"To Be or Not to Be" - Analysis of Hamlet's famous quote
...tion that the whole monologue deals with. The question of staying alive and bearing all the troubles of life, or rather choosing to die and end these pains. These are the matters that trouble young Hamlet. He considers the advantages and disadvantages of human existance and gives several reasons for either decision. These are the questions that bother him and reasons of certain decisions: Is it nobler (or better) to stay alive and suffer all the pains and problems that life can (and eventually shall) bring, or by opposing them end them? – By this he is questioning whether it is right to judge person´s nobility by the fact that he chose to end his life. Does this decisin make an evil (unreligious) person of someone? Is the one who chooses to suffer life´s pain a better person? In the times when “Hamlet” was written it was considered that the one who ends his/her life by his/her own hand is a mad and unreligious man (and therefore is unworthy of having a proper funeral). But on the other hand, is not the bearing of all life´s whips and scorns (such as despised love, law´s delay, opressors wrong, …) the sign of madness? For after suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, ending the heart-ache by dying is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But when it comes to the decision to end the injustice and heart-ache, eventually one is incapable of ending it. Because the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from where no traveller returns, scares us, and makes us rather bear all those ills. And this incapability, the weakness of our conscience, makes cowards of all of us. And so eventually we loose action. The introductory question of the s...