms than man has become? It's unfeasible actually. One can never have practiced to fulfill one's potential if one hasn't ever encountered it. Unlike the machinery of today, we do not come equipped with innate programming on how to function when given correct algorithms or combinations of 1's and 0's. In my opinion, to have decisions and actions be black and white is stripping away all the essence of being man, as opposed to Hamlet's suggestion that it creates man. Beyond the powers of faculties and thought lies the question of fate and the eventual, and inevitable, end.

Most of the characters in Hamlet die. They are left with their goals miraculously carried out, but their lives a waste. Hamlet reflects that "Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, /Might stop a hole to keep the wind away". (280). This statement and Hamlet's tone throughout question whether life itself is at all worth the fuss if we all end up dead in the ground anyway. Hamlet feels that change, as well as thought, is futile, "Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

Let be". (289). Akin to 'go with the flow', "let be" is a slacker of a statement that portrays the utter laziness of Hamlet whole philosophy. Thought isn't worth the time if you can act without thinking, man is a waste because he can't live up to his potential, and what is, is, so leave it. And although "There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow" (289) has a hint of optimism in which some good will come of bad, it still reeks of the same destined fate that is unchangeable by man. Should we accept the fall of the sparrow because there's providence?

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and every closed door opens a another... but one has to wonder at what point the good stops shadowing the bad and you have to go find the good for yourself. Overall, I feel that Hamlet's view on life is depressing, incomprehensibly macho, and not at all one of a hero. Thought is the essence of a man, a fully reached potential would leave no room for growth (ever), and in no way does one have to accept what has been laid out for them on the table. "To be, or not to be" is not the only question.