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Submitted by oppapers on February 24, 2002
Category: Book Reports
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Shakespeare was a man ahead of his time. He was a man who had an ability to
portray the inner workings of humanity. Throughout his masterful works he was able to
peer into the human psyche and capture emotions like no other writer has been able to do.
He filled every one of his plays, most notably Hamlet, with eternal truths concerning
human emotions. Shakespeare develops the paradox of man and contradictions of
humanity with imagery, ironic siloques, and philosophical rants by Hamlet and Claudius.
No one has ever returned from the dead. Nobody knows exactly what life after
death is like. This is the thesis of Hamlet's first paradox. The saying that "grass is always
greener on the other side of the fence" does not hold true when dealing with human life.
Life is a struggling, so why do we endure it? Hamlet reminds us that " . . . in that sleep of
death what dreams may come,/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/ Must give us
pause" (III.i.67-69). The reason that people do not give up their lives is because they do
not know what it is to become of them after they die. Man is trapped in life by the enigma
of death---the unknowns. He generally wishes to give his life up for something better; he
cannot because there is no knowing whether death is a better alternative or not. Even
though a better life is promised to us after death, one cannot get ot that place when taking
one's own life.
Shakespeare notes that the Scriptures disapprove of suicide. This is another reason
that men do not take their live. Hamlet wishes, "that the Everlasting that had not fixed/
His cannon gainst self-slaughter" (I.ii.131-132) after finding out that his father was killed
by his uncle. This passage strikes less loudly against the soul of humanity now than it did
when Hamlet was written. Poepl were incredibly religious in Shakespeare's...
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