Logic in Lunacy The path she chose to walk on was familiar to her as she had grown up going on walks there. Oh how she missed those days when life was so simple. When all she had to worry about was whether or not the flowers were in bloom. In current time, her father was dead and her lover had betrayed her, left her to suffer the heartache of grief alone. How she longed for his embrace! Yet she knew both of them were gone from her life for good which only sent her spiraling further into the pits of her despair. Searching for some sort of relief, she sang old hymns and climbed up the frail willow one of the branches snapped and she fell into the brook. She found the remedy to her despair at the bottom of the brook. Although her actions indicate she is completely and utterly insane, she is never truly unaware of what she is doing or saying. Ophelia’s madness begins as a way of getting people’s attention to make her voice known, but much like Hamlet, she gets lost in her own deception. It all starts with Ophelia’s honest desire to help Hamlet but she still …show more content…
She tells the King and Polonius “There’s something in his soul O’er which his melancholy sits on brood.” (III.1.178-179) She knows he is just grieving over the loss his father and his relationship with Ophelia, but she can tell there is something else there. There is something stewing not just in his mind, but in his soul and it is eating him up. The on brood portion is comparing to an egg preparing to hatch. Eggs will sometimes move or turn just prior to hatching and Hamlet’s sudden display of fake madness is hinting at the real insanity that will soon ensue. This is where Ophelia is first introduced to the idea of feigned madness. In Ophelia’s mind it is rather disturbing but the more she thinks on it the easier it is to see the appeal of fake