To Be or Not To Be? An Existential Question

With his utterance of "to be or not to be," Hamlet voices the single most important question of human existence, the question that all of existentialism is built upon and the question that every human, regardless of race or religious affiliation, must ask themselves at least once. The question of existence, particularly its purpose, lies at the base of our lives, and is considered by some to be the motivation behind human institutions and petty strife. Hamlet's approach being is rather secular and open-minded, as he does not consider God as a motivation to prolong one's life. In fact, he believes the sole reason for man to "bear the whips and scorns of time" is to delay the death that man knows nothing of. Yet, it is obvious that this finitude deeply disturbs him, regardless of what is to come after the death, because of the implications death has for the actions of the living. He says that in light of death, "enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action," implying that action becomes difficult to justify in the absence of meaning that is caused by death. Our hero is still left with the question of how he should act, and more importantly, why he should act. As I mentioned in my last blog post, Hamlet has already been confronted by these questions, and has since sought some physical meaning in the reaction of Claudius in order to justify his revenge. While I feel that physical meaning has answered for Hamlet the question of why he can act, the "to be or not to be" soliloquy relates that the Prince has still not answered why he should act. An answer to this question is the ultimate purpose of my reading of the play through this lens, but the inconclusive way in which Hamlet ends the soliloquy indicates that he has not found an answer to this question himself.