Ophelia’s Death by Water
Among the hundreds of dramatic scenes in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, one well-known one is the death of Ophelia, in the fourth act. Like all excellent scenes, it is dramatic, beautifully written, and compelling. Still, there is a common motif that seems to give readers extra interpretations and more depth to what Shakespeare attempts to convey. For example, there is a reason that Ophelia drowned instead of dying in battle or a weapon. The scene is a woeful one. Shakespeare writes Ophelia “Fell in the weeping brook, her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up… As one incapable of her own distress” (4.7.200-204). In this passage, Shakespeare paints the most haunting, beautiful, eerie picture of this death by
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water in the readers’ minds. He ends the passage with “Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death” (4.7.206-207).
As can be argued with famous literary deaths, death scenes are reflective of the character’s personality. With Ophelia, her nature was also evident in the way she died. Like water, she was intangible and obscured, and had no definite shape. This is due to the fact that she was dependent on men her whole life -- either her father, brother, or Hamlet -- to tell her what to do. Without them, it is not clear what her personality is like. Since water is indefinite, it has the ability to also change, being able to fit the mold of any container. Similarly, Ophelia always submits to any male character in her life, easily shifting her loyalty towards the man who holds authority. After Gertrude tells Laertes of Ophelia’s death, he says “Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears. But it it is our trick; nature her custom holds, let shame say what it will. When these are gone, the woman will be out” (4.7.182-185) Laertes expresses that his sister, Ophelia, has already had too much water by drowning, so he wouldn’t cry for her. In this passage, Shakespeare uses the water reference to turn this on gender, because Laertes contends that grief is seen as “unmanly” despite
crying being human nature. As proven in the quotes above, Shakespeare uses motifs, such as water, to provide extra interpretation and analysis of characters. Water had dual meanings-- a symbol of obscurity, and one of gender roles.
Gertrude explained that Ophelia 's heavy clothes pulled her down deep into the stream:"...her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death" (4.7. 178-181). Even in her last moments, Ophelia lets a greater power do as it pleases with herself. Instead of screaming for help and struggling to breath, she just sings a song while she is still floating on the surface. Nature chooses when she can take her last breath. Every time Ophelia has been used and verbally abused, her father was behind it. Grieving her father’s death, Ophelia had no idea what to do and became mad. “Grief at her father’s sudden and unexplained death has unbalanced her mind” (Schücking). With no father to tell her what to do, whether to freak out or call for help, Ophelia does what her father had always taught her. She lets the water do as it wishes with her regardless if it takes her last breath. Ophelia only does what she knows it
Throughout the play Hamlet, Ophelia is associated with floral imagery. Her father, Polonius presents her with a violet, she sings songs about flowers when she turns mad, she drowns amid garlands of flowers, and finally, at her burial, Queen Gertrude tosses flowers into her grave. Flowers symbolize her fragile beauty, blossoming sexuality, and a condemned innocence. Flowers are not deeply rooted. They are beautiful living things at the mercy of their surroundings. With no means of self-preservation, a flower's life relies on the natural forces around it. Ophelia's life mirrors this frail existence. She is entirely dependent upon the men in her life to make her choices. With no control over the storm brewing in her own life and no strength to withstand it, her shallow roots are ripped from under her. She loses her mind and takes her own young life.
It is widely believed that “Living life without honor is a tragedy bigger than death itself” and this holds true for Hamlet’s Ophelia. Ophelia’s death symbolizes a life spent passively tolerating Hamlet’s manipulations and the restrictions imposed by those around her, while struggling to maintain the last shred of her dignity. Ophelia’s apathetic reaction to her drowning suggests that she never had control of her own life, as she was expected to comply with the expectations of others. Allowing the water to consume her without a fight alludes to Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia as merely a device in his personal agenda. Her apparent suicide denotes a desire to take control of her life for once. Ophelia’s death is, arguably, an honorable one, characterized by her willingness to let go of her submissive, earth-bound self and leave the world no longer a victim.
