Hamlet Critical Lens Analysis

Helpless. The characters around Ophelia's life treat her as an infant who can't make any decisions on her own. The men in specific, look at her as a mere puppet. Her father and brother guide her to make the choices they see fit and she follows their advice even if she disagrees with it. Overall Ophelia is dehumanized and characterized as an object that is to be manipulated and taken advantage of to help others achieve their goals. Whose emotions are not taken into consideration. The entirety of Shakespeare’s Hamlet highlights and rejects the sexist treatment of Ophelia and depicts it in a negative light.

The ability for a person to both follow the wishes of others or deal with challenges while preserving his or her own morals, mental wellbeing and overall health is a balance that is hard to achieve. Often times the only way that people can effectively deal with conflicts in their lives is to throw away their instinct of self-preservation. Although Hamlet and Ophelia are lovers who claim to love one another, the emphasis that they place on their own wellbeing while dealing with demands varies greatly. Ophelia always puts her own wellbeing last, whereas Hamlet was willing to use Ophelia’s mental wellbeing in order to protect himself. While some similarities exist between Hamlet and Ophelia’s sense of self-preservation, the differences are exceedingly

Though any character in Shakespeare's Hamlet could easily be the epitome of lunacy, there is no character more obviously unsound that Ophelia, whose personality is the embodiment of codependency. Every time Ophelia speaks the symptoms are apparent as she can not seem to converse about anything but men. This is stereotypical of women at the time,in society as much as in literature. One can not fully blame Ophelia however as she is a product of her time period and used by the other characters. Ophelia’s character not only confirms Hamlet's suspicions about women but serves as pawn in the metaphorical chess game between Claudius and Hamlet. Thought it could be argued that her abuse by then men in her life has contributed to if not caused her codependency, however, the characters in the play seem to think that it is because of her own weakness. When Hamlet speaks the words “frailty thy name is woman,” he was not referring to Ophelia, he may just have easily have been. There are two characters in particular that Ophelia tends to cling to, her father

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a revenge calamity which concentrates on his wish and effort to solve his father’s murder. Throughout the course of the play, the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia could be described as a rollercoaster. Although Ophelia is not in every single scene in Hamlet, her impact on the play is highly noted. One way a reader could interpret her presence is because of how tragic her experiences in life is. She experiences the misfortune of love and security, but in order for her death to be truly tragic, she has to come to terms with the realization of her powerlessness without the men in her life. In her madness, Ophelia eventually does make this realization and because of her lack of alternatives, she accepts death.

Ophelia is such a typical character representing for Shakespeare’s intelligence that throughout the play, she gradually becomes a smart woman. At the beginning of the play, Ophelia is an obedient daughter who always follows her family’s direction: “I shall obey, my lord” (Act 1, sc 4). However, at the end of the play, Ophelia is aware of everything that happens around her. She gives each person in the court different followers with the different meanings. Her action expresses that she is a clever woman. Moving on to the Queen Gertrude, she is also marked to show how nimble the author is in the way he builds character. As a queen of Denmark, Gertrude seems to be powerful during her dominance. However, she is a weak person that although living her whole life with a guy who killed her husband, she still does not justify his mysterious lie. Otherwise, Gertrude is always a good wife who unthinkably obeys her husband: “I shall obey you” (Act 3, sc 1). Until she realizes that Claudius is a killer, everything is too late once she drinks the poison.

One definition of madness is “mental delusion of the eccentric behavior arising from it.” However, as Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Much madness is divinest Sense/ To a discerning Eye.” In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the main character, Prince Hamlet, shows apparent madness which proves to serve an important role throughout the story. This erratic behavior consists of his seemingly senseless dialogues, his loss of care for Ophelia, and his increasingly aggressive nature. Such behavior often proves justified by the play’s audience due to its convincing nature despite Hamlet’s predisposition towards insanity.

