Yorick's View Of Death In Hamlet

991 Words4 Pages
As human beings, there are certain things that remain beyond our direct control. Death, apart from birth, is one of those instances where humans are left with no control over such random, spontaneous events. Perhaps its ineluctability, the fact that we cannot undo a death, or ever regain that person, or replay the day of the death to try to change it, is what causes feelings of grief and sadness in human beings. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet begins to ponder and consider the meaning of life in the wake of his father’s death. He ponders on the spiritual aftermath of death through the ghost, and on the physical components of it as well, where Yorick’s skull creates a shift in Hamlet’s perspective that allows him to take action. It is this change in perspective that allows the reader to see the overarching theme of the piece: the worth of life and the enigma of death. As the play begins to unfold, it is apparent that…show more content…
Although Hamlet’s family is a royal family separated from much of the horror of medieval peasant life, they still had to face the very fact of mortality, and how to cope with it. For Gertrude, for example, her immediate reaction to the death of her husband was to fill the void created by his absence by marrying again, with a new king in order for things to continue the way they were. Her response to the death is that, “…Thou know’st ’tis common. All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.” (1.2 72-73) This does not mean that she does not feel the pain of the death; rather, that she was not internally prepared to live a life with the hole opened by old Hamlet’s death if she didn’t have to. Instead, she urges Hamlet to, “… Cast thy nighted color off” (1.2 68), and start acting happy about the new marriage and
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