Suicide In Hamlet

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Suicide In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, suicide is an important and continuous theme throughout the play. Hamlet is the main character who contemplates the thought of suicide many different times throughout the play, since the murder of his father. Hamlet weighs the advantages of leaving his miserable life with the living, for possibly a better but unknown life with the dead “ He wishes the his living flesh would melt into nothingness”(Act 1,Scene 2). Hamlet seriously contemplates suicide, but decides against it, mainly because it is a mortal sin against God. Hamlet continues to say that most of humanity would commit suicide and escape the hardships of life, but do not because they are unsure of what awaits them in the after life. Hamlet throughout the play is continually tormented by his fathers death and his inability to get revenge against Claudius and on several occasions seriously considers suicide, but always ends up backing out because it is a sin forbidden by God. We first see Hamlet contemplate suicide after Claudius and Getrude ask him to stay in Denmark, rather than return to Wittenburg to resume his studies against his wishes. In Hamlet's first soliloquy, Hamlet clearly wants to commit suicide, and wishes that his, “solid flesh would melt,/Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” (I. ii. 133-134). Hamlet wishes that his body would melt away so he would not have to see Claudius and Getrude together again, and pretend as though all is well. Hamlet explains to us that he does want to die, but he says he can not because, “the Everlasting had not fix'd/His canon against self slaughter!” (I.ii. 134-135). If God had not ruled suicide a mortal sin, Hamlet would have commited suicide at once for what he was going through. Opehlia, on the other hand in Act 4, is driven mad by her father's murder and by Hamlet's betrayal and
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