Sunday, May 15, 2011

OPHELIA .

In John Everett Millais painting, it’s interesting that he uses bright colors despite the fact that the painting is portraying a suicide. He also uses a variety of flowers. I think the painter is trying to portray Ophelia’s personality through the colors and the flowers. Also her face expression shows a very hopeless girl; almost as if she is clueless about her death.

Personally I think Shakespeare wanted to represent Ophelia as a very weak girl. She was meant to be a girl who is greatly influenced of what others think of her and she is rather fragile and somewhat pathetic. In the article Frailty Thy Name is Woman, Ophelia is said to be “frequently analyzed in relationship to Hamlet, and her motivation seems dominated by the characters with whom she interacts until she is spins free in her madness.” I completely agree with this statement. Ophelia was never really her own character. She was only related to Hamlet or Laertes or others. She never really had her own dependent role being that she relied on the other characters for her role. Also the article mentions how the play doesn’t discuss Ophelia’s past in any way which is also true. The reader never knows about Ophelia’s mother or her everyday life.

I also think that Shakespeare wanted the reader to understand the idea that Ophelia purposely drowned herself. She’s gone absolutely mad over the fact that Hamlet has killed Polonius and I don’t blame her. She was in a tough spot being that Hamlet, the man she is in love with has killed her father. Although I don’t agree with her committing suicide, I can understand why she would go a little crazy. I felt very sorry for Ophelia.

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