On top of this, Hamlet, who Ophelia loved, was also the perpetrator of her father's death. These events eventually lead for Ophelia to commit suicide, who Hamlet grieves over and feels guilty, regretting what he said of not loving her and killing her father.
Grief-stricken and outraged, Hamlet bursts upon the company, declaring in agonized fury his own love for Ophelia. He leaps into the grave and fights with Laertes, saying that “forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / make up my sum” (V.i.254–256).
In conclusion, Hamlet definitely had a massive part to play in Ophelia's death. However, he was not the only one to blame. Laertes did hardly anything wrong, other than going when she needed him most, which was not his decision to make but Claudius's.
Ophelia's death symbolizes a life spent passively tolerating Hamlet's manipulations and the restrictions imposed by those around her, while struggling to maintain the last shred of her dignity.
It is Ophelia's betrayal that perhaps breaks Hamlet the most, she is often considered to be the purest and most innocent of the characters within the text, and her disloyalty to Hamlet does only arise out of higher loyalty to her father.
Their particular form of madness was more related to hysteria -- an affliction which was considered to be particularly feminine. Clinically speaking, Ophelia's behavior and appearance are characteristic of the malady the Elizabethans would have diagnosed as female love-melancholy, or erotomania.
Tragic flaw: Ophelia has no control over her mind, body, and relationships, she doesn't think for herself.
Q: What does Ophelia represent in Hamlet? Ophelia represents femininity in Hamlet. Hamlet acts out his aggression toward his mother on her, which finally leads to her madness.
From the death of Ophelia, we naturally pass to the scene of her burial. Without interrupting the action of the drama, her funeral serves as a brief respite for the audience before the breathless on-rush of the fast approaching and final catastrophe.
Laertes must have been clued in to Ophelia's pregnancy. Polonius inadvertently admits to such a claim. Polonius's knowledge is revealed when Hamlet discloses that he knows Ophelia, his lady love might be pregnant. Check out the words that Hamlet uses when he confronts Polonious.
Hamlet is cruel to Ophelia because he has transferred his anger at Gertrude's marriage to Claudius onto Ophelia. In fact, Hamlet's words suggest that he transfers his rage and disgust for his mother onto all women. He says to Ophelia, “God has given you one face and you make yourselves another.
Ophelia's Death
Perhaps the most tragic death in "Hamlet" is one the audience doesn't witness. Ophelia's death is reported by Gertrude: Hamlet's would-be bride falls from a tree and drowns in a brook. Whether or not her death was a suicide is the subject of much debate among Shakespearean scholars.
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.
Some see Ophelia's death as an accident; others see it as a suicide resulting from the accumulation of a series of unfortunate events: her rejection by her boyfriend, her father's murder, and her possible pregnancy.
Unlike the other characters in the play, Ophelia died from loving too much, being too innocent, and too pure. She died because of her virtues, while others perished because of their faults. She did nothing wrong, but so many wrongs were dealt to her.
The significance of Ophelia's madness is to signify her losing two of the most important men in her life, Polonius and Hamlet.
In the painting, Ophelia is surrounded by colorful flowers and plants, symbols of life and continuity, and her body seems to be one with the water; this signifies the concept of returning to the earth when one dies.
While she lives in the same patriarchal society that demands that she subjugate herself to her father and her brother until she is married, Ophelia has fallen in love with Prince Hamlet.
While she lives in the same patriarchal society that demands that she subjugate herself to her father and her brother until she is married, Ophelia has fallen in love with Prince Hamlet. There is strong evidence that she has even had sexual relations with him.
In the play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius and the love interest of Hamlet, is depicted as a young and beautiful woman who is innocent, virtuous, and loyal. Ophelia is the innocent victim in Hamlet and the specific attributes that she has lead to her tragic death.
Her character in the play represents femininity and fragility. She also seems to serves as a way for Hamlet to express the aggression, which he feels toward his mother. Ophelia is an important character in Hamlet because she shows the audience a frail heart.
Her frailty and innocence work against her as she cannot cope with the unfolding of one traumatic event after another. Ophelia's darling Hamlet causes all her emotional pain throughout the play, and when his hate is responsible for her father's death, she has endured all that she is capable of enduring and goes insane.
The interpretation which best fits the evidence best is that Hamlet was suffering from an acute depressive illness, with some obsessional features. He could not make a firm resolve to act. In Shakespeare's time there was no concept of acute depressive illness, although melancholy was well known.
SARAH: Ophelia made a wreath of flowers and attempted to hang it on the branches of the willow. While doing so, she slipped and fell into the brook.
In addition to the play ending with the death of Hamlet and a host of others, Hamlet himself is a classic tragic protagonist. As the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet is a figure whose actions matter to an entire kingdom, which means the play's events reverberate through the entire world of the play.