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Old Nov 30, 2007, 05:57 PM
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Perna Perna is offline
Pandita-in-training
 
Member Since: Sep 2006
Location: Maryland
Posts: 27,289
How is suicide off topic :-)

I like the "problems" and possibilities of Hamlet. There's a lot to learn about one's self. It's like a puzzle, who is trying to do what and causes what and why, etc.

I don't think Ophelia was a threat, more everybody's pawn. I think she "allowed" herself to die/be murdered/committed suicide. Gertrude didn't help her and, as another woman, was in the best position to do so but the men drove her to it with her not being able to control her own lives and they failed to pay her enough mind to "support" her. Hamlet was thinking only of himself when he "rejected" her, made her leave him (as in "Get thee to a nunnery! Go!. . .") her brother didn't think of her at all and her father didn't arrange for her care should he die. But, I think she was a pawn in the "play" between Hamlet and Claudius, that Claud thought Hamlet loved her so did away with her to "really" unbalance him?

But think about Ophelia's "surroundings"/traumas, upbringing and whole life and compare it to your own at the moment? What would you have had Ophelia do to keep from killing herself/being murdered, etc.? Hamlet won't marry her and make her the next King. She has no mother, Gertrude won't take on that role now that her father is dead. Her brother is doing "boy" things and not thinking about his sister at all (I have three older brothers, been there, done that :-) She has no money or power or anything. How do you keep up hope in such a situation and was she "wrong" to suicide?
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