In great works of literature throughout history and time, there has always been a general understanding of what a happy ending is. Happy endings - as perceived by scholars of times past and by society today - are joyful sessions where a heroine or hero saves a damsel in distress, true love is found through the toughest of circumstances, or a moral lesson is learned through acts of kindness, loyalty, or bravery. However; in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, the protagonist of the play is facing death and has, finally, after a protracted and tedious journey, avenged his father’s death and has sated himself to realize and accept his own personal peace. Even as Hamlet is dying, his true love and what is left of his family dead, his kingdom being invaded

According to researchers, every 16.2 minutes, at least one person attempts suicide. Suicide is never the answer, but there are multiple characters in today’s literature that show the impact of the events leading up to the ultimate decision. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia takes her life because of the actions the individuals around her did. But, that is not the argument. The argument is that the people around Ophelia are not to blame for her committing suicide, it is Ophelia’s own fault, prompted by the madness surrounding her.

Women have been dominated and manipulated by men for many years. In Hamlet, the character Ophelia was living under the demands of her father. She didn’t actually decide anything for herself. She obeyed every demand she received from her father Polonius because for her it was a form of loyalty. When Polonius was killed by Hamlet, she became vulnerable since she no longer had the person who decided everything for her. Her life in an instant became a disaster because it was Hamlet the one she loved, the person who had killed her father. Ophelia’s death is debated as an accident or a suicide, but I believe it was an accident that ended in a suicide since she lost her father and Hamlet killed him.

There has always been something absolutely mesmerizing about a madman, be he present in a dark psychological thriller, a heart wrenching drama or otherwise. As a product of its time, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is in no dissension of this fact, with audiences young and old enraptured by the title character’s violent insanity and his love interest’s frail and tragic instability. However, as a product of its time and its time alone, there are certainly things lost in translation when the play is presented to a less than medieval audience. This is why it is always so important that the play be reinterpreted for the audience that will be viewing it. Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet is most definitely a product of its time as well, a fine example of Shakespeare

During the Elizabethan period, the role of women in society was very different from what it is today. According to the system of patriarchal society that dictated that women were inferior to men, they had to obey the male figures in their lives. The woman was seen as the weaker sex either physically or emotionally which meant that it was entirely dependent on her husband if married and members of his family if single. Moreover, in the Elizabethan theater, women were not allowed to play because of this hierarchy. Therefore, they were replaced by men disguised as women. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, published in 1601, women play a very special role. First, it should be noted that there are only two women in the room: Gertrude and Ophelia. By developing the role

As the innocent victim of Hamlet’s feigned madness, Ophelia’s insanity is a product of her inability to cope with Hamlet and her father’s death. Her songs show hidden grief and sorrow; her flowers represent the fact that beneath the innocent exterior, there is a weakness or flaw in everyone. Hamlet was able to look past his grief for his father’s death, but he caused someone he loves to be in pain. Whether it is the frailty of women, sorrow, or death, anything, including love, can appear to be pleasant, but can be the ultimate cause of a person’s

Sexism has prevailed all throughout the world for all of time. Constantly deemed inferior to men, women have filled the position of the second class citizen. Accordingly, many of William Shakespeare’s plays are male dominated and fit this timeless mold. This mold assures that women are merely tools and are nearly never allowed to work for themselves. In Hamlet, Ophelia and Gertrude, fit this idea perfectly. Because of this, Ophelia and Gertrude are no more than tools to explain and progress the male agenda. Men not only assert their power physically, but also mentally over these two women.

In a nutshell, a tragedy is a form of drama established on human suffering, generally concerns the downfall of the protagonist and ending on a despondent tone. “Hamlet” is more specifically classified as a “Shakespearean tragedy”; in which key differences consist of the chorus being replaced by comedic scenes, the play having several subplots and the protagonist facing a tragic death. Additionally “Hamlet” can be categorized as a revenge tragedy, as partly the plot is about a quest for vengeance.