The Causes of Ophelia's Breakdown
The play Hamlet is known for its eccentric plot and warped sense of reality as well as its fanatical characters. Hamlet himself created all the drama in the play with his pretend “madness” and his emotional outbursts, which lead to the destruction of almost all of the characters in the play. The most notable self destruction came from Ophelia, Hamlet’s object of affection. During the play, Ophelia had undergone a lot of stress which lead her character to metamorphous.
At the beginning of the play, Laertes spoke to his sweet, loving sister Ophelia about his departure of Denmark to go to England and also his concerns of she and Hamlet’s relationship. He warned her of what he thought Hamlet's true intentions were.
“If with too credent ear you list his songs Or lose your heart or your chaste treasure open To his unmastered opportunity.
Fear it, Ophelia; my dear sister.“ (I.iii.34-37)
He believed that Hamlet was only with her out of lust and Hamlet said that he wanted to marry her only so she would sleep with him. Laertes told her that Hamlet comes from a royal family and she does not, therefore Hamlet will not marry her, nor does he love her. Ophelia disregarded most of what Laertes had said about Hamlet. Right after that Polonius came to speak to Laertes before he had gone to England. They spoke briefly and Polonius gave him advice to follow. Before saying farewell, Laertes told Ophelia to remember what he had said. Curious of...
As the play opened, Hamlet and Ophelia appeared as lovers experiencing a time of turbulence. Hamlet had just returned home from his schooling in Saxony to find that his mother had quickly remarried her dead husband's brother, and this gravely upset him. Hamlet was sincerely devoted to the idea of bloodline loyalty and sought revenge upon learning that Claudius had killed his father. Ophelia, though it seems her relationship with Hamlet is in either the developmental stage or the finalizing stage, became the prime choice as a lure for Hamlet. Laertes inadvertently opened Ophelia up to this role when he spoke with Ophelia about Hamlet before leaving for France. He allowed Polonius to find out about Hamlet's courtship of Ophelia, which led to Polonius' misguided attempts at taking care of Ophelia and obeying the king's command to find the root of Hamlet's problems. Ophelia, placed in the middle against her wishes, obeyed her father and brother's commands with little disagreement. The only time she argued was when Laertes advised her against making decisions incompatible with the expectations of Elizabethan women. Ophelia tells him, in her boldest lines of the play:
In the beginning of the book, Gilgamesh appears to be selfish. Gilgamesh’s “arrogance has no bounds by day or night” (62). Even though he is created by the Gods to be perfect, he misuses his powers and gifts for his own earthly pleasure. He has sexual intercourse with all the virgins of his city even if they are already engaged. Through all Gilgamesh’s imperfections and faults, he learns to change his amoral personality. The friendship of Enkidu helped to change his ways, for only Enkidu, who “is the strongest of wild creatures,” (66) is a match for Gilgamesh. Through this companionship with Enkidu, Gilgamesh starts to realize his incapabilities and need for his friend. When they fight Humbaba, they both give moral support to each other when the other is scared. Another event that changes Gilgamesh’s character is the death of Enkidu. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh goes through the suffering of losing a loved one. Gilgamesh experiences a pain, which no worldly pleasure can ease. By this experience Gilgamesh starts to understand his vulnerability toward death and pain. Losing his best friend causes Gilgamesh to be melancholic. At this point Gilgamesh is humbled by the fact that even he could not escape the wrath of death. Gilgamesh goes from this arrogant king to a lonely grieving person with fear of death in his heart.
...be beneficial it must occur as early as possible after extensive hyponatremia correction (Kengne et. al 2009).
"There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance" (Walt Whitman). In the novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Katniss is a young girl from District 12, who lives in a society which finds great entertainment in the organized killing of children. These bloodbaths are constructed by the Capitol into an event known as the Hunger Games. In the Hunger Games, kids are thrown into a huge arena and forced to fight to the death. Katniss`s younger sister Prim is chosen to participate in the Hunger Games but Katniss volunteers to take her place as tribute. Over the course of the Hunger Games and the events that proceed it, Katniss changes from being impulsive and feeling impotent into a rational revolutionist, who quietly defies the capitol and takes a stand for what is right.
Typically, people who develop an eating disorder are in emotional turmoil. They want to be in control but feel they are not. Any anxiety, self-doubt, or feelings of failure or inadequacy become tied to how they look. When being thin becomes an obsession, when self-worth becomes associated with slimness, the stage is set for eating disorders. People with eating disorders become preoccupied, even obsessed, with food and weight. Eating disorders can lead to extreme behavior including self-starvation, bingeing, purging, and compulsive exercise. Untreated eating disorder lead to heart damage, depression, permanent health damage, or suicide. Eating disorders-- anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder are psychiatric illnesses that affect over five million American women and men.
"Laertes is a mirror to Hamlet. Shakespeare has made them similar in many aspects to provide a greater base for comparison when avenging their respective fathers' deaths" (Nardo, 90). Both Hamlet and Laertes love Ophelia in different ways. Hamlet wishes Ophelia to become his wife, Laertes loves Ophelia as a sister. Hamlet is a scholar at Wittenberg; Laertes is also a scholar at France. Both were brought up under this royal family of Denmark. And both are admired for their swordsmenship. But most important of all, both of them loved and respected their fathers greatly, and showed great devotion when plotting to avenge their fathers' deaths.
