The Tragedy of Hamlet - Essay Example

Ophelia was not completely sane, particulars of how she died to show that her bereavement was a calamity, if not an incidental one.
Ophelia’s entire world is devastated after her father perishes, because of her former at-odds allegiances to her father (who had never accepted Hamlet’s association with Ophelia) and Hamlet at this time having murdered him. After her father’s killing, she dialogues a lot of death, plus her lunacy is ostensible when she sings in an utterly demented way:

He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone
White his shroud as the mountain snow–
Landed all with sweet flowers;
Which bewept to the ground and did not go
With true-love showers
- Act 4, Scene 5, line 37

Here Ophelia is lamenting her father’s demise. She’s placed in an awful state – what do you do when your partner murders your dad? One would reason that the contradictory sentiments and ridiculous manners before her bereavement would propose that she took her own life. Ophelia’s dad had been slain by Hamlet; anybody placed in that condition would probably have contemplations of recklessness. Ophelia’s engagements in the scenes moving up to her demise propose it, but it was caused by a dreadful accident. If Ophelia’s intentions were suicidal, she would probably either take toxicant or cut herself with a knife, as they are both swift and tranquil; drowning is not generally the preferred routine of suicide – it is protracted and agonizing. Observing the quotes from the script telling Ophelia’s demise, it can be shown that Ophelia did not originally commit suicide:

QUEEN: There is a willow grows askant the brook…
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like while they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her distress…
- Act 4, Scene 7, line 190

It states that “an envious sliver broke” which denotes a branch halted, which made Ophelia fall into the stream. Hence, Ophelia did not plunge. If Ophelia had for some peculiar motive decided to kill herself by diving into the river, she wouldn’t have carried the branch down with her.
Though Ophelia’s demise first appears to be suicide, construing the script carefully
illustrates that it was not intentional. Suicide might probably have traversed Ophelia’s thoughts, because of the condition that she was in, plus given the gamble, she might have decided to commit suicide afterward. In the manner that she did die, her demise seems to have been a misfortune.
The account of Ophelia’s demise embraces more evidence about her engagements as she sank. However, that does not reveal that she did not desire it. The expression “Her clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like awhile they bore her up” delivers a very influential appearance of Ophelia, spread out and dying. The agony and sorrow that she was in was no doubt a burden she would like to be freed from, and possibly once the tree branch had shattered, and she had dropped into the river she thought that what she had not had the nerve to do earlier had just been completed for her. She possibly surrendered to the streams of the water and chose to let herself perish. Read More