Ophelia
A grieving widow is desolate. An African American slave is tortured. A concubine is mistreated. These three victims of circumstances that they could not control are pitied. So are there any foundations based on whether one should pity another? The Oxford Dictionary defines pity as the sorrow for another's suffering or misfortune. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia rouses the pity of the audience because she is controlled, manipulated, abandoned, driven to insanity, which eventually leads to her atrocious death.Ophelia was completely controlled, flagrantly used, and verbally abused by the dominant men in her life: Polonius, Laertes, and Hamlet. Laertes was blatantly unsympathetic towards her relationship with Hamlet. He gravely advised her to protect herself and to not take Hamlet's display of affections as a promise of marriage. Polonius took a more forceful approach. He forbid Ophelia to see Hamlet again and also told her that she was foolish for thinking that Hamlet was sincerely in love with her: "you speak like a green g
Her loneliness and absolute indecision forced her through the threshold of insanity. People of the court thought that Ophelia was mad because of Hamlet's rejection and Polonius' death. Furthermore, she sang songs and pranced around. The subject of her songs alternated between her father's death and the romance between her and Hamlet. She was abandoned by all of those who controlled her: Hamlet rejected her, Polonius died, and Laertes left to France. She was left in solitary confinement. She had no one else to tell her what to think, or what to do. She lacked independence and the self-confidence to think for herself. "I do not know, my lord, what I should think." (Hamlet 1.3. 104). In this segment, she reponded to Polonius as an innocent maiden lost in utter confusion. "I think nothing, my lord." (Hamlet 3.2 119). She was raised to do what she was told and to let others make decisions for her. As a young woman, she was robbed of her innocence, as a submissive daughter, she was mistreated, and as one of Shakespeare's most tragic characters, she was pit
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 721
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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