Death And Corruption In Hamlet Essay -- Corruption in Hamlet

Harold Blume said it best when he said, Hamlet is deaths ambassador to us. Through erupt Hamlet, we switch the images of death, decay, rottenness, and corruption pressed upon us. The imagery corresponds with the plot of the play perfectly, solely culminating with the gravedigger scene. The corruption images illuminate the actions of the people in Claudius court, beginning with Claudius own actions.The beginning of the play lets us know that it is winter with Fransiscos statement that it is bitter refrigerated (1.1.6) This may be an allusion to death in itself things are dead in winter. The guards speak of the ghost and we know right away that we have a witching(prenominal) theme, as well as a theme of death. In act 1 scene 2 we get the judgment that King Hamlet has been done for(p) for a while. Gertrude is already re-married and is happily out of mourning clothes. Gertrude even tells Hamlet, who is in full black mourning clothes, to cheer up. Good Hamlet, cast thy nightly tin t off,And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.Do not for ever with thy vailed lidsSeek for thy noble father in the constellateThou knowst tis common all that lives must die,Passing through nature to eternity.(1.2.68-73)Hamlet does not feel that it is time for him to shed his wretchedness except yet. The impression given is that it has been a long time scince the death of the old king and unless Hamlet still clings to his memories and grief. After everyone leaves, however, we find out all the marked-up details about the new King and Hamlets cause. Hamlet begins the rottenness imagery right away when he compares the world to an unweeded garden that grows to root things rank and gross in nature posses it merely. (1.2.135-6) He is utterly despondent and blames his mother and uncle for not feeling the way he does. He is the one who points out that the old King, his father, has not been dead long at all only a month in fact. He rails over the fact that his mother could be s o fickle, marrying again so soon. The affront is ground even more sharply into his frail sensibilities when she marries his fathers brother, his uncle. The fact that the two of them could be so jolly so soon after the death of his father just staggers him. He predicts t... ...ferences to death are true references and not just imagery. Alexander died, Alexander was buried,Alexander returneth into dust the dust is earth ofearth we make loam and why of that loam, whereto hewas converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? irresponsible Caesar, dead and turnd to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind away(5.1.192-7)Hamlet is coming to terms with his own mortality and realizing the true somatogenetic destiny. He finds irony in the fact that a king could become a meal for a peasant, a seal for a beer-barrel, or a patch to keep wind out of a dwelling. Hamlet shows us that life is to be viewed without prejudice. It does no good to go about life with only your own interests in mind. He sa w the rottenness and corruption that comes of that and it broke him. He loved his father and to see him so maligned was heartbreaking, especially coming from those who should have loved him most. That revelation shattered Hamlets ideal view of the world.