To Be or Not To Be

“To be or not to be – that is [definitely] the question.” The idea of suicide is an important theme in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Hamlet says several times that he wishes to kill himself, and Ophelia's death has been interpreted as suicidal by many critics (and, indeed, by one of her own gravediggers). With particular attention to Hamlet's two important statements about suicide (the “O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt” soliloquy in …

…comes after life. Hamlet’s beliefs are backed up when he sees his father’s ghost. The ghost has not passed on, but is stuck in Purgatory. King Hamlet, is in between because he is trying to get revenge on his murderer, through Hamlet. Even now, in present day, a lot of people don’t succeed in killing themselves because the human being will all have that doubt in their mind about paradise after death.