I think Socrates and Hamlet agree on Death (I do too)

In The Apology and Hamlet, Socrates and Hamlet both play with death like a knife in their fingers (aware, afraid, confident, asking for blood). The texts both extract from death the necessary motivation for characters and plot. But most importantly in both texts there is light peeping from death's dirty little behind, dissecting its ambiguous, and unmapped nature. For death is unknown, still so, and although nowadays we have seemed to stray from it (especially since god has died) the optimistic path always exists. In the worlds of Plato and Shakespeare, maybe in ignorance or for the love of beautiful ideas, death not only means expiration and despair :( but also freedom!, transcendence!, love (｡♥‿♥｡). So here's what I want to get at: how Socrates and Hamlet actually see death, with all its weird little quirks. I'll poke around in their messy situations first, then sit with the last things they say before dying (let's pretend that's their real final take), and then throw the two side by side.

Socrates on Trial

In the glory of ancient Greece, Socrates is put on trial for impiety and corrupting the youth by Meletus. Socrates enters the trial with smug disdain for the court and politicians. And without feeding them with persuasive putty he attacks the listeners and sticks to his truth. Like a naughty child, Socrates knows that if he played to the emotions of the crowd, used eros to persuade the sail of the ship, he could and can outstep his punishment. Socrates knows exactly where he's standing, laying out the faults and the forms of the judicial system, sizing up his role against theirs. Socrates is the orator and his role is to speak the truth. The judge and the court's role is to listen to him, pores open, and distinguish truth from injustice. Socrates knows this is impossible, but he is always so caught up in the clouds (forms), too righteous to break free. So yeah, no shock, they sentence him to death.

Sleep and Passage

"Let us also think..how great a hope there is it [death] is good"(Plato 40c-40d). Socrate's lays out two possibilities for the outcome of his death: sleep and passage. Sleep is a "state of nothingness", on par with modern views (where maggots eat us whole), simply put it is the loss of consciousness and passing of the soul. This is the view that life is the only life, death is the only death, nothing more nothing less. Socrates believes this is pleasing to consider because it compares to a pleasant dream. Simply I believe he finds it is peaceful, comforting to sleep for eternity. The next perspective is one where after death, Socrates will take a journey to the afterlife. There he will be immortal, bodiless and forever running freely with the activities of his mind. This is the perspective Socrates holds dear to his heart as he believes death will liberate him from his body and project him towards the forms. Socrates describes two possible outcomes, and is pleased with both. One could think he calls on death to be remembered or to stick truth in the face of the oppressor, but this can all be deduced to probable ego. If Socrates is as pious as he claims, as righteous as he stands, then I'll just take these perspectives as true and run with them.

Hamlet in Denmark

In Denmark, Hamlet's uncle has taken the throne of his father's and married his mother soon after the death of his father. Hamlet's father returns in the form of a ghost proclaiming that Hamlet must kill his uncle Claudius in order to save Denmark from sin. Hamlet fakes his insanity, kills a man, discovers what's true, gets captured by pirates, confronts death, and finds his lover, Ophelia, has drowned before he is asked to fence Laertes (brother of Ophelia whose father was killed by Hamlet). In this fencing match Hamlet, Ophelia, Hamlet's mother Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes all die from stabbing and poison. So.. lots of death, lots to say.

I Follow Thee

Hamlet vacillates on his ideas of death throughout the text, going through and fro with care and despite. But like I did with Socrates, I'm gonna treat his last words as the real weight of what he thinks. As Laertes is soon to die and Hamlet has been poisoned, Laertes cries to Hamlet, "Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, Nor thine on me."(Shakespeare 361-363). Hamlet responds, "Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee."(Shakespeare 364). Hamlet responds to Laertes' plea without forgiveness, as he doesn't believe it is his duty to do so. Rather, he asserts, God will forgive us both once we die, I will come with you. So Hamlet's betting that death wipes his sins clean as he slips from purgatory up to heaven. A pleasing thought for a lonely sinner. But hold on, I want to chew on that line a little more, "Heaven make thee free of it". When Hamlet's father asks Hamlet to kill Claudius to save Denmark, he is asking Hamlet to sin to prevent sin. So Hamlet has to sin. He's boxed into this paradox of immorality. This rotates back to forgiveness, Hamlet must sin(!); thus death is the desperate hand for forgiveness. But more on the sense of freedom, this paradox of immorality I believe was the root of his madness and the soil for inaction (The reason for his heartless thoughtfulness). You can feel it all over the play, Hamlet is wrecked by this paradox, stuck in "a prison of Denmark" like he says (Shakespeare 2.2.26). So in another sense death was the freedom from this prison, from the despair and anguish of being a tortured human, purely unable to become god. In certain ways, this is existential, but only in the truest pessimistic sense, almost cowardly (but this is Hamlet, no?). So when you weigh the sane and insane bits of him together, Hamlet's take on death lands both religious and existential. Freeing him from sin and the necessity to sin. This view lacks the pride and hopefulness that Socrates held, death is more or less relieving to Hamlet like alcohol to a wound.

Two Blurry Rooms

Actually, I think you can sort the views of Hamlet and Socrates into two blurry rooms. The passing to immortality for Socrates and the forgiveness of Hamlet's sins can be categorized into a view of faith, religion and afterlife. My roommate once said said the afterlife was a product of the fear of the unknown. I agree, I'd also say it reeks of Gilgamesh's motives. Yet how sad neither of us believe there is life after death. The views of Socrates' sleep and Hamlet's freedom from anguish can be shoed into a view of non-existence, oblivion, existentialist. Although, it is important to say Hamlet does truly believe in Heaven; his view of death darkens throughout the play but he never speaks of afterlife's inexistence. These two piles of ideas knock against each other a lot, but the philosophers who hold them, unite them into a singular representation (like two metaphysical dynamite sticks tied together with human twine).

In Love with Two White Men

After confronting the questions that explode in their hearts, I think I'm in love with those two white men. Their ideas are now a part of me as if they have inseminated my brains. Now when I have a decision to make I will ask what Hamlet or Socrates would have done in this situation. And I will sit on the concrete and ponder like a puddle, never deciding. Not till the moment before I die, then I will shout it to the skies with excessive pride (hopefully when I die, I die naked like Hecuba's daughter. Just leave it all out, open casket, for everyone to see).