We first meet Ophelia when she is talking with her brother Laertes, who attempting to educate her about the ways of the world. He warns her not to get too close to Hamlet, for Hamlet is "subject to his birth," (1.3, 18) he cannot choose who he loves. His caring advice for his sister, though, is lined with undertones of accusation. He warns her that even "the chariest maid is prodigal enough,"(1.3, 36) implying that even though she may seem modest, but her intentions could very well be the opposite. He attacks her virginal nature, heaving the burden of other, more crass, women upon this frail beauty. She, though a member of the more seemingly dim and weak sex, replies very wittily to this, "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do...reck not his own rede." (1.3, 47-51), advising, and possibly implying, the same things to her dear brother, showing their mutual respect for each other.
Gilgamesh ignored many of these kingly duties and was eager to become heroic and godly. "The young men of Uruk he harries without warrant, Gilgamesh lets no son go free to his father. By day and by night his tyranny grows harsher" (George, Tablet I 67-69). The beginning of the epic depicts his kingship as tyrannical and immoral, which could go without question or complaint unless the gods will it. Although considered great for his many feats such as his great walls and military expeditions, his faults could not be questioned by the commoners, which show a flaw in Mesopotamian kingship. Therefore, the gods ask Anu to create a counterpart to Gilgamesh to balance his oppressive reign. "Let him be a match for the storm of his heart, let them vie with each other, so Uruk may be rested!" (Tablet I 97-98). Enkidu, Gilgamesh 's counterpart, was initially created as a wild, uncivilized man rather than a demigod king. His position was to serve as a person that would try to prevent Gilgamesh from becoming so lofty and boastful and to make him become mature and make rational decisions. This becomes evident in Enkidu 's first encounter with Gilgamesh at the wedding: "For the goddess of weddings the bed was laid out, Gilgamesh met with the maiden by night. Forward
The story of Hamlet is a morbid tale of tragedy, commitment, and manipulation; this is especially evident within the character of Ophelia. Throughout the play, Ophelia is torn between obeying and following the different commitments that she has to men in her life. She is constantly torn between the choice of obeying the decisions and wishes of her family or that of Hamlet. She is a constant subject of manipulation and brain washing from both her father and brother. Ophelia is not only subject to the torture of others using her for their intentions but she is also susceptible to abuse from Hamlet. Both her father and her brother believe that Hamlet is using her to achieve his own personal goals.
Gilgamesh the king is a myth beholding various heroic traits shared in multiple other stories and myths for that fact. Towards the beginning of Gilgamesh’s myth, he chooses to conquer the beast of the jungle, Humbaba, and sets himself the goal to do so. Heroes must have a goal or else there is nothing for that hero to accomplish, and create a story of. However, once Gilgamesh accomplished his goal of defeating the terrifying Humbaba, he experiences a greater loss than the hero ever imagined possible, the loss of his best friend Enkidu. Although, once Gilgamesh realized what he had done was certainly the wrong choice of action, he devoted all of his time and effort into reviving his friend. On his journey for the search of eternal life, hero Gilgamesh essentially “descends into darkness” both mentally and literally while he enters the underworld to obtain his desire. Here Gilgamesh realizes that what he did was selfish and wrong, and that he is also not the only person who is of value in his life. Subsequent to Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh becomes aware that his decision to murder Humbaba was once again wrong and resulted in his own depression and loss. Throughout the duration of a myth, the hero mu...
Laertes’ view on women and Ophelia specifically is made evident as soon as the reader is introduced to the pair. While discussing Hamlet, Laertes warns her, “Fear it, Ophelia; fear it, my dear sister, / And keep you in the rear of affection,
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem of a hero named Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is seventy- five percent god and twenty- five percent human. Gilgamesh is a fierce warrior and is used to getting what he pleases whenever he wants, but he is not satisfied with all the things he has. Gilgamesh is lonely and wishes for a companion of some sort. The gods notice that Gilgamesh is starting to become too powerful for his own good and decide to create another being somewhat similar to Gilgamesh, but more powerful so that he is able to defeat Gilgamesh and bring him to his knees. They create a similar being named Enkidu. Enkidu starts off as just a very powerful being wondering the wilderness by himself. He, like Gilgamesh is lonely and wishes to find someone
Both Laertes and Hamlet firmly associate themselves with their families. Laetres highly respects his father and loves him very much. Similarly Hamlets conveys this by comparing his father to “Hyperion” a sun god. “This visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose” They both share a strong but different love for Ophelia. Laertes departing of advice onto Ophelia concerning her relations with Hamlet can be explained as a wish for safety, emotions and virtue which he considers to be at threat by Hamlet, ”But you must fear, his greatness weighed, his will is not his own”. With Hamlet it can be clearly seen in the scene of Ophelia’s funeral where he declares his love for her and his distress of the departure of her soul, “forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make my sum!”. Just before this both Hamlet and Laertes jump in her grave for a scuffle, without even a consideration. This is also an example of the two characters rashness.
After all of the torture Hamlet has inflicted on Ophelia throughout act III, scene i and ii, it comes to no surprise how broken Ophelia is when word comes out of her father 's death in scene v. She claims that nature that "...is fine in love" (line 160) has come for the things that she loves, which are Polonius and Hamlet, and that her love for both of them was so noble that she gave up her sanity for it. To clarify, Hamlet has caused Ophelia suffering by leaving her without someone to give her guidance and protection, just like how Gertrude was when Hamlet 's father died. Tragically, her loss of sanity, also leads her to end her own life. Ophelia 's suffering is quite significant to this play since it leads to Laertes 's motif of incestuous desire, as well as, how it gives further motivation for Laertes to avenge his family, thus, adding on to the theme of the nation as a deceased
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia is the most static character in the play. Instead of changing through the course of the play, she remains suffering in the misfortunes perpetrated upon her. She falls into insanity and dies a tragic death. Ophelia has issues surviving without a male influence, and her downfall is when all the men in her life abandon her. Hamlet’s Ophelia, is a tragic, insane character that cannot exist on her own.