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Throughout the play, Hamlet ponders the meaning of life for his seems to be so tragic. He insinuates that if God had not made suicide a sin, he would likely commit it. Such a statement and attitude suggested that Hamlet was suffering with a transition between world-views (his personal perspective as to how the world works). This transition is at the heart of Hamlet’s development, and is the major contributing factor to the play’s significance.

At the beginning of the play, Hamlet appears to have reassigned his life with no value as he intrepidly follows a ghost claiming to be the spirit of his father into a darkened forest alone, despite the probability that this ghost is in fact a malevolent demon who wishes Hamlet harm. Throughout this entire period of the play, Hamlet expresses complete despair; his lamentation evolves into a rash conclusion that life has no meaning. The existence of this outlook is reinforced during his visit to the graveyard where he realizes that the once great Caesar and Alexander the Great are, materially, of no more use than a collection of dirt or clay.

Despite the seemingly irrevocable despair brought on with this realization, Hamlet finds solace in the notion although one’s material self is useless after death, the story of their life can pervade time through the murmurs of the progeny. This is the stabilizing factor in Hamlet’s despair, one which leads him to the final acceptance of a religious, deterministic world view which he embodies in the idea that “if [the fall/death of a sparrow] be not now, yet it will come”. He follows by stating that all one can do in life is prepare for the events that they will experience under the will of God; that “the readiness is all”.

It is with this statement that Hamlet openly accepts any fate that may befall him, and it is this acceptance that explains his serenity with his death and the insistence that Horatio live to tell his tale.