Ophelia And The Bell Jar Analysis

Madness is defined as the state of being mentally ill or having extremely foolish behavior. It is a condition in which is difficult to identify whether it is true or not. In William Shakespeare's masterpiece, Hamlet, there is confusion as to whether or not his madness is real. The ghost of his father asks Hamlet to avenge his death. While he tries to accomplish this, he puts on an antic disposition. The antic disposition reoccurs throughout the play, but is merely an act. Hamlet is mad in craft because he admits that he is not mad several times, he behaves irrational only in front of certain individuals, and he has many feigned actions.

“Pretend you are drowning,” the woman-hater hissed to Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, who did not have to pretend (Plath 107). Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel follows nineteen-year-old Esther through her descent into suicidal schizophrenia as well as through her supposed recovery. When sent on a blind date in Chapter 9 with Marco, an affluent and handsome Peruvian man, Esther catches her first sight of a diamond, which Marco presents to her. He bruises Esther’s arm with his grip as he leads her into a country club. Later in the night, Marco forces Esther to dance the tango with him, despite her protests.

      When one refers to madness in Hamlet, most would think of Hamlet's madness, or at least that that he was pretending to possess. Although Ophelia does go insane and ultimately commits suicide, the central lunacy of the play revolves around Hamlet himself. Hamlet's plan to act mad is completely unexplained. It is safe to

Joan Montgomery Byles’s view of Ophelia’s behavior in “Ophelia’s Desperation” and Sandra K. Fischer’s view of Ophelia’s behavior in “Ophelia’s Mad Speeches” contradict each other and present opposing explanations. Byles’s view is that Ophelia is defined by the male roles in her life (i.e. her father, brother, and lover). Fischer’s view is that Ophelia is simply grieving the loss of her father and fails to break the hold of the men in her life. These two analyses present opposing explanations because one author is saying that Ophelia simply cracked because she has lost her father and she just could not handle it and the other is stating that Ophelia went mad and committed suicide because she was tired of

Insanity has been a struggle for humanity since the very first decades of the human race, very often it is hard to judge whether a person is actually struggling with this illness or is only putting on an act. Insanity is very detrimental to one’s life if real as it leads to extreme foolishness or irrationality that cannot be controlled. On the other hand, Insanity can be used as an effective strategy to hide ones plots or plans of revenge by redirecting a person’s focus away from said idea. In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the protagonist, Hamlet exhibits many properties of a man who has gone insane, but after deeper inspection it is obvious that all of this is just an act. The saneness of Hamlet becomes evident as he admits his sanity

Many playwrights agree with this school of thought, seeing a person’s madness as reasonable or sensible. Tennessee Williams presents this idea that madness is reasonable when viewed with a discerning eye in his play A Streetcar Named Desire. In the play, the character Blanche DuBois is mad, when madness is defined as “mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it”(Prompt). Throughout the play she displays erratic behavior and appears to be delusional, but one could argue her madness can be rationalized or justified. Her madness impacts the direction of the plot, the plot wouldn’t be there without it.

Madness is a trait which it is difficult to tell its authenticity. The theme of madness is an essential piece in William Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet, the protagonist, Hamlet, who just lost his father, and having his uncle, Claudius marrying to his mother, Gertrude weeks after, he is very upset about the events and became very depressed. When Hamlet meets the ghost of his father, he decides to put an antic disposition on and started acting crazy as a part of his plan in order to discover if his father’s been murder or not. From time to time, Hamlet’s act of lunacy gets out of control and eventually caused him to lose his sense of reality and actually go insane, just like when he sees the ghost in his mother’s room, but Gertrude did not see or hear a thing, and he starts to lose his logical sense at the end when he is talking to the Osric and his best friend, Horatio. Finally, Hamlet’s antic disposition overtakes his rationality, controls him, and leads him to his downfall and many others around him.

