Conversation-Enabler
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia is one of the most elusive characters of the play and her importance is very hard to pinpoint and has raised eyebrows for centuries. For example, the scene of her death is one that artists have depicted over and over, yet that iconic moment is merely alluded to and happens off stage. This reflects Ophelia’s character very well considering that she is often at the periphery of the action; more talked about then talked to. There are many questions surrounding Ophelia and many interpretations to her character. Is she as virtuous as her father and brother want her to be? Does her madness really drive her to suicide or is her drowning actually an accident? Is she more than a pawn? All of those are at the back of the reader’s mind when Hamlet is concerned and her importance can easily be questioned considering how little is known about her. Yet, despite the lack of information about her and her past, and despite how very small her actual presence in the play is Ophelia remains essential if not to the audience, then at least to the characters surrounding her. She serves as a conversation-enabler in relation to many of the chore themes of the play. Ophelia might be a very passive character, but by her mere presence she allows themes of suicide, madness, and grief to be pushed further by the protagonists that surround her. Both because of what happens to her and because of the way people around her react to those events, 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.
There are volumes of critical analyses devoted to William Shakespeare's Hamlet. As the title indicates, Hamlet is the main character of the play, but there are other characters who are also important to the plot. So much attention has been given to Hamlet's antics that characters such as Ophelia remain relatively unexamined. Ophelia is a key figure in the play, and to understand her reactions to the patriarchal society in which she lives through her relationships with the men in her life adds more depth to the play. Ophelia's character is revealed through her relationships with her father, Polonius, her brother, Laertes, and her lover, Hamlet, and their characters in turn are revealed through their
The character of Ophelia is an excellent element of drama used to develop interpretations of Shakespeare’s text. At the beginning of the play, she is happy and in love with Hamlet, who first notices her beauty and then falls in love with her. The development of Ophelia’s madness and the many factors that contributed to her suicide are significant parts of the plot. “Her madness was attributed to the extremity of her emotions, which in such a frail person led to melancholy and eventual breakdown” (Teker, par. 3). The character of Ophelia in Zieffirelli’s version is the personification of a young innocent girl. “Her innocence is mixed with intelligence, keen perception, and erotic awareness” (Teker, par. 13). This Ophelia is a victim
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.
Loving, concerned, and fragile. Ophelia, a character in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare, is forced to undergo a litany of emotions. At the beginning of the play Ophelia is full of love and is very optimistic towards her relationship to the protagonist, Hamlet. She moves into a concerned state revolving around Hamlet, from there Ophelia shifts into a very fragile state. As the play continues Ophelia struggles and endures loss until she reaches the point where she can no longer go on.
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.
Likening himself to a sinner, Hamlet tells this to Ophelia to further prove his warning of becoming a sin-breeder. After lying to her about his true love, Hamlet is able to force Ophelia in the only option to take is to head to a nunnery. Hamlet not only silences Ophelia’s voice, but also informs the idea that Ophelia can only be defined in terms of how Hamlet see her. As a result of this metaphorical silencing, Ophelia is able to understand her role in Denmark only in terms of the instructions provided to her by the men in her life. Since she is typically regarded as melancholic or mad throughout the play by the men that dictate her life, Ophelia’s representation is often consumed by her madness and insanity.
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.
Various different methods of communication exist all around the world, some of which are most commonly used for expressing and transferring views and ideas. Incidentally, there are also ways to be able to take advantage of those methods and utilize them in a selfish manner. Which is basically using language to manipulate people or situations in order to try to accomplish objectives. An example of this can be seen in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where it’s shown how this type of exploitation can have very extreme outcomes. Notably, Paulo Freire believes that an individual needs to have a balance of reflection and action, in order to possess authentic dialogue. In the play, Hamlet creates a language barrier to protect himself from others and using that as his way of controlling what they do, which in turn makes him unaware of the importance of action. Thus, in the Shakespearean tragedy, Hamlet is able to manipulate others through talking excessively and not partaking in any sort of action, which is able to display the lack of authenticity in his language. This could not have been done without affecting those around him, most importantly Gertrude, Polonius, and Ophelia.