Essay On Ophelia's Death In Hamlet

In “Hamlet” a tragedy written by William Shakespeare, the death of a character is an occurring event. William Shakespeare uses imagery and allusion to demonstrate the result of manipulation from other characters upon Ophelia, daughter of Polonius, and leading up to her death. Her death was not the consequence of disgraceful actions of her own, but rather by the involvement of others and their influence on her life. Hamlet’s apparent rejection of her love and her father’s personal vindictive leads up to her simple-minded state, entering a world of madness. She has now gone mad, singings nonsense songs and giving people flowers that she has picked from the garden. The cause of Ophelia’s death has been debated over the years, was it a suicide

Gertrude states that Ophelia fell into the water when she was trying to hang her “fantastic garlands” on a tree and one of the branches broke. However, when she was in the water, she was “one incapable of her own distress”, not acknowledging the danger she was in (4.7.177). Even though she was in the water, she did not struggle to escape the river, but instead sung “snatches of old tunes”, until finally the weight of her thick clothes pulled her under the water and she drowned (4.7.176). Therefore, Ophelia’s death was an accident to a certain extent, because her madness made her blind to the danger she was in. Although her death initially seems to be like a suicide, yet it was an accident. Suicide may have crossed Ophelia’s mind, because of the state she was in and everything that has happened with the men in her life. The pain and grief she went through is something she would probably like to get rid of, and perhaps once the tree branch broke, she just gave up and didn’t decide to fight the river currents. She was likely aware that she was drowning, and didn’t fight it because it is ironically a solution to her problems; but she did not consciously think of committing