Throughout Shakespeare's play Hamlet, the main character, Hamlet, is perceived as mad. Hamlet’s madness is a topic that is interpreted differently through the several movies that have been made. Through Hamlet’s actions and the actions of his girlfriend, Ophelia, his madness can be proved as just a charade that he has put on. Ophelia’s character changes very significantly throughout the play, in the beginning, she is an innocent girl who is only there as Hamlet’s love interest, but as time goes on her character is corrupted. Hamlet says “I loved you not” Ophelia replies, “I was the more deceived” (3.1.127-129). This scene is the beginning of Ophelia going crazy, she loves Hamlet, and for Hamlet to say that he never loved her leaves her heartbroken. Throughout this section …show more content…
Hamlet says “How now? A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead” Polonius cries “Oh, I am slain” (3.4.26-27). All though Ophelia is not a part of this scene this is still a major point when dealing with her sanity. Hamlet, her ex-boyfriend that she loves and who just broke up with her claiming that he did not love her, just killed her father. When Ophelia finds out about this it puts just enough stress on her to destroy her mind and this is the point where she goes fully crazy. She just lost her father, and she knows that Laertes is going to try to get revenge for their father, so along with losing her father she also has a brother who is going to try to kill the one she loves. The next time Ophelia is seen it is not hard to tell that she has lost her sanity, her persona has completely changed. Ophelia is next seen in Act 4 Scene 5 from lines 23 till line 75 throughout this scene she is singing a song that has importance to her since it has to do with what has driven
Pennington, Michael. "Ophelia: Madness Her Only Safe Haven." Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. of "Hamlet": A User's Guide. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996.
The life of Hamlet is without a doubt very interesting, he suffers from unfortunate events in his time that are often major blows to his ego. His father dies while he’s away at college, Hamlet is next in line to be king until his “uncle-father” steals it from him; but it is to be known his “uncle-father” would not have stolen it if his “aunt-mother” hadn’t allowed it. It’s very apparent from the beginning of the play that he is very well obsessed with his mother and her doings. He harasses, humiliates, and abuses her because she has done such an unforgivable act by marrying Claudius. His thoughts and feelings towards his mother are very strong and well known, he even describes the odd pair as “little more than kin and less than kind.” That’s not all with Hamlet; his mother remarrying is just the tip of the iceberg so deeply rooted in the ocean of his emotions. His relationship with Ophelia is twisted, Hamlet goes through episodes of
Ophelia in the fourth act of Hamlet is demonstrably insane, but the direct cause of her slipped sanity is something that remains debatable, Shakespeare uses the character Ophelia to demonstrate how women during this time were unable to break away from social norms. While it is evident that Ophelia is grieving over the death of her father, Polonius, as Horatio says of her “She speaks much of her father, says she hears / There’s tricks in the world, and hems, and beats her heart” (4.5.4-5), as lines from one of her many “songs” points towards grieving over an aged relative, “His beard as white as snow / All flaxen was his poll” with flaxen indicating a white or grayed head of hair (4.5.190-191).
Upon learning that Ophelia has allied herself with Polonius and Claudius, he loses his head and has an incredibly dramatic episode. He is initially honest and open with Ophelia, but his mood quickly changes when he learns they are being spied on. He questioned Ophelia’s motives by asking whether she was honest and fair. He breaks her heart upon the realization she is not on his side. He tells her that he once loved her, then their conversation spirals into nothing more than Hamlet hurling insults at his former love before storming out.
incoherent rage, he provides Ophelia with the ultimate medium for her. ensuing in the madness. The murder of Polonius is the greatest among many factors. that contributed by Hamlet to the somber fate of Ophelia. A prelude, composed of warnings from Polonius and Laertes, is.
People have mostly seen women inferior to men because women have been thought of as simple-minded and could not take care of themselves. Shakespeare’s Hamlet shows how men treated and thought of women during the 1500s. There was an order most did not interfere with; however, some did. In the 1500s, women were supposed to conform to men’s wishes. Throughout the play, Ophelia first obeyed her father and brother’s wishes, ignored the social norms later, and then went mad, which caused her to never gain her own identity.
