Ophelia's Madness In Hamlet

In "No Fear Shakespeare Hamlet" Ophelia is just a innocent victim that acts on what people tell her to do and don’t respond to what she want. Hamlet and Ophelia's love was real and not a lust but she let people manipulate her. When you love somebody they will do whatever it takes to protect and support there loved one and Ophelia played victim of loving Hamlet.

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.

Including these parts into the play, it shows just how affected people can be, and how many really do react to the unpleasant tragedies. Once Ophelia, a smart, young woman found that her father had been slain, she went mad in grief, singing sorrowful tunes and drowning herself in the river, not being able to bear any more of the sadness that she felt. All happening so soon, in this story characters are faced with corruption, but not all know how to bear with it. Ophelia is just one of many that faces this kind of heartbreak, however all people experience it in different ways. The frailty also will lead to anger, and confusion in actions, allowing many, including Laertes and even Hamlet, to pursue rebellious acts without remorse until it has been done. Shakespeare demonstrates that people are not invulnerable, and many of the ominous feelings we face can lead to terrible

His madness was argued to be an act to confuse Claudius. He acted crazy to cover his plans of seeking revenge on Claudius, when talking to Polonius he acted completely mad, “For in the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion-Have you a daughter?”(Hamlet 2.2.95) Hamlet used much blabber, such as this, when talking to anyone close to Claudius. As the play went on his madness was more and more liable. He started becoming very irrational and distracted by his plans. When Ophelia gives Hamlets letters back he goes into a rage, yelling “Get thee to a nunnery.”(Hamlet (3.1.131) The most well known action Hamlet committed was when he stabbed Polonius in a rash decision, hoping it was Claudius, “O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!“(Hamlet 3.4.171) One thing that brought him one step closer to going mad was Ophelia’s death. Hamlet may have been acting in the beginning but by the end of his devious plan to avenge his father, he lost himself and actually caused himself to go mad.

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.

In William Shakespeare’s, “Hamlet”, Hamlet’s love interest and Polonius’ daughter, Ophelia, died a passive and sudden death. While hanging wreaths from a willow tree, Ophelia fell from the tree and drowned in a brook. Although her death was claimed to be accidental, it is unknown if she committed suicide because she made no attempt to save herself. Her death represents the life she lived and the relationships she had with other people like her father and Hamlet. Ophelia’s death symbolizes her life with being controlled by her father, her honor and privilege of being buried in sacred ground, and the sudden termination of the relationship she had with Hamlet.

Not only is Ophelia's death marked much less significant than the other male deaths noted in the previously mentioned articles, but Ophelia’s death is articulated as a passive accident, one that happened to occur, to no avail. Every other death in the play is met with vigorous analysis and criticism, unphased by the death of Ophelia, inadvertently caused by men. Ophelia is also described as “mermaid-like” adding to the previously set notion that women are sexual objects- even at death. At this point of the play, Hamlet proclaims in a bipolar and seemingly fraudulent manner that he has always loved Ophelia (although he ordered her to “get thee to a nunnery” and was the root of her abrupt madness and suicide), while Laertes threatens that he loved Ophelia more. The attention and passion are still not recognized and respected with Ophelia even after her death but is used as a game between two men to satisfy their guilt and build their ego, competing for the love of Ophelia that was only disrespected when she was

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.

This insult leaves Ophelia hurt and heartbroken because she believed that Hamlet was the love of her life and couldn’t believe that he would accuse her of being so awful. Despite how much he loved her, Hamlet knew that he had to force her to go away in order to save himself from being spied on and eventually betrayed. After Ophelia is shoved away by Hamlet, she goes mad and comes to the conclusion that she no longer has anything to live for and subsequently, flings herself off of the castle walls into a pond where she ultimately drowns and meets her death way before she should

Ophelia goes into a state of insanity due to the murder of her father. She needed someone to lean on, especially the man she loved. With no comfort and no understanding of the tragedy, Ophelia took her own

Ophelia's death also symbolizes her selflessness. She cared about everyone else and always does what she is told. She tries to keep secrets, but Laertes “shall keep the key”

Theme of madness in Hamlet One of William Shakespeare’s most popular plays is Hamlet. One reason why this play was so popular was because Shakespeare used Hamlet to demonstrate how the mind is so complex. Hamlet was in fact not insane but he used madness as a trick to get what he wanted all along, even in the play Hamlet says, "That I essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft.". Hamlet was a master manipulator. Hamlet thought about every move he made and planned in advance.

In the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare madness is a prominent trait that many of the characters in the play come to possess. These characters go through a multitude of troubles throughout the play that makes this madness justifiable. This madness plays an immense role in the outcome of the play and events throughout it. Hamlet and Ophelia show this trait of madness in their actions throughout the play which ultimately have a detrimental effect on themselves and other characters in the play.

In this scene, Ophelia feels inner conflict because she is no longer sure that sleeping with Hamlet before marriage was the correct thing to do. Ophelia is having a lot of doubts about the decision that she has made, and this can be connected to her decision of whether to end her life or not. Eventually Ophelia decides that she can not live through the pain any further and drowns herself in a river. This is not the only instance in which Ophelia felt a large amount of inner conflict, another example is during Act I, Scene iii, when Laertes confronts Ophelia about her relationship with Hamlet: “Perhaps he loves you now… but you must fear, his greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own.” (I, iii, 25-28). At this point, Ophelia feels that her love towards Hamlet is reciprocated and she is not sure why Laertes is doubting her relationship so much. However, when Polonius joins the conversation and tells Ophelia to end the relationship, she responds with: “I do not know my Lord what I should think.” (I, III, 103). This shows how Ophelia is conflicted whether she should go with her own feelings, and keep seeing Hamlet, or to listen to her father as he should know what's best for her. Eventually, Ophelia decides that her feelings towards Hamlet do not matter, because Polonius wants her to end the relationship so she must do what he

As a result of spending her life under the protection of her father and his orders, due to her submissive nature, Ophelia remains naive and unaware of the deceit and bitterness surrounding her which renders her incapable of facing the harsh realities of life once her father dies and Hamlet leaves her. After the death of her father and with the absence of both Laertes and Hamlet from her life at the time, Ophelia is driven to madness and Gertrude explains it the King: “She speaks much of her father, says she hears there’s tricks i ' the ' world, and hems, and beats her heart, spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt that carry but half sense.” Finally seeing the grim reality of her surroundings without her father to hide behind, Ophelia loses her sanity and eventually end her own life as she no longer knows how to lead an independent life. In conclusion, Ophelia is portrayed as a puppet on strings being pulled around by the males in her life, making all her decisions and controlling what she can and can’t do, and once all the men are gone, she no longer able to function on her own and she ends her life as a result.