hamlet essay

The future is dictated by the living. Following that perspective, life must have a certain value tagged to it because it is not infinite and death will come inevitably. Every goal worked for and everything earned in life is lost in death because of the ignorance people express towards human life.

In the first scene of act of five two, clowns debate over what occupation is build the strongest. The choices are a mason, shipwrights, and carpenter. Clown one asks which is build strongest and clown two replies, “The gallows-maker, for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.”  Clown two asks clown one the same question and he replies, “Say “a grave-maker,” the houses he makes last till doomsday.” The responses symbolize the little value life holds. Life is not worth living because we will all die at one point or another. The grave and gallows makers will never be unemployed because death is never ending.  Hamlet arrives and begins to dig up skulls that each holds a different value. He finds the skull of a politician that “had a tongue in it, and could sing once.” The politician impacted society through his words but in death his words hold no value and Hamlet describes him by saying,  “This might be the head of a politician, which this ass now reaches over one that would go around God, might it not”?  

Everything earned in life is lost in death so what is the point of living if everything you love will be lost? Hamlet feels that way throughout the entire play. If he cannot have his revenge what is the point of pressing forward? Hamlet has no concept on how valuable life is. His ignorance leads to the selfish belief that he has the right to take a priceless life, he portrays that when he says, “Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon—
He that hath kill'd my king, and whored my mother;
Popp'd in between the election and my hopes;(70)
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage—is't not perfect conscience
To quit him with this arm? And is't not to be damn'd
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?”

            Hamlet questions himself in whether or not he has the right to take a life. He deeply believes that if the King’s life must be taken it should be by his hand only. Does anyone have the absolute right to pass judgment and take a life? In his rage Hamlet fights with that conflict within himself throughout the entire play. Therefore, Hamlet’s hesitation and half hearted beliefs is a product of his ignorance towards the value of life.