Death. It usually plays a side role in our busy and complex lives, but when it hits you personally, things are forever changed. Death leaves behind a trail of sorrow, pain, and misery. Most people have a natural and healthy fear of death, but for some it is an obsession that fills their mind until there is nothing else they can think about. This is the case in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet fills his mind with thoughts of revenge and suicide, hoping to right what is wrong and deliver justice to evildoers. Every minute of every hour of everyday is spent thinking about death and Hamlet's obsession with death effects everyone in the play
             Polonius was the first to feel the wrath of Hamlet's obsession with death. Hamlet slays Polonius thinking that it was Claudius, but when he lifts the curtain to reveal Polonius, all he says is, "Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!" (Act III. Scene IV: line 32). Hamlet doesn't care that he has just killed an innocent man, in his own head Hamlet justifies it by making Polonius sound like he deserved to die for intruding. As a result of Hamlet killing Polonius, Ophelia went into a state of insanity. With Laertes gone and her father dead, she has no one to depend on. Her only hope was Hamlet's love for her, but that turned out to be unfruitful. Ophelia drowns herself in the river because she feels that there's nothing else she can live for, everyone in her life is gone. With the news that Hamlet has killed his father and Ophelia committing suicide, Laertes vows to even the score and kill Hamlet. Laertes challenges Hamlet to a sword fight, but in the end it is Laertes who is slain by his own sword. Hamlet has no fear of death anymore, all her cares about is balancing the table and getting his revenge on Claudius. Polonius, Ophelia, and Laertes were all effected by Hamlet's obsession with death, which ended each of their lives.
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