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one of the most evident and important themes is the theme of madness. The theme is apparent throughout the play, mainly through the actions and thoughts of Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes. Madness is defined as the quality or condition of mental illness or derangement (being insane). Madness is at the center of the conflicts and problems of the play and is conveyed through Shakespeare’s elaborate use of manipulation and parallels between Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes to contribute to Hamlet’s tragic character.

There are many different events in a person’s life that could lead them to insanity. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” you are dealing with a woman who is a victim of male over-protectiveness and isolation that eventually leads to her insanity. In William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” you are dealing with a man who has to deal with his father’s death and rejection from the love of his life that eventually leads him to a form of insanity. Each character handles their situations differently, but it could have gone the other way had they chose to make different decisions.

The Idea of madness is shown drastically in the story of Hamlet, as well as Macbeth. Reason being is because madness and insanity is the theme for both and is what turns both stories into tragedies, as well as both having tragic hero’s. In Hamlet, the person that seems to be going insane is Ophelia, and this all starts with her father’s death. Her father dying wasn’t it though, it was the fact that her lover, Hamlet, was the one that killed him. This situation that Ophelia was put in is what started her path to insanity. As said by Theodore Lidz from the Reprint International University Press, “Shakespeare dramatized Ophelia’s madness to provide a counter theme to action surrounding Hamlet’s own insanity”. As Ophelia starts her descent into

“Insanity- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world” A quote by the writer R.D Laing, insanity is a very complex subject, just as complex as love. The boundaries of insanity reaches no limits, That is why the line is blurred in the very famous tragic play by William Shakespeare “Hamlet Prince of Denmark”. Given all that Hamlet had been through it's not surprising that he developed a certain madness, from the death of his dear father [The King] , Hamlet's mother marrying his uncle, his inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, & his love for the fairest Ophelia that inevitably plummeted. Hamlet was well aware of acting “mad”, he believed

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, madness is very evident and a major theme throughout the play. Shakespeare uses the character Hamlet to exemplify the complex workings of the human mind exploring ideas of insanity and madness. Madness is the quality or state of being mad: rage, insanity, extremely foolish behavior. Throughout the play Hamlet is perceived to be mad, however his insanity was more than an act of life. Hamlet’s life involves many tragedies including the death of his father, his mother’s incestuous marriage, and his own death at the end of the play.

Madness is a common theme in many works of literature from the Elizabethan era. It is often confused with the work of the devil or love sickness. Due to the combination of widely accepted religious beliefs and the lack of understanding of mental illness, Hamlet’s madness is a defining factor in the storyline of William Shakespeare’s renowned play Hamlet. The theme of madness is first introduced in Act I. Early on in the play, the tragic nature of Hamlet’s character becomes more and more apparent. This is first presented in one of Hamlet’s soliloquys in scene 2, “O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,/ Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,/ Or that the/ Everlasting had not fixed/

“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness…” Derived from Kahlil Gibran, this quote correlates with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Madness is an utmost theme within the play, affecting various characters in distinctive ways. Shakespeare conveys the message that madness is an extremely liberating realm and one should allow their mind to experience this release. Often a person is so caught up with life, responsibilities, and duties that they extract themselves from the pleasure of freedom. The highly negative aura surrounding madness, to the degree that it is even classified as an illness, adverts many away from allowing this opportunity to take over. The id is the impulsive side of our mind, often characterizing our

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” - Friedrich Nietzsche. There are so many factors that contribute to a person’s madness. Love, trauma, genetics, low self-esteem, cultural expectations, etc. can affect one’s mental health dramatically. In order to stay sane, one’s physical, intellectual, emotional, and environmental health has to be balanced. If more than three of these dimensions of health are out of balance, then one’s mental state will be unstable. The sense of reality will feel like a fantasy. One will fall into a mental stupor, that if untreated, becomes detrimental to oneself and to others. There are environmental factors that play a role in the character’s Christophine, Antoinette, and Rochester’s madness.