Death And Corruption In Hamlet Essay -- Corruption in Hamlet

Harold Blume said it best when he said, Hamlet is terminations ambassador to us. Throughout Hamlet, we have the images of death, decay, rottenness, and corruption touch upon us. The imagery corresponds with the plot of the play perfectly, all 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 cold (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 in force(p) outdoor(a) that we have a supernatural theme, as well as a theme of death. In act 1 scene 2 we deject the impression that King Hamlet has been gone 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 exhort up. Good Hamlet, cast thy nightly colour off,A nd let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.Do not for ever with thy vailed lids research for thy noble founding father in the dustThou knowst tis common all that lives must die,Passing through nature to eternity.(1.2.68-73)Hamlet does not feel that it is clock time for him to shed his wretchedness just yet. The impression given is that it has been a long time scince the death of the old king and only Hamlet still clings to his memories and grief. after(prenominal) everyone leaves, however, we find out all the sordid details about the new King and Hamlets mother. Hamlet begins the rottenness imagery right a government agency when he compares the world to an unweeded garden that grows to inspectd 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 fa ct that his mother could be so 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, capacity they not stop a beer-barrel?Imperious Caesar, dead and turnd to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind away(5.1.192-7)Hamlet is coming to price with his own mortality and realizing the true physical 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 true(p) to go about life with only your o wn interests in mind. He saw 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.