Dead Memories – Slipknot. 

Sadness and melancholy are also universal topics, and finding these two topics in any sort of artistic work is a simple task. However, sadness can take multiple shapes and can be caused by multiple factors. Two of the most important elements that can cause a very profound state of depression and sorrow are deception and mourn. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet there is a character that suffers these two tragic elements, and therefore, is affected and experiences a deep state of dreariness. Ophelia is a character that becomes the victim of fate. Hamlet, affected by his multiple problems and delusions tells Ophelia that his love for her is nothing more that banalities and that she should live life without caring about love. Instead, she should go to a nunnery. Some scenes after, Hamlet murders Ophelia’s father, Polonius. These two events create a lot of negative effect in Ophelia’s soul, so much that she is not able to perceive any type of happiness in her life. Dead Memories, by the American metal band Slipknot, explains this emotional paradigm. The song argues that the only thing left after love is death. There is a very powerful line in the song that explains how after a love deception, the only things that are left are scars and dead memories in the person’s head and heart. After this, there is a rupture between what seems to be two complete different individuals, the blissful past being, and this new miserable and mournful one. That joyful being now seems distant and somehow dead (The other me is dead, I hear his voice inside my head). By drawing this relationship, one can elicit the obvious emotional connection between Hamlet’s fourth act and Slipknot’s tragic song.