A Parallel Guidin Ophelia In Shakespeare's Hamlet

Ophelia is introduced to the audience as naïve young girl hopelessly submerged in affection for her beloved Hamlet, the son of the former king. She is the daughter of the current king’s most trust advisor, Polonius. Ophelia’s first plank of madness is laid with the departure of her brother for France. This early “loss” of a loved one is similar in many ways that Hamlet’s father is also gone. However both Laertes and Hamlet Sr. inevitably return. Ophelia is a crutch to Hamlet, a living symbolic representation of Hamlet’s emotions much in the same way that ancient Greek stories used a chorus. Ophelia is the one woman chorus of Hamlet (the play and character both), a fact which makes her one of the most elementally affluent of Shakespeare’s characters in a literary sense. In his play, Hamlet, William Shakespeare uses his character Ophelia’s descent into madness as a parallel
These contrasts are Hamlet’s desires, the things that he desperately needs and what keeps him living. Ophelia is the coal to his train (of thought), something which Ophelia does not always feel the same about him. “Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap? Ophelia: Ay, my lord. Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?” (60) As the story progresses Ophelia realizes that the man she loved has gone through a transformation. He is no the longer the same person. In frustration and despair, she effectively puts her foot down, a brake, by what most readers believe to be suicide. As she, the tracks, tear themselves apart, the train that is Hamlets goes careening off down the middle to destruction, a ten pounder flying down the bowling lane determined to knock down all pins: his adversaries and friends. Ophelia was the crucial point that held together all that was Hamlet; with her death, so was sealed the fate of every other