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).
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.
At the top of Act Three Polonius forces Ophelia to return Hamlet's letters and renounce his affections. Ophelia obeys, but her action sends Hamlet into a fit of misogynistic rage. Soon after, Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius.
This disorder has been triggered by the "unnatural death" of Denmark's figurehead, soon followed by a raft of murder, suicide, revenge and accidental deaths. Hamlet is fascinated by death throughout the play. Deeply rooted in his character, this obsession with death is likely a product of his grief.
Ophelia was also grieving over her father's, Polonius, death. Ophelia's death results from Hamlet's madness and his telling Ophelia that she needs to go to a nunnery. The cause of Ophelia's suicide was mainly from Hamlet's madness. Hamlet's madness came first from seeing the ghost of his father.
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.
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.
And, since death is both the cause and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justice—Claudius's murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet's quest for revenge, and Claudius's death is the end of that quest.
Ophelia's clothing carried her afloat for a time, but eventually she sank to her death. Laertes finds his grief uncontrollable, and he runs out in a rage. Claudius and Gertrude follow him, ostensibly to quell his anger.
It's sad because Hamlet does have genuine affection towards her. Unfortunately, because Hamlet has the Oedipus Complex, his love for Ophelia couldn't develop since he became obsessed with his mother. Later on in Act 3, Scene 1, Ophelia's father, Polonius, asks Ophelia to return Hamlet's love letter to him.
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.
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.
The significance of Ophelia's madness is to signify her losing two of the most important men in her life, Polonius and Hamlet.
In Act 4 Scene 7, Queen Gertrude reports that Ophelia had climbed into a willow tree (There is a willow grows aslant the brook), and that the branch had broken and dropped Ophelia into the brook, where she drowned. Gertrude says that Ophelia appeared "incapable of her own distress".
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.
How is Ophelia's death foreshadowed? Ophelia's death is foreshadowed in Act 2, Scene 1 of Hamlet. She is talking to her father about Hamlet's madness. Her madness, which leads to her death, is predicted in this scene.
What does Hamlet insist at Ophelia's funeral? His grief for Ophelia is forty thousand times that of Laertes' grief. How does Laertes die? He is cut by his own poisoned blade.
Ophelia was completely devastated over her father's death, "He is dead, Gone to thy deathbed, He will never come again." When she is introduced as being mad in the play in Act IV, scene 5, she makes many references to her father's death through a song she sings.
Hamlet. "Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity." That makes calamity of so long life."
One can name them as themes but it should be remembered that all each Hamlet theme interacts and resounds with all the others. Here are brief accounts of a selection of the major Hamlet themes of revenge, corruption; religion, politics, appearance and reality, and women.
Hamlet initially argues that death would indeed be preferable: he compares the act of dying to a peaceful sleep: "And by a sleep to say we end / The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to."
Sweet and innocent, faithful and obedient, Ophelia is the truly tragic figure in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. "Her nature invites us to pity her misfortune caused not by any of her own self-initiated deeds or strategies"(Lidz 138).
Her death is "doubtful" (V. L227) because she is as bereft of motivation as she dies as is the infant being baptized. Whatever "intention" leads to her drowning, the church seems to rule that she has "Too much of water" (IV. vii.
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.