Grief In Hamlet

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The path to darkness is very familiar to the average media consumer. We see sadness and death in everything from books, to songs, to movies. Our everyday lives are filled with dark and depressing thoughts and events. Shakespeare was a late 1500s writer who was involved in some of the most influential pieces of literature ever written. According to biography.com, Shakespeare is often “considered the greatest dramatist of all time.” Hamlet is known to be one of Shakespeare’s most tragic plays and is filled with depression, sadness, and insanity. The Hamlet play consists of multiple characters that suffer from insanity. In developing the affects of grief and anger in Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes, Shakespeare suggests that the death of a loved …show more content…
It is reasonable for someone to mourn the loss of a loved one, but Hamlet takes his emotions too far in his quest to find out the true story behind his father’s death. Hamlet becomes depressed and mentally unstable with the fact that his father has past away recently and his mother married his uncle, who tells him that his grief for his father “’tis unmanly” (Shakespeare 9). The treatment he receives from his uncle and the quick remarriage of his mother drives Hamlet to believe that he was betrayed by his family and neither one of them cared about the late King Hamlet. Hamlet’s emotional instability brings him to “his canon ’gainst self-slaughter” (Shakespeare 10). The fact that Hamlet Hamlet After talking to the ghost who tells him to “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder,” Hamlet (Shakespeare 23). Unlike others characters of this play, “Hamlet[’s madness] comes from hatred” of the new King, Claudius, and the recent marriage of his mother to Claudius, his uncle (freecontentweb.com). Hamlet’s insanity is displayed in the play as his actions towards other people, primarily Ophelia, who is affected greatly by the actions of …show more content…
Ophelia’s madness is a result of her doing absolutely nothing wrong, in fact she does everything she is told to do by her father, Hamlet, and Laertes. The death of Ophelia is so tragic because “she gets destroyed by the patriarchal court culture” (shmoop.com). Ophelia’s insanity also stems from the change in relationship status with Hamlet, who has begun to treat Ophelia poorly ever sense he began his investigation on the death of his father. The death of Ophelia, as described by Gertrude, occurred “When down her weedy trophies and herself/Fell in the weeping brook” (Shakespeare 100). Gertrude explains that Ophelia fell into the river, hinting that her death was unintentional. Ophelia is controlled by the males in her life; Polonius, Hamlet, and Laertes. Shakespeare writes, “her garments, heavy with their drink,/ Pull’d the poor wretch” down into the river, like an outside force killed Ophelia. This outside force is a metaphor for the control that Polonius, Hamlet, and Laertes had on Ophelia, which ultimately killed her. Ophelia did not have the ability to make decisions for herself, rather to obey everyone else’s commands. Shakespeare writes how the restriction set on Ophelia’s actions were ultimately the agent of her death. Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia drive her beyond her limits, to
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