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Ophelia Daughter to the now dead Lord Polonius, killed by her lover Hamlet. Distraught by the death of father and the oss of her lover, Ophelia has been played for a fool from the beginning by Laertes and Polonius. With their deception she has been tricked to believe that Hamlet was nothing more that a player and did not really love her. Believing this, she then returns his gifts, while being spied on by the King and Polonius, to see if he really is mad or if it's just that he is in love, in doing this Hamelt now has figured out that Ophelia has betrayed him and the trust between them is gone. As the play goes on, her dismay grows as Hamlet, too, is using her but as the butt of his jokes, as seen in the "mouse trap". Already emotionally unstable, due to the fact that Hamlet is no longer with her, she now takes her final dive into insanity with death of her father at the hand of Hamlet. Kept as the crazy would, in a padded room, but in the majesty of Denmark's castle. What lies before her is certain doom. In the beginning of the play it seems that Hamlet and Ophelia have a real future together as being, possible, King and Queen of Denmark, but this is all dashed due to the new King and his greed for power. Under the advice of the King, Polonius now pursues Ophelia to stop what is happening between her and Hamlet. So in the end that both of them are no more. She ends her own life. Ophelia was always the victum in this play. From the beginning she was told that to think and the real reason, I think, of her demise was because she could never think for herself. She was nothing more than an echo of her father and the King. So in the end Ophelia could not survive this outragous fortune and "to die; to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end" was her decision. |
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