Ophelia is discovered by Gertrude and appears to be at peace. She has flowers her as well. There is no sign of struggle. She wanted to die. Also the gravediggers even were confused as to why Ophelia was getting a Christian burial because the church doesn 't allow a Christian burial if one takes their own life. Furthermore Ophelia is acting crazy toward the end of the play. She is in pain, stressed and in sad due to the events she has endured. Her father is dead and Hamlet is to blame. She just couldn 't take it anymore. Therefore, the only way she could have dies was because of
Melancholy, grief, and madness pervade Shakespeare's great tragedy, Hamlet. The emotional maladies presented within Hamlet, not only allow the audience to sympathize with prince Hamlet, but also with the tragic lady Ophelia as well. It is Ophelia who suffers at her lover's discretion because of decisions she was obligated to make on behalf of her weak societal position.
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.
Hamlet is a Shakespearean play written at the end of the sixteenth century. Throughout this tragedy, the life of the prince of Denmark, named Hamlet, is closely followed after the death of his father. Hamlet eventually discovers that his father has been murdered by his own brother and Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, who has already wed Hamlet’s mother. Furthermore, Claudius crowned himself as king, even though Hamlet was the successor to the throne. After Hamlet is confronted by his father 's ghost, he vows revenge on Claudius. Though he intends to take Claudius’s life, Hamlet is eventually so obsessed in his own plot of revenge that he becomes insane and hurts many of the people around him. Ophelia, Hamlet’s lover, is one casualty of the plot to kill Claudius when Hamlet accidentally murders her father, Polonius, and disowns her.
In Hamlet, Ophelia is unaware of the evil is spreading around her. She is an obedient woman, and is naive in that she takes what people say at face value, which makes her an innocent lady. "You should not have believed me, for virtue/ cannot so inculate our old stock but we shall relish of/ it. I loved you not." (III.ii. 117-119). Hamlet says these lines as a mask of his madness, but Ophelia does not understand his true motives and takes Hamlet's words very seriously to heart. The words that Hamlet says to Ophelia both confuse and hurt her greatly. Hamlet's lines are what eventually lead Ophelia to insanity, and Ophelia's insanity is what causes her death by drowning.
Before Ophelia dies, in act four, Claudius wishes to know where Hamlet put the dead body of Polonius. Hamlet refuses to tell him, and says for his uncle to go to hell. This is when Claudius tells Hamlet he is going to be sent to England to be executed. Right before Hamlet kills Polonius and speaks with his mother, Hamlet and Ophelia get into a huge argument. Polonius and the King set up a scam to see if Hamlet’s “madness” is caused by Hamlet’s love for Ophelia. Ophelia, breaks up with Hamlet, and Hamlet becomes livid. He tells Ophelia, “You should not have believed me...I loved you not,” (act three, scene one, lines 126-128). Hamlet also tells Ophelia that she is a nymph, meaning that she sleeps around. Even though, the audience puts together that Ophelia is pregnant with Hamlet’s baby. While Hamlet begins to sail to England, Ophelia becomes mentally insane. She starts reciting poems, songs, and complete nonsense. She’s depressed because her father was just killed by her lover, Hamlet tore her apart by treating her like dirt, and just found out that Hamlet is being sent to England to be executed. In the article, On Ophelia’s Madness, it enlightens, “And yet her tragedy seems to me to have been misinterpreted by a long array of critics, who have emphasized that her madness is due chiefly to the death of her father,” (Camden). Ophelia commits suicide by drowning herself, and the argument here, is if she ended her life because of Hamlet, or because of her father’s death. Camden believes that her self slaughter was because of Hamlet, in which if she killed herself because of her father’s death, it would be Hamlet to blame, for he killed Polonius. Ophelia, the love of Hamlet’s life, just killed his own girl. This is yet another death the Hamlet has caused. Hamlet, on the way to England, knows that a letter on the ship is from his uncle, sent to the King of England, that states loud and clear, to
Another significant female character is Ophelia, Hamlet's love. Hamlet's quest for revenge interferes with his relationship with Ophelia. There is much evidence to show that Hamlet loved her a great deal, but his pretense of madness drove her to her death. Ophelia drowned not knowing what was happening to her. This can be deduced by the fact that she flowed down the river singing and happy when in truth she was heartbroken. Ophelia was very much afraid when she saw Hamlet "with his doublet all unbraced; No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd, Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle" (Act #. Scene #. Line #). She described him as being "loosed out of hell" (Act #. Scene #. Line #). In addition to that he scared her when he left the room with his eyes still fixed on her. She is especially hurt when Hamlet tells her that he no longer loves her and that he is opposed to marriage. He advises her to go to a nunnery and avoid marriage if she can.