In order to sway everyone in Elsinore that Hamlet was insane, he first sells his insanity to Ophelia because he knows of her loyalty to her father. By convincing her, he would convince her father and the king. Despite his successful plan of "craziness", he severs many relationships with friends and family, especially with his believed-to-be lover. After verbally assaulting her in the castle, Ophelia takes his words "I loved you not" (3.1.117) and "...what monsters you make of them" (3.1.134-35) to heart and she feels betrayed and abandoned. Once again, the relationship is demolished. However, upon Ophelia 's death, Hamlet professes, "I loved Ophelia; forty-thousand brothers / could not match with all their quantity of love / make up my sum" (5.1.236-38). The readers learn in Act V that Hamlet 's love for Ophelia was indeed genuine despite his previous actions and words.
This can be proven by the change in Ophelia’s actions and behavior. Ophelia starts to sing strange songs in front of Gertrude about her father’s death and Hamlet’s madness. Ophelia sings to Gertrude and sings, “He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone, at his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone” (4.5.26-29).This tells us that Ophelia is a very soft and is a very weak character and can easily get heart broken. She cares about her family and the death of her father has shattered her into pieces, it may cause problems for her to
With the men’s constant abuse, they each start telling her different things. Unsure of whom to listen to, she starts to get confused and starts losing herself. When finally there was no one there to tell her anymore she goes mad, and on the brink of her madness she ends up killing herself. Throughout all these events, no one stops to think of her as an actual person, but instead like a rag doll they could just toss around. The play Hamlet itself was discussed without any bother of Ophelia for nearly four hundred years before scholars started to think of her and read the play with a Feminist viewpoint.
Critics argue that Hamlet has the first reason to be hurt by Ophelia because she follows her father's admonitions regarding Hamlet's true intentions for their beginning love. In Act 3, scene 1, line 91 Hamlet begins with his malicious sarcasm toward her. "I humbly thank you, well, well, well," he says to her regarding her initial pleasantries (Johnson 1208). Before this scene, he has heard the King and Polonius establishing a plan to deduce his unusual and grief-stricken behavior.
Two of Ophelia’s difficulties arise from her father and brother. They believe that Hamlet is using her to take her virginity and throw it away because Ophelia will never be his wife. Her heart believes that Hamlet loves her although he promises he never has (“Hamlet” 1). Hamlet: “Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but not the time gives it proof. I did love you once.” Ophelia: “Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.” Hamlet: “You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock ...
It is obvious throughout the play Ophelia is ordered around by Laertes and Polonius, and obeys them without a moment's thought. They act like she has no mind of her own, but she listens and does as they wish, so it seems she cannot think for herself. Polonius and Laertes treat her as though she is worthless. Laertes urges Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet ...
Ophelia eventually takes her life in that haunting scene of a young girl, "fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide...chanted snatched of old lauds...garments heavy with their drink...pulled the poor wretch....to muddy death" (4.7.173-181). At this point she views the world as this awful, crazy place where she can no longer live in. She takes the step that Hamlet cannot. Her suicide marks the lowest point in her life. She has come to the realization that not all men are good, not all people are true, and the world she lives in is not what it seems. It’s not all full of sunshine and rainbows. It's full of greed, anger, sadness, and betrayal.
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.
Ophelia is manipulated by Hamlet to display to the King and the rest of the court that he is in fact mad. When Hamlet enters her room wearing disheveled clothing and acting quite strange towards her, he knows that Ophelia will tell her father and the King. Ophelia then reports this strange occurrence to her father, telling him about his strange composure of taking her “by the wrist and” holding her hard and then “shaking” when he was about to let go. (Act 2, Scene 1 Lines 86-91) The team of Polonius and the King also exploits Ophelia in order to dig deeper into Hamlet’s madness.