The most famous of the five soliloquies delivered by Hamlet over the course of the play begins "To be, or not to be? That is the question." Here, Hamlet is considering suicide. He finally decides against doing so, however, reasoning that as difficult as life can sometimes be, it is preferable to death, which might be even worse.
Hamlet's central characters are Hamlet himself, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius, Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Horatio. But only Horatio survives when the curtain falls at the end of Shakespeare's play. Another central character, Hamlet's father King Hamlet, appears only as a ghost — he has been dead since before the play began.
If the character of Hamlet has a tragic flaw, it may be his inability to act decisively. On the other hand, his occasional impulsiveness — for example, in rejecting Ophelia and stabbing Polonius — results in death and destruction as well.