Ophelia is one of the most intricate characters in the play Hamlet written by William Shakespeare. Ophelia is a young teen, who is in love with Hamlet as soon as you find out about her. From what you learn she has always had a longing to be married to Hamlet. As the story continues on you will found out that, Ophelia, still madly in love, gets more complex. As new intriguing events and careless mistakes happen, where does this leave the young Ophelia?

            She comes in act I scene iii, she is talking to her brother about her love for Hamlet. Of course her brother Laertes is leaving and can no long keep an eye on her heart. “I shall the effect of this good lesson keep as watchmen of my heart” (1.3.45-46). She said this to reassure that no mishaps will go on while Laertes takes his leave for France.  In Laertes leaving Ophelia alone, she could not pursue Hamlet even further as she had wished. When talking to her father Polonius she says “he hath my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection to me” (1.3.100-1). This is in the scene where Hamlet had supposedly grabbed Ophelia by the wrist, and told her that he does love her.

            Later on in the play, Polonius and Claudius come up with this great plan to see what is wrong with Hamlet. The thing is Polonius thinks that Hamlet is just love sick. So in this plan, they use Ophelia to there advantage. They place her in the corridor and make her pretend to read a book as soon as Hamlet passes by. This is when Hamlet is in his “crazy” stage after seeing the ghost. After telling Ophelia to go to a nunnery, and telling her that he never did love her, I believe this is the “breaking” point in our poor Miss Ophelia. She begins to burst into tears over the torn letters that he had given her and cries out “Heavenly powers, Restore him!” (3.1.145). At this point in time you can just imagine all of the questions that are running through Ophelia’s mind. Such as “Why is this happening to me?” or “Did he ever love me?”  Then after all of this nonsense, Hamlet toys with her boggled mind even further.

            During the time of Hamlets mischievous plan to catch Claudius in the act, Hamlet meets up with Ophelia. He just then straight up asks Ophelia, “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?” (3.2.112). during this point and time, Ophelia accepts that Hamlet is the way that he is and allows him to. Then once the play has started, Hamlet continues to talk to Ophelia. He teases her about being merry, and talks about being married. He had the audacity to talk to her like that, in such a short period of time, after he had broken her heart. But once again she accepts it, and then she says “You are naught you are naught/ I’ll mark the play” (3.2.145). What she is attempting to say is that he is being indecent and should just watch the play. Later on after Claudius makes a big commotion, Hamlet did something that causes Ophelia to just go all out crazy.

            Hamlet had killed Polonius in thinking that it was Claudius just spying on them. In the mean time, Hamlet really doesn’t care that he had just killed an innocent man. Polonius was just hiding behind the curtain to try and ascertain the truth about Hamlets situation and why he was really insane. After this, the queen, as of who Hamlet was talking to during this horrific scene, tells Claudius what had happened. By now Ophelia knows what had happened, so she knows that she is all alone, her brother is at leave in France, and her father was killed by the one that she had put her love and faith into. So later on when the Queen Gertrude is talking to a gentleman, she comes into the room. She is just singing songs of her time, and is completely insane at this point. Without anyone there to control her, she is just free to do whatever she wishes to do.

            Later on in Act four, scene three, Laertes had secretly returned from France to check up on his father and sister. Then he finds out that his sister is just straight up crazy, and his father is dead. While Ophelia is singing responses to Laertes, such as: “They bore him barefaced on the bier, Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny” (4.5.169-70). Laertes now knows that Ophelia has been driven off the edge. He tries to ask for help, he wants his sister back, but Hamlet, ironically, the one that she had loved, had driven her right off the edge, and into the bottomless abyss of madness.

            By the end of Act Four, scene seven, Ophelia has fallen into the river. Although she does not seem to care, and seems to have wanted her life to end, she just sings.  Although her death scene, may have been tragic, it has a lot of symbolism in it. Such as the flowers that are all around her in the description from the Queen. The queen mentions some flowers, such as: The willow, crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, long purples and coronet weeds. When the end of the story, Ophelia has died, and left us wondering. Such as how did this come to her, why would she do this to herself? I may never know, but Ophelia went from normal, to madness.