Hamlet was struck with much grief and pain in his life, so one could expect that the meaning of life from his point of view is not exactly a positive one. Hamlet's encounter with the ghost of his father has started him thinking about death. In this famous soliloquy he wonders about what death is actually like. Is it nothing but sleep? That sounds all right because we go to sleep every night. But is there something after death? We won't find that out until we die ourselves and travel to "the undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns." Throughout the play, Hamlet endured and suffered much, and he often questioned the purpose of his life. Although, he thought about it, we know that in the end he did not kill himself to escape the suffering. So something important must have been tethering to him his doleful life. it was his quest for justice and peace. Hamlet lived on to avenge his father. Up until his death, nothing else mattered. Throughout the story, Hamlet was obsessed with meaning in his life or the lack thereof. He struggled with questions more on the nature of death rather than life. It was apparent that even with revenge as motivation, he was still pondering ending his life. But it is important to note that he feared the afterlife and it's uncertainty. "To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There’s the respect. That makes calamity of so long life." Hamlet says how fear of the unknown is the determining factor in his reason to stay alive. Death obviously ends the troubles of life but may have troubles of its own -- which he makes apparent in his soliloquy. This M.O.L. kind of goes starkly against the meaning of life being happiness. He is basically saying that there is trouble wherever you go -- whether you are alive or dead.
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