I enjoyed reading through this speech again just now -- I have a strange sense that my thinking has been clouded every time I've read it in the past (primarily in school), but now I can grasp it.
That said, I don't agree with Hamlet at all, and the real problem is far deeper than he realizes. I'm also surprised that Stephen uses this soliloquy to capture his own thinking.
"To sleep: perchance to dream" -- that's the turn, but Hamlet is worried about the afterlife, about supernatural judgement. He's very right to be, in context -- he's already met a ghost. But isn't Fry a vocal atheist? Isn't he already sure that "no dreams will come"?
I don't think I've ever had "might go to Hell" as a reason against suicide... I was already most of the way to atheism by the time I was playing with these kinds of thoughts as a teenager.
It's also a cheat, in a way -- sort of like "I don't kill people because I'm afraid then I'll burn in Hell" is much less moral than "I don't kill people because I understand the pain and harm of murder, and I don't want to inflict that on anyone".
The real problem of answering "to be or not to be" is that suicide isn't as obviously morally wrong as murder. Yes, harm is done -- the people around us can be devastated, for example -- but for a mind in sufficient pain, it's not hard to attenuate the imagined future suffering down to nothing, and I've talked to lots of people actively doing this ("they say they love me, but they'll be happier when I'm not here causing them so much trouble..."). And it doesn't work to argue someone out of depression, of course, though I'm afraid I learned that lesson the stupid way.
That said, I don't agree with Hamlet at all, and the real problem is far deeper than he realizes. I'm also surprised that Stephen uses this soliloquy to capture his own thinking.
"To sleep: perchance to dream" -- that's the turn, but Hamlet is worried about the afterlife, about supernatural judgement. He's very right to be, in context -- he's already met a ghost. But isn't Fry a vocal atheist? Isn't he already sure that "no dreams will come"?
I don't think I've ever had "might go to Hell" as a reason against suicide... I was already most of the way to atheism by the time I was playing with these kinds of thoughts as a teenager.
It's also a cheat, in a way -- sort of like "I don't kill people because I'm afraid then I'll burn in Hell" is much less moral than "I don't kill people because I understand the pain and harm of murder, and I don't want to inflict that on anyone".
The real problem of answering "to be or not to be" is that suicide isn't as obviously morally wrong as murder. Yes, harm is done -- the people around us can be devastated, for example -- but for a mind in sufficient pain, it's not hard to attenuate the imagined future suffering down to nothing, and I've talked to lots of people actively doing this ("they say they love me, but they'll be happier when I'm not here causing them so much trouble..."). And it doesn't work to argue someone out of depression, of course, though I'm afraid I learned that lesson the stupid way.