Hamlet What Causes Ophelia to Term Paper

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Throughout the play Shakespeare presents Ophelia as the symbol of innocence who is destroyed by the evil and harshness of the world; which has its origins in the murder of the King. We experience her slide towards insanity in terms of the terrible predicament of her situation. It is also tragically ironic that the real cause or her madness is the murder of Hamlet's father, which has also driven Hamlet towards madness for revenge. Once Ophelia find that the father has been murdered by Hamlet, this pushes her over the edge and she loses contact with reality. This is portrayed in the pathetic nonsensical songs that she sings, which suggests that her loss of faith in Hamlet and the murder of her father have destroyed her senses. "He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone..." (IV.V.29-30).

The madness of Hamlet however is the centre around which the play revolves and is extremely complex to analyze briefly.

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Shakespeare portrays the young Hamlet as an intelligent man who is aware that he is surrounded by manipulating and underhanded people and that he can only find the truth and revenge his father by adopting the pretence of an "antic disposition" or madness. His madness is rational and calculated, while Ophelia's insanity is emotional ands arises mainly for the inability to understand the changes in people whom she previously trusted and loved. The subplot of Polonius' murder and its affect on Ophelia therefore adds depth and structure to the main plot and Hamlet's feigned madness. There is also the more complex issue of whether, in the process of pretending to be mad, Hamlet in fact loses contact with reality and that the events that he initiates eventually drives him to a form of madness. The madness of both Ophelia and Hamlet and interrelated in that they are different dimensions of the larger tragedy of the play.....

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