Act 1: Ophelia has been plotting for the throne for a long time. Her father, Polonius is the king’s trusted advisor and her brother Laertes is a soldier. Ophelia’s mother died when she was very young. Polonius insists she is the spitting image of her mother. Laertes is often away and only receives update letters from his father in which he praises Ophelia.
Her mental downfall occurred after Hamlet accidentally murdered her father. Even though Polonius was not always wise and sometimes made her do silly things such as rejecting Hamlet, she loved her father. It seems like the whole country mourns for Ophelia’s loss of mind. A kind gentlemen says, “Her mood will needs be pitied...She speaks much of her father, says she hears there’s tricks i’ th’ world, and hems, and beats her heart, spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt that carry half sense. Her speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move the hearers to collection.” (Act 4:5, lines 2, 4-9). This gentlemen describes Ophelia’s speech as not making sense, that she gets mad at inconvenient matters, and has many unnecessary conspiracies. Some have compared Ophelia’s madness to another one of Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest. A writer previously mentioned, F. Hyatt Smith, says that “Her mind disintegrates like Prospero’s vision” (Smith). Smith says this to point out that Ophelia is drowning in her problems instead of trying to get herself out of them (Smith). The sad thing is that Ophelia’s insanity brings her to her death. Ophelia falls off of a tree into the water below and drowns because of her thick clothing. Some, such as the gravedigger, claim that this was an act of suicide, but it was
Ophelia loves Hamlet; her emotions drive her to perform her actions. Some would say that Ophelia’s emotions could have actually been what ended her young
People throughout the world are constantly chasing love, falling in love, and yearning for love. In this process, a single question resounds: Does he or she love me? This question appears in numerous works of literature, including William Shakespeare’s tragic play Hamlet. Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark and primary character of the play, professes his love to Ophelia, the daughter of the king’s advisor Polonius, in the beginning of the play; however, in the midst of faking insanity in a plot to revenge his father, Hamlet denies his love for Ophelia, but later relays profuse exclamations of love after her death. This, then, brings into question the genuinity of Hamlet’s love for Ophelia. Shakespeare’s Hamlet indicates that Hamlet loved Ophelia at a time, but his overwhelming desire to revenge his father’s death and personal confusion trump this feeling, causing Hamlet to push his love into the background, revealing that affections can
In Act IV of the play, Ophelia showed the most mental instability throughout her direct speech. Ophelia was singing about her father and so she sang “And he will not come again? And he will not come again? No, no he is dead, go to thy deathbed” (4.5.186-190). Ophelia showed her mental instability when she found out her father got murdered by Hamlet; therefore, she went insane and kept singing about her dead father. Towards the end of act IV Ophelia showed the most mental instability through her actions, by drowning herself. When she drowned herself because of how emotional and insane she was about her dead father, Gertrude saw her in the lake drowning herself, and so she went and told Laertes “One woe doth tread upon another’s’ heel, so fast they follow, you sisters drowned Laertes” (4.7.159-160). That was the end of Ophelia in act IV and so she ended her last scene floating on the top of the lake