Why does Ophelia go insane? Does anything she says make sense?

In the fourth act of Hamlet, Ophelia is insane, but the cause of her slipped sanity is not clear.While it is obvious that Ophelia is grieving over the death of her father, Polonius, as Horatio says, she hears tricks in the world and beats her heart.

The evidence shows that she is grieving over a relative with a white or grayed head of hair, as she sings in one of her many songs.This line directly references an older man and because of this detail, Polonius's death has obviously taken its toll on Ophelia, causing her to spout such wild and wretched songs.I would give you some violets, but they withered when my father died.They say a made a good end, as she is constantly fixating on the death of Polonius, so much so that every single thing reminds her of him.Her brother Laertes is the one she is talking to, but she does not know who he is.She doesn't recognize her brother because Polonius was such a vital figure in her life.

It is possible that the explicit sexual references in her songs account for her obsession with Hamlet as well as her grief over the death of her father.There is a strange reference to a promiscuous or simply flighty man who promises love (or sex here with the word "cock") but backs out.This is compounded on by a following line, "You promised me to wed, so would I 'a' done, by yonder sun, / An thou hadst not come to my bed."Though the man in the song has promised the speaker that they will soon wed, he has left her for no apparent reason and like Hamlet has broken his vows for reasons not known.In not requiting her love, Hamlet has broken her heart and her poor mind because she fixated upon Hamlet's "detestable" oath.

In Hamlet, there is a tragic character named Ophelia that is pitiable because of unfortunate circumstances that she has been put through.

We both wrote about her.You think that her suicide is due to her father's death and her relationship with Hamlet.I think Polonius is affected by how Hamlet treats her before she dies.I wonder if she would have reacted to the accident if her father had not died.Would she have done more to fight the current of the stream?Would her fate be the same?It is interesting to see that her father's death and the act of Hamlet led to her madness.I don't know which had more effect.There are a lot of questions generated by your post.Well written!

We both wrote about her.You think that her suicide is due to her father's death and her relationship with Hamlet.I think Polonius is affected by how Hamlet treats her before she dies.I wonder if she would have reacted the same way if her father had not died.Would she have done more to fight the current of the stream?Would her fate be the same?It is interesting to see that both Hamlet and her father caused her madness.I don't know which had more effect.There are a lot of questions generated by your post.Well written!

I thought your post was interesting because you had a lot to say about Ophelia.I agree with you that she killed herself because of her father's death and her relationship with Hamlet.I believe that Hamlet had a huge effect on her before she died.I think Hamlet was the last straw for her, so maybe she wouldn't have committed suicide.I think both her father's death and her relationship with Hamlet made her depressed enough to commit suicide.The fact that the water completely weighs her down and she doesn't even have a car is shocking and shows how depressed she was.

I wrote about her in your post, I really liked the points you brought up.I think she is under appreciated because of the complexity of her character.I think that the most obvious cause of her death is her father being murdered, but I agree that her obsession with Hamlet could be the reason.I never heard those lines of her song about Hamlet breaking his promise of marrying her.With all of the circumstances surrounding her, I think that she definitely did not fight her death for a purpose.I wondered if the plot would have changed if she reached out to her brother for comfort because he was so determined to avenge their father.Great points!

I think that Hamlet's madness is very different from that of Ofelia.Hamlet has a direct correlation to his father's death and the appearance of his ghost.Hamlet is troubled at the end of the play even though he is only faking madness.Ofelia's madness is a little more sudden.Ofelia almost falls into madness because she doesn't know why her father's death or the loss of her "boyfriend" is the cause.The natural order has been disturbed by the death of King Hamlet and Ofelia is a casualty in the war to get the state to not be so rotten.

Sam, I like your analysis of Ophelia.She is used at will by the men around her.In the beginning of the play, Hamlet loves her but her brother tells her to keep her distance.She is used by her father to test Hamlet.Due to what other people are telling her to do, she is forced to give up the one she loves, and he dies because of it.I believe that her loss of her loved ones is what causes her maddness.Hamlet ridiculed her and her father, I assume a person closest to her as there is no mention of a mother.I assumed her song implied that she had an intimate relationship with Hamlet and that he would marry her if she agreed to it.I thought the lack of purity was caused by the fleeing from marraige.Your post went in depth on a character I would have liked to discuss more in class, and it cleared up some myths for me.

Sam, I really enjoyed your post about what you considered to be Ophelia's madness.I also wrote about her death.I brought up her "mindless" singing in my post about her death, and I like that you included her singing.Since you are comparing and including it within the madness of Ophelia, I find myself second guessing whether or not it was her letting herself go or if she was in fact mad.Many of the other characters we have read about this semester are male, but Ophelia was portrayed to us as a female.Hamlet and Laertes jumped into her grave when she died.

I agree with you that Ophelia is a pitiable character in the play.The focus is on Hamlet and his crazy behavior, but I can see how he went crazy as well.I enjoyed your analysis and examples of how she viewed her loved ones' deaths.When I first read it, the first sign of madness was that Ophelia was singing and letting the heavy water pile on top of her and her clothing.I had originally thought that her death was a suicide, but after reading what you wrote, I think it's more like a mental illness.The loss of her father, brother, and lover is enough to make anyone angry.I pity her as a character because now she is her own person and Hamlet and her family are partly to blame.

I liked the points you made about her.Her madness stems from the death of her father.She is a tragic character because her character is so interesting.While reading this portion of the play, I felt bad for her because her songs show her slipping into further madness with a lot of bizarre sexually-laden lyrics.It is upsetting to know that it can happen to anyone.