Ophelia's Suicide

There are a variety of factors that can contribute to one’s demise. In the context of the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare many possibilities can be identified that pertain to Ophelia’s sudden death. Ophelia’s death was triggered by her mental breakdown due to the loss of her father. In the midst of her inner turmoil, her depression worsens as she learns that Hamlet, the man she loves departs to England. When she dies, Gertrude reports her death to Claudius and Laertes. Gertrude, The Queen of Denmark, is responsible for Ophelia’s death. By looking at Gertrude’s over protective relationship with Hamlet, her lack of initiative on the situations around her in a time of tragedy, as well as her vivid account of Ophelia’s death, evidence that

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.

    Ophelia's downfall continues throughout the play, and her final plunge into the waters of madness and suicide culminate around her father's death. Hamlet, while talking threateningly to his mother, accidentally slays Polonius who was hiding behind the curtain in his mother's room. Hamlet thought it was Claudius he heard coming to his mother's aid when she cried for help and lunged at the curtain with his sword, killing Polonius. "O, I am slain!" were his final words. After Ophelia learns of her father's death at the hands of her estranged lover, she goes

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

Finally, her death symbolizes her relationship with Hamlet because she died suddenly which is similar to how sudden Hamlet’s love for her changed. He went from being the love of her life to claiming that he did not love her anymore. Hamlet told Ophelia that he “did love her once” (III.1.125), but he “loved her not” (III.1.129). This shows evidence of their love ending suddenly because Hamlet’s feelings toward Ophelia changed since he claimed to be in love with her, but similar to Ophelia’s unexpected death, Hamlet unexpectedly acted as

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’s role in Hamlet is a very tragic one, because in all honesty, she was one of the most innocent characters of them all. She loved her father dearly, but he was taken away from her by complete accident. As Ophelia’s story progressed, her composure slowly started slipping away from her when she sang to Gertrude and Claudius about her father’s death and starts taking off her clothes (Act 4, scene v). When

2mention again that Ophelia is mourning her father's death. She sings about it, talks about it and even dies for it. She didn't care about anything else except her feelings she had towards this situation. She ended it all by committing suicide. Like the other girls in the play, when Ophelia was asked to do something she obeyed without question. She loved Hamlet a lot but couldn't bear the loss of her father , and in my opinion that makes her strong, she would give her own life just so she wouldn't have to live without her loved one.Similarities. The Queen and Ophelia wish for Hamlet to be happy and for him to go back to being himself again. Everyone around him feels as though he’s

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.

Ophelia is painted as a weak character by Shakespeare and doesn't know what to believe. Hamlet killed her father which causes a larger rift between Hamlet and Ophelia. She spirals downward and eventually goes insane and kills herself. Ophelia's words are not listened to and believed which helps to pave the way for her eventual mental health breakdown.

Ophelia experiences alienation throughout Hamlet, although she ends her life with suicide, unlike Hamlet. The queen places blame on Ophelia for Hamlet's madness and states: "...for your part, Ophelia, I do wish that your good beauties be the happy cause for Hamlet's madness..." (Shakespeare 140). The queen lightens her feelings of guilt for the murder and places the guilt upon Ophelia. Gertrude, the queen, knows that she has committed something wrong with the plot of killing Old Hamlet and therefore finds an outlet through Ophelia. Also, to try to discover Hamlet's cause of insanity, Claudius and Polonius use Ophelia to get closer to him and find out that perhaps they could conclude that his

As discussed by Ophelia and her father, Polonius (Act one, Scene Four), their relationship was blooming and becoming serious enough to be considering marriage. After Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost, he began to act disrespectful to everyone around him, including Ophelia. As a result to his negligence and sloth towards this seemingly serious relationship, Ophelia had a nervous break down and killed herself. After receiving news of his Father's death, Polonius becomes enraged, giving Claudius the perfectly sized window to kill off Hamlet. In the final act of the play, all tension rising through Hamlet’s Negligence to act was finally released with a catastrophic

In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Ophelia, Polonius’s innocent child, overwhelmed with grief drowns herself in a brook. Many instances led to her unfortunate death. The first situation was Polonius’s ploy to see if Hamlet was mad because he loved Ophelia or from other causes. Hamlet, continuing to portray himself as a madman, ruthlessly scolds Ophelia. She is confused as to why he’s fanatically yelling at her since they loved each other. As the story nears its conclusion, Hamlet is bitterly criticizing Gertrude, his mother. In the heat of their discussion, Hamlet unsheathes his rapier and fatally wounds Polonius mistaking him as King Claudius. When Ophelia discovers the fate of her father, she is depressed. In conjunction, with Hamlet’s

Ophelia was known as a sweet, innocent, and more importantly obedient girl. Yet, being the obedient, daughter she was, she separated from Hamlet by orders of her father and helped him spy on Hamlet for the King. Being in love with Hamlet, this was a difficult thing for Ophelia to do, although, not until her father’s death does the reader really see Ophelia in a state of madness. When she talks to Gertrude she begins to sing, “He is dead and gone, lady, / He is dead and gone;/ At his head a grass-green turf, / At his heels a stone” (4.5.29-32). The way Ophelia acted seemed obviously uncharacteristic of her, and portrayed a mental breakdown that ultimately leads her to take her own life. This tragic event marked a turning point in the play due to the fact that she wasn’t murdered, but a casualty of the feud between Hamlet and Claudius. Both of them bared responsibility for the murder of her father, which lead to her decision to commit suicide. Additionally, losing the love of Hamlet may have caused her to feel alone and in such a dark place it made her feel suicide was the only option. In conclusion, Ophelia’s death was caused due to the backlash of Hamlet and Claudius feud and the responsibility for her death should be placed on both of

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.