The Analysis and comparison of Hamlet and "Let me Die in my Footsteps"
             In Shakespeare's Hamlet, at one point in the play Hamlet contemplates suicide. This is because he has talked to a ghost that was supposedly his father and he told him that Claudius, now King, had murdered him and that he wants Hamlet to get vengeance for him. Hamlet also is upset with his mother because she has married his uncle in only one month's time after King Hamlet's death.
             Hamlet asks the question "To be or not to be--that is the question." (Shakespeare 64) Hamlet is questioning whether to commit suicide. "Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...or to take arm against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them."(64) Hamlet is asking whether it is better to suffer all of the troubles of life, the "slings and arrows", or is it better to just die and not have to deal with the difficulties of life.
             "To die, to sleep no more! And by sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to - tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."(64) Hamlet is explaining when he says sleep he really means to die or to take his own life, and to end all of the problems and shocks that humans have. "[T]is a consummation devoutly to be wished" (64), meaning he wishes that he could do this, that he could commit suicide and end all his heartache.
             "To die, to sleep...to sleep...perchance to dream! Ay, there's the rub! For in that 'sleep of death' what dreams may come - when we have shuffled off this mortal coil - must give us pause."(64) In this quote, Hamlet begins to explain why people do not commit suicide, and now he is telling us the reason that people "pause" when they think of killing themselves. The fear of the afterlife, what happens after death, especially a...