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Ophelia character essay
Character analysis ophelia
Character analysis ophelia
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Ophelia character essay
Character analysis ophelia
Character analysis ophelia
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Ophelia intentionally kills herself. Ophelia, stricken to her core by the heinous murder of her Father, Polonium, began experiencing hysteria. Spiraling into despair, Ophelia quickly drifted into madness eventually unable to coherently answer questions. In her final hours, Ophelia surrounded herself with the beauty of nature.
Just one of these traumatic events could make a character go mad, but the combination of the three justifies Ophelia’s madness. The use of these three tragic events in Ophelia’s life makes her madness reasonable. The first event to happen that changes Ophelia’s demeanor is her relationship problems with her boyfriend, Hamlet. In Act III, Scene I of the play, Ophelia says to Hamlet “My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long
Hamlet could have caused Ophelia emotional agony due to their relationship ending or from killing her beloved father, which leads her to the action of killing Ledford 4 herself. Hamlet seems to be very complex and he may not be as deranged as Shakespeare makes everyone in the play to think he is. When readers think into detail about the way he could have possibly “mentally killed,” Ophelia or directed her to this spot in her life, we realize he is actually quite smart if it is part of his use of violence to seek revenge. Shakespeare constructs Hamlet to be a character that everyone can love and feel sorry for at times because we as readers can relate to him in some aspects.
That does not help the fact that Ophelia needs guidance and wisdom. Her father never her gave that to her during his lifetime. He was so infatuated with making sure his children do not mess up his agenda, that he totally threw their needs as humans to the side. Ophelia never learned how to cope with struggles that come up during one’s lifetime. Ophelia also lets her relationship with hamlet dictate her self worth.
When Ophelia returns all his letters and gifts he tells her that he has never loved her and that she should “get thyself to a nunnery.” This is one example how his mood changes throughout the play. Then after all this her father, Polinous, is murdered by Hamlet. The Hamlet is sent away to England All of these actions result in her feeling such stress that she becomes insane in the end.
Ophelia goes mad throughout the story. She is overwhelmed by the loss of her father and the rejection of Hamlet. Her character is seen spiraling down a dark path that also ends in death. Ophelia is depicted as not having control over her actions; speaking and acting erratically. While Hamlet is speaking erratically and behaving oddly, he still maintains control over his actions and movement throughout the story.
I believe that Ophelia’s act was that of despair. Ophelia suffered a great deal of emotional trauma throughout the course of the play. The man she loves viciously rejects her before leaving Denmark, which leaves her feeling betrayed and heavy-hearted. Not only this but, Hamlet is believed to have gone insane and was the one who took her father’s life. With all of this going on, her brother and confidant, Laertes is off in England.
When we consider each character at the beginning and end of this play, they were all impacted negatively—some more than others—by their psychological thought processes. Representing femininity, Ophelia was driven to the point of death that was deemed suicide by the
Her displays of madness have become more and more prevalent by now in the book. She speaks in rhymes prances around the castle, and hands out “flowers” that are just weeds. In addition, she sings songs that make you question whether she is all there. She sings “He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone, At his head a green-grass tuft; At his heels a stone” (4.4 30-33). Ophelia’s descent into madness is a gradual but sure
In “Hamlet” William Shakespeare uses the character Ophelia to get to the men around her. She’s portrayed as a weak, trusting woman that tells her father and brother everything. They see her as a virtuous, unsuspecting, loyal daughter. Hamlet sees her differently. He sees her as an object, easily disposable.
Saying this, Hamlet’s behavior towards Ophelia is crude, rough, and full of anger. Despite Hamlet’s harsh treatment towards Ophelia, he really did love her, but because she was not his main focus, the
She suffers from an emotional breakdown because of the treatment of the one person she loves (Hulbert et al., 2006). "How now, Ophelia! You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said; we heard it all"(III.i:181-183), cruelly, in this excerpt, her father Polonius does not seem to understand the emotional situation in which he has put his daughter in nor to comprehend the damage he has caused to Ophelia and Hamlet 's relationship. He does not care about his daughter 's happiness; all he cares about is himself, and pleasing the king. Ophelia is unable to apprehend the dominance of her father as she obeys him blindly even in scheming against her beloved Hamlet.
Ophelia is grieving the loss of her father after Hamlet kills him. Ophelia doesn't know that Hamlet killed her father. But Ophelia has gone mad from learning about her father's death. Also, after Hamlet telling Ophelia that she needs to go to a nunnery, Ophelia is a little bit discouraged. She is discouraged because Hamlet had told her before that if Ophelia would sleep with him that they would get married.
Ophelia is often thought of as one of the most obscure characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This is the result of her voice throughout the play only being heard in response to the voice of others and often dismissed as opaque nonsense. In turn, this leaves the audience open to depict her mute and physical interactions in a way which will correspond with their own thoughts and reasoning, forming Ophelia into much more well-rounded character than that of which we see in the text. As Showalter states in her essay, Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism, “there is no ‘true’ Ophelia […] but perhaps only a Cubist Ophelia of multiple perspectives, more than the sum of all her parts,” (Showalter 297). If you agree with Showalter, you’ll believe that in order for one to fully understand Ophelia’s
At the beginning of the play, Ophelia didn’t have the strongest mind in the room, but she certainly wasn’t broken as she was towards the end of the tragedy. There were certainly clues of Ophelia’s downfall, as she was easily broken and constantly used as a political tool instead of being treated as a human being. Shakespeare has the reader notice this, which makes them uneasy from the start about Ophelia’s character. There are constant moving parts in this play, most of which have the consequence of being negative to Ophelia. The suspense in the play builds regarding Ophelia’s character when Hamlet admits that he never loved her, making the reader worry about the girl since it was cruel and Ophelia truly loves Hamlet.