Hamlet's soliloquy "To be or not to be

Hamlet's Soliloquy is touted as one of the most telling of all his rants. In this one passage he discusses the reason people choose to live or die. In short men choose to live because they fear the unknown of death. This passage is a larger answer to Hamlet's own question of why he has chosen to this point to act in life, to avenge his father's death rather than simply to let himself die or be killed as his father was. From this point forward in the work, Hamlet lives without fear of death, Ophelia has shown him that fear is only necessary when one makes no peace with the calamity of his life. Hamlet vows to make his revenge and let his life be taken in the process if it will. If the soft, fair Ophelia can choose death over life to end her worldly calamity, the scorn of his love given and then taken away, than he must no longer live in fear of death, he must avenge himself and his father so that all but the wicked can sleep the peaceful sleep of death.

The language of the passage is a clear indication that Hamlet is at a decision point. He has taken from his life the message that all is calamity, especially in worldly intrigue and that a decision must now be made to live or die, avenged or un-avenged. His fear is built on, the fear of the unknown as well as the fear of living in a world that continues to beat him down with, "whips and scorns of time, / the oppressor's wrong, the proud mans contumely, / the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, / the insolence of office and the spurns / That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make..." The language is wavering, as like all other points in the work, he discusses with himself the nature of his decision. He asks, what is right, to seek out an end to his worldly depravity before or after he has avenged his father or to simply keep living in such calamity, because he is afraid of death? Yet, his resolve is set when he says, "And thus conscience does make cowards of us all; / and thus the native hue of resolution / I sicklied over with the pale crust of thought, / and enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry, / and lose the name of action." Hamlet seeks to stop thinking and to start doing, and in his last apology to Ophelia, for using her in his plot and precipitating her own death he tells her, "-Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in they orisons / Be all my sins remember'd." He gives Ophelia the right to hold him responsible for his act of betrayal towards her.

Hamlet vows not to fear death but to take within his own hands the responsibility to avenge himself and his father Hamlet, through his interactions with his betrayed father, the ghost, has established that there is a life after death. He knows it to bring the individual back to a life that betrayed them. Hamlet's own fear of death is based upon the assumption that if he, as his father dies un-avenged he will be doomed not to "a sleep to say we end / the heartache and the thousand natural shocks, / That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation / Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep: perchance to dream:" He is doomed to a sleep that is plagued by fear and reprisal, to seek out revenge for worldly actions against him. Hamlet knows that if he were to die today he would likely be doomed to walk the halls, as his father dreaming of the day that he was killed and the betrayal that ended his life, "ay there's the rub; / for in that sleep of death what dreams may come." Hamlet knows that reaching out to seek the sleep and dream of death he would be dooming himself to an eternal seeking of revenge, not unlike that of his father who reached out to him in death to tell his story of betrayal and exact revenge upon the wife (mother) and brother.

The soliloquy reveals that Hamlet is mortal, that he is afraid of the un-avenged death and that he is now willing to let himself die in an act of avenging his father. He is also clearly willing to take the eternal scorn that will likely be waged against him in life and death with regard to the wrong he did to the fair Ophelia. In this passage he is more honest with his feelings about Ophelia than at almost any other time in the work. He has previously lamented that the fair Ophelia has been used, as he has to try to cover the story of his father's death, by allowing those who follow to live on without revenge. He takes responsibility for his actions against her, knowing that he and others have caused her death and that this was only one of the possibilities of her place in the intrigue of the situation. The passage reveals that Hamlet is done being afraid of death, of the fearful dreams of eternity, he is willing to take actions that will hasten his won death walk, hoping to do so in such a way that what he laments is his own action towards the fair Ophelia, rather than the actions of others toward him and his father. Hamlet reveals that he, like Ophelia has been a pawn in the game of others and that if he can exact revenge than he can go on to live in eternity with the remembered sins against Ophelia.