Q3 of 20 Page 91

'The undiscovered country from whose bourn' No traveler returns, puzzles the will’.

i) Who is a traveler here?


ii) Why is it called an 'undiscovered country'?

(i) The word ‘traveler’ refers to man. A man is being compared to a traveler: just as a traveler keeps travelling all his life, every person keeps on his journey of life until he is met by death and death is an event after which no man returns back to life; what happen in the afterlife is thus unknown.


(ii) The ‘undiscovered country’ here refers to the afterlife. The life after death could be bitter or sweet but no living being knows what happens after death and no dead comes back to explain the afterlife. Thus, the life after death is a mystery which no one knows about and thus it is referred to as the ‘undiscovered country’.


More from this chapter

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1

Complete the summary based on your understanding

Hamlet was in a deep dilemma. He wondered if he should ___________________ to live or die. His mental conflict centered around ___________________ possibilities. He asks if - it is nobler to ___________________ the slings and arrows of an unbearable situation than to fight against the sea of ___________________ that afflicts one and by opposing them, end them. He pondered over the prospect of dying because with death we _______________ the heartaches and the innumerable natural ___________________ that human beings have to endure. It is an end that we all hope for -to sleep ___________________.


There is a problem in this solution also .In the sleep of death we might have ___________________ and these dreams add more ___________________.


Despite the calamity, the dreams usher, death is ___________________ because none can tolerate the whips and scorns of time. In such traumatic situations, a ____________person would choose to make the final settlement by ending his life with a sharp knife.


A weak-minded person is unable to bear the ___________________ of life and so chooses to end his life. But what prevents him from embracing this option is he dreads the ___________________after death. No ___________________man has come back to share his post- death experience. Luckily this makes the meek, cowardly to put up with the travails of life and not ___________________to the thought of committing suicide. There is a general belief that those who commit suicide have a guaranteed place in hell. This belief, fortunately, ___________________one from putting an end to one's life. According to Hamlet, too much thinking ___________________ one’s action.

 2

Read the following extracts and answer the questions:

a) 'Or to take arms against a sea of troubles


And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep…'


(i) Identify the figure of speech in the first line


(ii) What, according to Hamlet, is the solution to the problems that engulf us?


(iii) ‘Sleep’ here, refers to ________________. What figure of speech is it?


b) 'For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,


Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,


The pangs of despised love.'


i) What are the situations mentioned here that force one to end one's life?


ii) Identify the figure of speech in the first line and explain.

 4

'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought'


i) How does our conscience influence us?


ii) Identify the contradiction in the first two lines and explain.

 5

'For in the sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil'


i) What do you understand by the phrase 'mortal coil'?


ii) Shuffling off this mortal coil refers to _____________.


iii) What dreams does one have in 'the sleep of death'?