Introduction: The play, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, follows the story of Hamlet shortly after the murder of his beloved father. Background: Hamlet discovers that Claudius, his stepfather and uncle, has poisoned his brother and his father's ghost wants his death to be avenged. Claudius uses Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Polonius, and Polonius' daughter Ophelia to spy on the young prince. This caused Hamlet to lose faith in his lover, Ophelia, and pretend to be mad to throw off the spies from his plan to kill his uncle and the new king. Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius during his first attempt to kill Claudius, which leads Ophelia to go mad herself. Ophelai is seen as “…a cult figure who embodies their turbulent hopes” (Romanska 485). Thesis Statement: The significance of Ophelia's madness is that it signifies the loss of two of the most important men in her life, Polonius and Hamlet. It is clear that Ophelia is grieving over the death of her father, Polonius, when Horatio says "She speaks much of her father, she says she feels..." (Shakespeare IV 4-5), but a secondary cause of Ophelia's madness could also be due to her failed relationship with Hamlet. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Topic Sentence: Ophelia begins her descent into madness, as her family possesses and oppresses her feelings, and the man she loves declares that he never made him love her. Furthermore, it alludes to her being a whore as she is supposed to "take you to a convent" which has a duality, more than meaning a place of Christian faith, this terminology also represented brothels. Furthermore, Hamlet also uses Ophelia to vent his hatred of women as a whole, furthering early modern patriarchal misogyny. He states that all women are liars and painted faces cannot be trusted. As a result, Ophelia's oppression drives her further and further into madness to the point of suicide, and this is the price for Ophelia as she is completely complacent with those around her. Furthermore, her father Polonius treats Ophelia as his possession, and also believes that Hamlet does not have the best intentions for Ophelia. However, although he agrees with Laertes that Ophelia is a "green girl", he takes a different position to his brother's claims. Polonius believes that Hamlet wishes to take her virginity and attempts to dissuade her from her love for him, thus introducing family devotion as Ophelia agrees not to see Hamlet again; he succumbs to his oppression as he states, "I will obey, my lord." Although "Polonius is deliberately indifferent to what his daughter feels," just as his brother is, Ophelia takes on the role of dutiful sister and daughter and agrees to end his romance. Polonius takes his patriarchal oppression further when he insists on listening when Ophelia returns the gifts Hamlet gave her during their affair. This further intrusion from her father shows, once again, his neglect of Ophelia's emotions, as she readily agrees to talk to a man who had not told him in a while that she had "been so scared." Evidence and Quotes: Evidence suggests that she is simply mourning her father is clear in the lines of her many songs and shows that she is mourning her father as in the lines "His beard as white as snow..." (Shakespeare IV 190-191). This line references her father because he was an older man and because of this detail it shows that Polonius' death took a toll on Ophelia's psyche causing her to sing bitter songs. There are further references to Ophelia's father, such as "I would give you someviolets, but they all withered when my father died", show Ophelia's destroyed mental state, as she is constantly fixated on the death of Polonius, so much so that everything reminds her of his disappearance (Shakespeare IV 180-181). Ophelia is taking it so much that she doesn't even recognize who she is talking to as her brother Laertes was such a vital figure in her life, she is mad beyond hope and therefore doesn't recognize her brother or anyone else she talks to. Comment: However, the sexual references in Ophelia's songs explain her obsession with the now mad Hamlet, as in "promising his love" to her at the beginning of the play and then being scorned, she is doubly heartbroken by his absence along with the death of his father. With lines like “Young men will do nothing if it comes to that…” could mean an oblique reference to a promiscuous man who promises love but backs out after a short while (Shakespeare IV 59-60). The line shortly after is: “You promised me to marry…” which could argue that Hamlet is the cause of his deteriorating mental state (Shakespeare IV 62-64). Although the man in the song has promised the speaker that they will marry soon, he has left her for no apparent reason, and like Hamlet's supposed claims of love and marriage to Ophelia, Hamlet has also broken those vows for reasons unknown to Ophelia . It is likely that Ophelia had become so fixated on breaking Hamlet's oath that by not returning her love, Hamlet had broken both her heart and her poor mind. Ophelia exists as a tragic character in Hamlet and is entirely pitiful due to the unfortunate circumstances she has been subjected to. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Concluding Paragraph: Perhaps if Ophelia had not lived in a world where social constructs and hierarchies dictated how she was to live her life, she would not have had to find peace only in death. It is our responsibility to build a world that is not held back by social constructs like gender or class to prevent the future deaths of people like Ophelia. It would be impossible to say that it was those social constructs that led to her death without all the natural references in Gertrude's monologue. Stripped of any reference, Gertrude's monologue says only that Ophelia, wearing a loose dress, fell. He sang and, "unable to distress himself", drowned. Everything else that is revealed hinges on nature references that give deeper insight into Ophelia's connection to nature and the conflicts that led to her anguish, madness, and death. This monologue proves that metaphors matter and provide a lot of information about what is happening just beneath the surface. References Dane, G. (1998). Read Ophelia's Madness. Specimens, 10(2), 405-423. (https://doi.org/10.1179/exm.1998.10.2.405)Bialo, C. (2013). Popular performance, the broadside ballad and Ophelia's madness. SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 53(2), 293-309. (10.1353/sel.2013.0014)Camden, C. (1964). On Ophelia's madness. Shakespeare Quarterly, 15(2), 247-255. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2867895)Bostrom, M. (1996). Women in Madness: Ophelia and Lady Macbeth. Articulate, 1(1), 6. (https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/articulate/vol1/iss1/6/)Gates, S. (2008). Assembling Ophelia's Fragments: Gender, Gender, and Revenge in Hamlet. Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 34(2), 229-248. (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA208534875&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00982474&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ebe87edc0)IntroductionIt should follow an "inverted" triangle format , meaning that the writer should start by going generally and introducing the text and the author or topic under discussion, then.