Essay on Hamlet and its Ophelia

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.

In another scene, Polonius orders Ophelia to return the gifts that Hamlet gave her, and to make her rejection of him unmistakable and absolute. Polonius believes that if she is the cause of Hamlet’s madness, this would be the proof. “That Hamlet loses his mental stability is arguable from his behavior toward Ophelia…” (Foster, par.16) In Branagh’s version, we see how terribly this tears Ophelia’s heart. When Hamlet sees her, he walks up to her, telling her how much he loves her. After Hamlet kisses her, she returns the love letters that he wrote back to him. She sees how crushed he is, which makes her feel even worse; but she also believes she has to do this because her father ordered her to. Hamlet tells her “Get thee to a nunnery” (William

Hamlet was deeply in love with the recently departed fair Ophelia, daughter of Polonious, who also sadly is not with us. He loved her much more than he expressed, and it is unfortunate that his inability to express his love for her could have been part of her downfall. Although he treated her scornfully and rudely I know that he loved her more than anyone could imagine. Hamlet, I remember, at the dear Ophelia’s funeral, you told the whole world of your love. “I loved Ophelia. 40 thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love make up my sum,” you said. I cannot help but think that if you had expressed your love for the fair maiden, both her and quite possibly you would still be with us today. He loved his mother, Queen Gertrude. Although he held her in disdain for her hasty marriage to Claudius, who he despised, he still loved her with all his heart

Midway through Hamlet, Ophelia is well under the control of Polonius and Hamlet. They are both manipulating and using her as a pawn as to get what they want and she has little to no say about it. Act 2, scene 1 serves as a turning point, as it is when Ophelia begins to realize the manipulation she faces at the hands of both her father and Hamlet, and that she can only truly gain her freedom when she herself descends into madness. Polonius’ manipulation, Hamlet’s control and Ophelia’s own thoughts and actions demonstrate her descent, and the aftermath.

Ophelia was such an innocent character. She was young and naïve. Ophelia was faced with many dilemmas. She was in a relationship with Prince Hamlet, who was very distracted and eventually went mad himself. Ophelia’s madness started with an overbearing, over protective father. He controlled Ophelia and used her with out thinking of her feelings, “I must tell you, you do not understand yourself so clearly…What is

   Poor Ophelia, she lost her lover, her father, her mind, and, posthumously, her brother. Ophelia is the only truly innocent victim in Hamlet. This essay will examine Ophelia's downward spiral from a chaste maiden to nervous wreck.

Ophelia is Hamlet’s love interest throughout the entire play. However, in an attempt to be strategic, Hamlet feigns insanity in order to be deceiving and in turn breaks Ophelia's heart. His sudden disinterest towards her coupled with her father Polonius and brother Laertes’ commands to stay away from Hamlet composes a dire internal conflict within Ophelia's mind. She is torn between her undying love for Hamlet versus her desire to be an obedient daughter and sister. In addition, Hamlet unintentionally murders Polonius rather than Claudius, which also adds to Ophelia's insanity. To make matter worse, Ophelia has no mother figure within her life. So taken all together, she is stuck in a constant battle within herself with nobody who is there for her. “I hope all will be well. We must be patient/ but I cannot choose but weep/ to think they would lay him/ i' th' cold ground” (Hamlet v, iv). This quote from Ophelia demonstrates her deep sorrow towards her father's death, as well as the start of her path to insanity. Her lack of a maternal figure leaves her with nobody to discuss her feelings and troubles with. Because of this constant battle within her life, Ophelia finds herself in a confrontation with her emotions, which ends in her official decision of suicide. Which one could argue makes her decisive in the end which may be true, but her internal struggle leading to her choice of suicide is what makes her a great example of a character struggling with uncertainty during times of

Ophelia started acted insane when Hamlet frantically ran up to her, grabbed her arms and shook her because he had seen the ghost of King Hamlet. “He took me by the wrist and held me hard. Then goes he to the length of all his arm, And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face As he would draw it. Long stayed he so. At last, a little shaking of mine arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down,  He raised a sigh so piteous and profound As it did seem to

Yet to Hamlet, Ophelia is no better than another Gertrude: both are tender of heart but submissive to the will of importunate men, and so are forced into uncharacteristic vices. Both would be other than what they are, and both receive Hamlet’s exhortations

Ophelia, ever since her introduction, has been introduced to be a sweet and sympathetic person, providing the play with emotional moments, but her death was used as a bait and switch by Shakespeare towards audience members who had expected her to change the play’s somber mood to more hopeful one, which in turn makes the play even more tragic. After she had been visited by an apparently crazed Hamlet, she tells Polonius about the visit, prompting him to believe that the young prince is crazy in love, and goes out to tell the king. After it was explained to Claudius, and Hamlet’s former friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern failed to find the underlying cause of his madness, Polonius makes Ophelia approach Hamlet while he and the king hide and monitor his behavior.

In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Shakespeare developed the story of prince Hamlet, and the murder of his father by the king's brother, Claudius. Hamlet reacted to this event with an internal battle that harmed everyone around him. Ophelia was the character most greatly impacted by Hamlet's feigned and real madness - she first lost her father, her sanity, and then her life. Ophelia, obedient, weak-willed, and no feminist role model, deserves the most pity of any character in the play.

Ophelia is shortly affected by the protagonist’s mad conduct. And immediately she goes to her father, Polonius, to explain how she is “so affrighted” as a result of Hamlet’s visit:

Overwhelmed by outside forces and her repressed love for Hamlet, Ophelia is truly a sad and remorseful character in this play, an innocent victim with little essence or depth. An evident victimized woman, ruled by her Renaissance sense of romantic love, it can further be argued that Ophelia was extremely ambiguous. She was too incompetent to decide what she really desired in life. Because she falls in love with Hamlet at a very young age she cannot truly comprehend what love is all about, even though there is strong evidence that Ophelia had sexual relations with Hamlet. Hamlet emphasizes the hypocrisy of his words

Ophelia later relays this meeting to her father, telling him that Hamlet was not properly dressed, "and with a look so piteous in purport as if he had been loosed out of hell to speak of horrors-he comes before me." (2.1.82-84). This scene is directly after Hamlet learns of his father's murder. It seems that Hamlet is looking to Ophelia for help, his feelings were crushed and he needed consolation. I extract the estimation that prince Hamlet adores Ophelia, and that she is one the few loved ones he has left to turn to. I am sure he loves his family, but his father is dead, his mother is unconcerned with his father's death and his uncle is the murderer of his father.

When Polonius finds out that Ophelia has been conducting a romance with Hamlet, he insists that she no longer have contact with the prince: ‘I will teach you. Think yourself a baby.’ (1.3.105) Polonius convinces Ophelia that she has been naïve and stupid to believe Hamlet’s professions of love: ‘Affection? Pooh! You speak like a green girl.’ (1.3. 101) In Polonius’s dialogue, Shakespeare repeatedly employs images of Ophelia as a child to portray how her father psychologically controls her, by making her dependent on his commands, as a young child would: ‘I shall obey, my lord.’ (1.3.136)