Is Ophelia Weak

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.

After this conversation, Polonius talks to Ophelia about Hamlet as well. He tells Ophelia that Hamlet isn’t good for her. He says “Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers” (Shakespeare 1.3.127). Then, Polonius commands her to stay away from Hamlet. When this scene is acted in Zeffirelli’s version, Ophelia gets upset with Polonius and storms off after she says “I shall obey my lord” (Hamlet; Shakespeare 1.3.136). In Branagh’s version, Polonius is angrier at Ophelia. He pushes her into a confessional, and after he recites his speech, he walks away. Then, Ophelia says the line “I shall obey my Lord” in her head while she has flashbacks of being with Hamlet (William Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Shakespeare 1.3.115-136).

Ophelia is a very interesting and confused character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. She has so many moments where she is hanging onto her sanity by a thread, and one small thing could set her off. Ophelia illustrates character traits leading to her tragic downfall, including innocence, ignorance, and distraught actions.

In the beginning of the play, it is clear through her thoughts and actions that that Ophelia is an obedient person. But upon closer inspection, the audience can see that she is not merely an obedient, but completely dependent and weak character. In fact, her needy nature is unmistakable from the beginning. OPH: “I do not know, my lord, what I should think.” POL: “Marry, I will teach you. Think yourself a baby…” (Act I, Scene III, lines 105-106) Her cruel clashings with Hamlet, which go against her feelings for him,

Ophelia is also put forth as a foil to Lord Hamlet. Before the events of the play unravel Ophelia, whom is the daughter of Polonius and sister of Laertes, gives us traits of Hamlet She reveals that he was a model courtier and scholar, “The glass of fashion and the mould of form, Th’ observed of all observers.” Ophelia also offers another dimension to the story, the love interest. They both love each other, even though it may seem that this love is not a legitimate one too many seeing as how Hamlet was going crazy. Or so it seemed, yet again she brings out information to us, that Hamlet was not nuts but just enraged.

Shakespeare places many interesting characters in his plays. Claudius, Polonius, Marcellus, and Reynaldo are a few from his play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. However, Ophelia appears to be the most innocent all throughout the play. This character has either indirectly or directly affected the lives of every main characters in the script. Ophelia’s character is portrayed as obedient, maidenly, and a mad young girl.

Even in death, she displays yielding and passive behavior: Ophelia does not have the intention of committing suicide, though she fails to save herself from sinking. She is essentially a casualty of a society that enforces unreasonable expectations for its women and is never afforded the liberty of thinking for herself and making her own judgments and decisions. Her passive death represents the lack of control she has over her own person and the dependence she has developed on other people. Therefore, Ophelia is mentally unstable and not capable of realizing that her life is on the line. Ophelia is trained by the men in her life to be compliant with their demands, preventing her from practicing her autonomy and enabling her to be easily manipulated by Hamlet.

She is casted as a very Intense, profound character because of her situations whose voice goes unheard and actions are controlled by her father Polonius and Hamlet. In Scene 7 act 4, Gertrude informs Claudius and Laertes that Ophelia drowned in a brook. Prior to this, Ophelia is described as a “sister driven to desperate terms” you can say that she is playing the stereotypical role of the damsel in distress. Ophelia genuinely needs Hamlet to love her. She is embedded the idea from her own tretury that without him she can't survive. We see that Ophelia becomes an emotional mess when Hamlet tells her he doesn’t love her. Her submissive, reliance on men tells us that she is weak without support, but she will obey what her father says She acts as a puppet for the people who are dominant to her. They control her and mold her to what they want her to do and be. It’s really interesting how uncaring and unsupportive Polonius is towards her. Even to her own blood, she is treated with the utter most disrespect. This clearly tells the audience how women were portrayed in the Elizabethan era.

In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, there were many important characters just like Hamlet who show up in more than three-fourths of the play; but there are also characters that don’t necessarily show up as much but still have a strong role. One of the characters that didn’t get as much screen time but was still important was Ophelia. Ophelia was a sister, girlfriend, and daughter that so many people loved. Therefore, Despite the lack of presence of Ophelia, she ultimately played a big role in the lives of a lot of the characters.

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.

"Her whole character is that of simple unselfish affection" (Bradley). In comparing the characters in the play Hamlet, Ophelia’s purity and delicate beauty make her comparable to a flower. Ophelia signifies the nature and righteousness of the Elizabethan Era, with her willow trees and flowers visible, and epitome of a goddess. Throughout most of the play, Shakespeare uses Ophelia to enable other characters in reaching their goals. Elizabethan society created impossible expectations for women, considered to be the weaker sex, exploited, and in need of protection. With no exception to this expectation, Ophelia is mistreated, scorned and ultimately shamed by the men in her life. Ophelia is the most innocent victim of Hamlet’s revenge in Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet”.

To begin with, Ophelia is a character from the Shakespeare classic Hamlet. She is perceived as a young woman who is kind hearted and obedient towards the male characters within the story. These characteristics cause her to be seen as the victim of the male characters who revolve around the story of Hamlet.

In a split second, she is placed in a situation where she has to chose between her loyalty to her father, or her own conviction. She chose to lie to Hamlet rather than reveal her father. This is her fatal flaw. Hamlet, knowing she is lying to him, goes on a rant and not only denounces his feelings for her, he questions her integrity and refers to her as a whore (Act 3, Scene 1, Line 111-115). Hamlet is crude in his own day by asking Ophelia "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" (Act 3, Scene II, Line 109) Ophelia had deserved the treatment she received from Hamlet. Hamlet was fed up with Ophelia ignoring him and trying to stay away from him. Even with the betrayal she was just going through all the commands of her father and brother but you should not need anyone telling you who to love. From her betraying Hamlet and the denouncing of his love, this confrontation begins Ophelia true descent into insanity.

When someone that have the today’s mentality reads Hamlet, Ophelia is seeing as a submissive, sweet, naive and obedient woman whose only goal is to serve the men to whom she is bound by blood or marriage. However, in the final of the play Shakespeare shows her, after all, unhappy within that limited universe. In almost everything, Ophelia's trajectory obeys traditional values. Paradoxically, only his death is transgressive, because suicide was taboo, especially according to Christian thought that the suicide would go to hell.