Logic in Lunacy The path she chose to walk on was familiar to her as she had grown up going on walks there. Oh how she missed those days when life was so simple. When all she had to worry about was whether or not the flowers were in bloom. In current time, her father was dead and her lover had betrayed her, left her to suffer the heartache of grief alone. How she longed for his embrace! Yet she knew both of them were gone from her life for good which only sent her spiraling further into the pits of her despair. Searching for some sort of relief, she sang old hymns and climbed up the frail willow one of the branches snapped and she fell into the brook. She found the remedy to her despair at the bottom of the brook. Although her actions indicate she is completely and utterly insane, she is never truly unaware of what she is doing or saying. Ophelia’s madness begins as a way of getting people’s attention to make her voice known, but much like Hamlet, she gets lost in her own deception. It all starts with Ophelia’s honest desire to help Hamlet but she still …show more content…
She tells the King and Polonius “There’s something in his soul O’er which his melancholy sits on brood.” (III.1.178-179) She knows he is just grieving over the loss his father and his relationship with Ophelia, but she can tell there is something else there. There is something stewing not just in his mind, but in his soul and it is eating him up. The on brood portion is comparing to an egg preparing to hatch. Eggs will sometimes move or turn just prior to hatching and Hamlet’s sudden display of fake madness is hinting at the real insanity that will soon ensue. This is where Ophelia is first introduced to the idea of feigned madness. In Ophelia’s mind it is rather disturbing but the more she thinks on it the easier it is to see the appeal of fake
While her best friend was on the phone scolding her with nothing but the truth – her mind waffled from the conversation she was having on the phone
She has no mind of her own, if it isn’t a ludicrous amount of information being blared into her head, she won’t understand it. “What does it mean? It doesn’t mean anything! The Captain was right!” (Bradbury 72)
She has no memory of an entire month in which she was entirely under the influence of her inflamed brain (Callahan, 2012, pg.41). Therefore, a large section of this book is told from the perspective of an unreliable source, but this does not detract from this engaging novel’s message or
A major controversy that has divided the literature community for hundreds of years is the debate of whether Hamlet, in William Shakespeare’s well known tragedy Hamlet, is feigning madness or is actually mad. It can be proven though textual evidence that Hamlet is not insane and his feigned insanity is just a ruse to distract those around him from seeing his superior conscience, given to him though the late King of Denmark, which makes him more aware than the average citizen. The higher sense of consciousness separates Hamlet from the others because it makes him a thinker instead of a follower. This can be seen in his interactions with other characters and how his feigned insanity affects Ophelia, who is also a thinker. Hamlet’s feigned madness can be exemplified in his interactions
When Ophelia returns all his letters and gifts he tells her that he has never loved her and that she should “get thyself to a nunnery.” This is one example how his mood changes throughout the play. Then after all this her father, Polinous, is murdered by Hamlet. The Hamlet is sent away to England All of these actions result in her feeling such stress that she becomes insane in the end.
Madness was a reoccurring theme throughout the play and these were the two characters which portrayed it more than others. In Act 3 Scene 1 Hamlet encounters Ophelia and calls her “fair”, creating a calm atmosphere. Later Hamlet rapidly changes his attitude, raging towards Ophelia and telling her “Get thee to a nunnery” implying he loved her once but now denies her love. Hamlet was acting mad in front of her in an aggressive manner and says “God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another”, Hamlet is suggesting that all women are two faced. Hamlet finds out that this was a setup of Claudius and Polonius to spy on him, so they can find out if he is truly mad.
Crawford states that Shakespeare includes Hamlet’s fits of madness were deliberately used to make Claudius and his attendants confused and for them to think Hamlet’s mental health is deteriorating. Crawford analyzes, “The fact that he [Hamlet] has made it appear like real madness to many critics today only goes to show the wideness of his knowledge and the greatness of his dramatic skill” (Crawford. 1916. p 1.). Crawford states that Hamlet is merely acting insane and he is extremely clever for doing this.
It is seen both fake and real. Hamlet uses “madness” as a disguise, allowing him to get the information he needs about Claudius’ actions. He also uses it as an excuse for his actions, mainly Polonius’ murder. Claudius also uses it as an excuse to have him exiled instead of executed since Hamlet is very popular with the Danish people. In addition, though, you can see his genuine grief over the death of his father, and at one point says, “I know of late-
Like some how she was cleansed of her mistake, but later in the story Kaysen realizes that nothing died inside her and that her mistake stuck with her. Because she was depressed she start cutting or, as she called it in
She can’t accept the fact of Polonius’s death and doesn’t know what she should do next because no one would instruct her anymore. She also recalls that Hamlet had promised he would marry her, but now he had killed her father and betrayed her. Finally, Ophelia’s madness loses control and her sanity unravels which led to her death. She had no idea what herself was doing. She began to act strangely and sing weird songs all the time to express her emotion in her own way.
In the play, Hamlet, William Shakespeare reflects the common early modern beliefs and perspectives about madness by using the character development of the protagonist who feigns madness throughout the play. Given Hamlet 's status as a prince, current knowledge of madness during the time period, and the contrast of the different types of madness of other characters in the play, Elizabethan audiences would have found it plausible that Hamlet feigns madness as part of his plot to avenge his father 's death. This new historicist perspective steers the modern reader away from anachronistic psychological interpretations of the play. Hamlet’s status as a prince gives the character certain roles and expectations to fulfill, such as avenging his father’s
In Act III, scene i of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare, readers will come upon Ophelia’s soliloquy. After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have failed to find a reason as to why Hamlet is acting in a peculiar and mad way, Claudius is persuaded by Polonius that the reason for Hamlet’s madness is the broken romance between Hamlet and Ophelia. To prove this, Claudius and Polonius plan to spy on Ophelia’s meeting with Hamlet. During their conversation, Hamlet denies ever having loved her and curses her. Ophelia is left fretting over his sanity.
In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the idea of characters mimicking or doubling each other is prevalent throughout the text. However, the role of doubling characters and foiling characters indicate two different meanings throughout the play. Doubling characters indicates that the characters are similar in the way that they act, whereas foiling is often when two characters contrast or differ greatly from one another. Two of the most important characters in the play, Hamlet and Ophelia, double one another with their madness; however, Shakespeare uses their madness to show how crazy Elsinore is. Madness is described as the state of being mentally ill or in the state of frenzied, chaotic activity, and is also when one cannot be trusted which, is shown multiple times throughout the play.
Hamlet is a very diverse character that goes through several different emotional stages throughout the novel. Some think that he is depressed because of his father’s death, and some think that his breakup with Ophelia has made him go mad. Though Hamlet does seem out of control at times, it is because he is keeping a secret about his father’s death. The average person does not usually deal with the death of their parent well, and knowing that it was intentional makes Hamlet even more emotionally unstable. From the beginning of the novel, Hamlet proves to be very melancholy, and upset with his life.
While Amy was grieving over her son’s death and struggles to collect herself, her husband composed himself easily. When he tried to console Amy, she became infuriated at him for being calm after their son had died, as if he did not care about his existence. The two entered a heated argument, with the husband persuading his wife to not leave the conversation and to confront her problem. When Amy explains why she was so angry with her husband, she exclaimed, “‘Three foggy mornings and one rainy day will rot the best birch fence a man can build.’ Think of it, talk like that at such a time!