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.
In this way, Ophelia's drowning, surrounded by flowers with her last breath in song, is her surrender to her overwhelming femininity. In an ironic twist, her watery suicide, which plunges her into the impersonal eternal female essence, works to remind the characters of her humanity and individuality.
Ophelia's description cannot fail to evoke sympathy for him, be he truly mad or not. In addition, it is Ophelia's dramatic function to elucidate Hamlet's tragic flaw- his indecisiveness and inability to act. This leads to his downfall, and it is vital that the audience appreciate this.
The significance of Ophelia's madness is to signify her losing two of the most important men in her life, Polonius and Hamlet.
Laertes will duel with hamlet in a "friendly" fencing match & get an unbated sword & poison it as well as his drink. What dramatic purpose is served by having the news of Ophelia's death come when it does? Makes Laertes want to kill hamlet more.
(Which means that in the film, she dies the same way she does in Shakespeare's play—but this time by her own choice.) Meanwhile Ophelia chooses to leave a world that values vengeance over justice, and over love.
Hamlet, wondering who has died, notices that the funeral rites seem “maimed,” indicating that the dead man or woman took his or her own life (V.i.242). He and Horatio hide as the procession approaches the grave. As Ophelia is laid in the earth, Hamlet realizes it is she who has died.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 seems to know that Ophelia is helping her dad spy on him, and he accuses her (and all women) of being a "breeder of sinners" and orders Ophelia to a "nunnery" (3.1.
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.
Ophelia's madness stems from her lack of identity and her feelings of helplessness regarding her own life. While the death of Hamlet's father made him angry enough to want revenge, Ophelia internalized the death of her father as a loss of personal identity.
Tragic flaw: Ophelia has no control over her mind, body, and relationships, she doesn't think for herself.
Ophelia's tragic flaw is the loyalty she affords those she loves. This loyalty renders her incapable of emotionally handling his mistreatment, in addition to the demands of her father and brother.
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.
What rumours are circulating about Ophelia's death, according to the gravediggers? It was death by suicide.
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.
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.
In the movie, Ophelia does not die. Instead, after realizing that Hamlet's quest for revenge against King Claudius could prove hazardous to her own health — and deducing that she is pregnant with Hamlet's baby — Ophelia fakes her drowning death.
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 uses flowers as symbols of her deep sorrow and grief. She is very upset because her father, Polonius, has just been killed by Hamlet. Being a sensitive and intelligent young woman, Ophelia needs to express herself, and she does so by passing out flowers to the court in her seeming mad state of mind.