Marxist View Of Death In Hamlet

Xavier Castro
Mrs. Weyant
English 12 CP
January 30, 2015
Hamlet
No matter whom you are in the world or how great you were in your lifetime there is one thing that is inevitable. That is that you day your life will end. Royalty, peasants, saints and sinners, all have the same ending. So it is safe to say that death is something that everyone is equal in. Whether ‘tis noble or not, death is the great equalizer. In the play Hamlet, it doesn’t, matter what social class characters were in, the all are equal in value at death. This view of death as a common equality is often compared to the ideas of Marxism. This idea will be inherited by Prince Hamlet who started off the play with different views on death. The characters in Hamlet all have different …show more content…
At first he starts to question the owner of the skull that the gravedigger tossed up. During his speech Hamlet is trying to make a connection with the skull but he can’t because that person is dead. He can only guess on the occupation that this skull’s owner had. This is where he starts opening up to the idea that death brings us all to a level playing field. Whether this skull hand acres of land and riches his skull still ended up in the same grave as these other skulls. Whatever life he had didn’t meant anything because look where he ended. Hamlet ultimately realizes that life is …show more content…
Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. (5.1.178)
Once the skull of Yorick was in his hand, Hamlet has a realization on death. He sees that he can’t reflect on Yorick’s life anymore. That man he once knew is gone. Now what used to be Yorick is just dirt and bones. Useless. Roland Mushat Frye writes about when Hamlet holds Yoricks skull in Ladies, Gentleman, and Skulls: Hamlet and the Iconographic Importance. Frye states:
But if we re-establish the sixteenth-century Shakespeare’s imagination worked, we see Hamlet here thinking through the ultimate realities of death to arrive at what becomes, for him as it had for others, a new sanity even serenity.
Fry says that when Hamlet finally is holding the skull in his hand that he finally realizes the “realities of death.” Yorick’s skull finally makes Hamlet understand that everyone is equal at death because he see that the once, the funny and silly Yorick, doesn’t resemble him at all anymore. Fry also states that after this Hamlet finally has peace of mind. Not that Yorick is dead but to the fact that everyone will truly be equal in time. As he continues to analyze the skull, he thinks to himself of all the great men of history. He then talks about Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar,

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