“To be or not to be” sounds familiar right? This quote is from one of Shakespeare’s many plays, Hamlet. So what does this quote mean?
In this scene hamlet is battling with himself on whether to live or to take his own life. This brings us to the question, what is life worth? To many of us death is something we don’t want to think about but when we dig deeper into the thought of it, we find life true value. You see, whether we best life of a price tag or by someone’s personal traits, a persons life will always have some extent of purpose. After all, nothing is still something.
Going back to Hamlets soliloquy, he follows up that a few lines later with, “to die, to sleep – no more – and by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” This quote has a really deep meaning because Hamlet is basically saying that it might be easier to convince himself that he’s just going to sleep, when in reality he’s talking about dying. Hamlet is saying that he believes by going into a “Sleep”, that it will take away from all the pain that life withholds. Later on in this monologue, Hamlet battles another thing, what happens after death? He goes on and saying “to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns.” With this quote, we listen as Hamlet has another conflict within himself. He is questioning the worth of his own life and if it is worth ending to perhaps start a new one or to continue fearing the unknown. From reading this whole Soliloquy you can tell that hamlet does not want to live. He’s felt so much pain in his life he feels he needs to end. How much has gone through many hardships but the fact that he does not wanna push through it makes him a pessimist to his own life. What deems him worthy of choosing whether he lives or he dies? Many people would argue that he has a choice because it is his life. But what about the people who have it harder? Do they keep pushing or do they give up? Personally, I don’t think anybody should give up. No matter how hard her life maybe, you never know it’s going to change. Along with that, you can be the change. Not everything in life is going to have answers, but I feel you are better off searching for the answers not finding them rather than quitting and not looking at all.
With this next article from Time.com, Amanda Ripley wrote a piece on “WTC victims: what’s a life worth?“ she contemplates on whether or not the value of life can be based off a price tag. In paragraph two she starts off with “the concept of assigning a price tag to a life has always made people intensely squeamish.“ Basically saying that when someone dies, is it wrong to put a price on their death and can money make things better? The answer to this will vary from person to person. After that she continues with, “Is a poor man’s life worth less than a rich man’s?” Through the rest of this article replay brings up scenarios where people have wanted money for death of a loved one. She refers to instances such as 9/11, Oklahoma City bombing, and of the 1998 bombing of Nairobi embassy. With all these cases she is making the reader question if being compensated by money is justification for a person’s death. If you go online and type in human life value calculator you are almost guaranteed millions of matches to pop up. If you go into any of those given searches, you will find that most of them question your financial value instead of what really matters. The “Human Life Value Calculator” From the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education, starts off it’s piece by stating “ The human life value calculator has been designed to help assess your financial value to those you love by estimating the future financial contributions you will make to your family… or, more starkly, the financial lost that your family would incur if you were to die today.“ just by this quote, you can see that some, money is everything. Another writer named Kenneth Feinburg wrote an article called “What is the Value of Human Life?” Feinburg is an attorney who specializes in alternative dispute resolution. With that title, he was assigned cases after the 911 attack. In paragraph 3 of his article he quotes, “ but as I met with the 911 families that wrestled with issues surrounding valuation of lives lost, I begin to question this basic premise of our legal system. Trained in the law, I have always excepted that no two lives were worth the same in financial terms.” What Feinburg is saying is that even though he did not believe what he was doing was necessarily okay, he, by law, had to do it. In paragraph 5, he goes on to further explain himself by saying “I was engaged in a personal struggle. I thought it would make more sense for Congress to provide the same amount of public compensation to each and every victim- to declare, in effect, that all lives are equal. But in this case, the law prevailed.” Morally, he knew it was wrong to use money as a means to make up for a life lost. It is our Justice system that perhaps persuade us to value life as a number.
The last thing I would like to shed some light on is an article written by Chris Jones. It is titled “Roger Ebert: The Essential Man” The roof is Argo you hear about a movie critic who is diagnosed with cancer. He’s had multiple surgeries on his jaw, is regaining his ability to walk, and is also now mute. His whole life is through writing now and he could not be happier. Even though he has many disadvantages, he makes do with what he has and is still very optimistic about life. He adjusted to the changes he had to make and used his disability to his advantage and now has thousands of people supporting him. “Ebert takes joy from the world in nearly all the ways he once did. He has had to find a new way to laugh- by closing his eyes and slapping both hands on his knees- but he still laughs.” This man is the definition of optimistic. His main concern when going through all this was how he was going to express his happiness. Most people in this situation go into depression and sit in self- pity. This shows that life is worth it, you just have to make it worth it. Many people have gained so much respect for Roger Ebert and his enthusiasm for life even with his restrictions.
Life is going to be tough. Nothing will come easy and you will have to fight for a lot of things. Money should not have anything to do with the value of someone’s life, just the happiness they bring to others as well as confide in themselves. As a change in mind, we should value lives as the positives about someone rather than the negative. If we change our mind sets I feel we can change the values of so may peoples lives and also change the minds of people who think they have a low value in life. Money is not justifiable for the loss of a loved one and acting like it is I feel lowers your own value.