“”We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.”

All of Hamlet revolves around death. It is the reason for the revenge, and it takes the lives of all the characters. The article I read in the New York Times mentions how the whole story revolves around death, that it is what causes and ends everything. Hamlet is concerned with mortality as much as revenge.

            This quote really intrigued me when I first read it. The whole concept that we are all just worm-food sort of gives the feeling that our lives do not matter because we will all just be food one day. The article mentions that as well, how Shakespeare is writing everyone’s future, because everyone is going to die one day. But I don’t think this quote means we should just give up, that nothing matters because we will be gone soon enough. That is too depressing a concept to really fully accept as the only truth. It may be true, but there is more to life, even if it isn’t expressed in Hamlet.

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm”. It may be the circle of life, but life isn’t just about surviving long enough to die. Hamlet touches on the purposes of life, mentioning the happier memories of the characters. The play shows that we cannot just exist, as humans we feel and think. No matter how many deaths Hamlet encounters, he does not give up his goal for revenge because it is his love for his dead father that keeps him going. He still feels attachment for a human who is long gone, a body whose only worth was feeding the worms. Even though that may seem to be the only value humans have on earth, food for the worms, it cannot undermine the worth humans place on themselves and each other. Though it angers Hamlet that this is the case, that in the end one’s life and death does not matter, he has to accept it as a truth in the end.