Engl 1400 - Tragedies of Love!

Name      :  POOJA KRISHNA

Class       :  ENGL 1400

Instructor: Marilyn Simon

Date        : July 14th, 2015

                             The  Tragedies  of  LOVE!

        Throughout the history of many famous personalities, Revenge has taken an outstanding role and created numerous problems in each of their lives. It is just not only about the famous personalities but even in our world, many people struggle with family problems. Problems do occur in everybody's life. None of us can expect our entire life to move on very smooth without facing any hurdles. But very few of the lives are as bad as William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet, being one of the best plays written by Shakespeare gives us various information's that is filled with many uncertainties relating to different issues behind the  plot . Hamlet, being the main character, The Prince, loses his father forever. His mother, Gertrude immediately marries Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet is completely broken when he comes to know about the death of his father. He feels very helpless and lonely. But when he gets to know from a ghost about the murder of his father by his step father, Claudius, He decided to dedicate his life, his each and every second of taking revenge for his father's death. He is motivated to kill Claudius for two reasons. One that he killed his father and the other one because He married hamlet's recently widowed mother. Even though at the end of the play Hamlet dies in the process of killing Claudius, He finds justice by killing Claudius and that he feels his father can now rest in peace.

      According to me, the most sensitive characters in this play are Hamlet and his girlfriend Ophelia. Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius and the sister of Laertes. Ophelia happens to be a very sensitive girl with lots of values for her family members and relationship. Ophelia is very beautiful, gentle and loyal. She is a character that would obey anyone whom she trusts. Hamlet admires her beauty at first and then falls deeply in love with her. Ophelia is definitely innocent but people take her for granted and try to wash her brain very easily. Both the characters of  Hamlet and Ophelia have lots to deal with emotions. In the beginning of the play, Ophelia and Hamlet are shown to be the most loving ones. Their love to each other is unconditional. Hamlet, after losing his father, finds Ophelia to be the next person in his life who can understand him very well. Ophelia is deeply in love with Hamlet and believes that his love for her is very sincere and true. As we know that everything has an end and nothing lasts forever, the same thing happened with their relationship. Even though Hamlet and Ophelia did not have any problems in their relationship personally. There must always be a spoilt brat or what  I would like to call as a  'Villain' in everybody's love life. It was just not villain, but villains in Ophelia's life. And they were none other than her father Polonius and her brother Laertes. Actually, she wasn't wrong. Ophelia is a girl who doesn't know the evil minds of others. She blindly believes her loved ones. When her brother Laertes says that Hamlet is not true to her and that he is just sexually interested in her, She never believes him. She knows that Hamlet's love for her is very true. Even her father, Polonius asks her to be away from Hamlet and not to meet him. Polonius says that, he feels Hamlet is emotionally unstable. Being a father, he wants his daughter to be pure and not to have any pre-marital sex. They also try to convince her saying that, Hamlet cannot marry her as he doesn't have the rights to choose the one he can marry. After hearing all these, with great confusion, she says 'I shall obey, my Lord'. Ophelia is found betraying her only true love, Hamlet by doing this. She seems to do as she is told, even if it is strongly against what her heart wishes for. May be, she could have tried to defend Hamlet because she knew that he was true to her. But, what else can she do? She is a WOMAN. She lives in a society that is been dominated by Men. She is caught between her father's and brother's restrictive instructions and that of her love for Hamlet. She has to choose either of them anyways leading that to ditch one among her two reasons for her dilemma. If she hadn't agreed to do this, then maybe Hamlet and Ophelia would have lived happily forever.

      Ophelia starts to develop negative feelings on Hamlet. Polonius has imprinted all those negative thoughts about Hamlet on her mind that she is not able to overcome them instead like a fool believing them. Poor Hamlet, when he encounters the ghost and comes to know about the murder of his father, He immediately wanders and comes in search of Ophelia. He looked at her like he wanted to say something that how terribly something had happened with him. But, she never talks to him. He was broken. He had lots of feelings with him that he wanted to share with her. May be she could have understood those instead she went to Polonius and told him that she was afraid if Hamlet's behavior. Polonius immediately came to a conclusion that Hamlet was mad just like how Claudius, Hamlet's uncle and step father thought about him.