The Juxtaposition of Hamlet Characters
To completely understand how someone is, the reasoning behind their person, you have to take into account the people around them. In William Shakespeare’s play “The Tragedy of Hamlet”, Ophelia and Laertes represent different aspects of prince Hamlets traits that further the understanding of his behaviour, thoughts, and over-all character.
Laertes and Ophelia, like Hamlet, are children of murdered fathers. This connection helps create a link between the three that sends them passionately to their end.
Ophelia has an important relationship and entangling affair with the prince. Hamlets and Ophelia’s actions in time lead the young women into a deep grief, and eventually an even deeper lunacy. Her burning emotions and truly mad mind compares to and intensifies the look on Hamlets selfish nature and veil of thought-out deception. Laertes parallels Hamlets similarities as far as age, sex and vengeful functions. Driven by revenge for his father, Laertes also creates a difference between himself and the prince as he takes impulsive actions while Hamlet does not.
The two characters that are juxtaposed against Hamlet expand his stance. They give further depth into the thoughts that his character springs from without physically showing them. The book Poison, Play and Duel discusses this; “Hamlet is subject to exactly the same passions of Ophelia and Laertes. Grief, hate, madness, revenge, and self-destruction …” (Alexander 121). These themes experienced by Ophelia and Laertes to the degree that they face them, some lesser and some more so than Hamlet, reflects on and gives background to the being Hamlet is. Affected early on by grief and mourning due to the deaths of their father, Ophelia and Laertes continue on by taking parallel paths that compliment Hamlet’s and establish them as foils for him.
They are also representations of specific parts of Hamlets character. “Ophelia and Laertes actually pursue the courses of actions considered by Hamlet in soliloquy.
Laertes and Ophelia, like Hamlet, are children of murdered fathers. This connection helps create a link between the three that sends them passionately to their end.
Ophelia has an important relationship and entangling affair with the prince. Hamlets and Ophelia’s actions in time lead the young women into a deep grief, and eventually an even deeper lunacy. Her burning emotions and truly mad mind compares to and intensifies the look on Hamlets selfish nature and veil of thought-out deception. Laertes parallels Hamlets similarities as far as age, sex and vengeful functions. Driven by revenge for his father, Laertes also creates a difference between himself and the prince as he takes impulsive actions while Hamlet does not.
The two characters that are juxtaposed against Hamlet expand his stance. They give further depth into the thoughts that his character springs from without physically showing them. The book Poison, Play and Duel discusses this; “Hamlet is subject to exactly the same passions of Ophelia and Laertes. Grief, hate, madness, revenge, and self-destruction …” (Alexander 121). These themes experienced by Ophelia and Laertes to the degree that they face them, some lesser and some more so than Hamlet, reflects on and gives background to the being Hamlet is. Affected early on by grief and mourning due to the deaths of their father, Ophelia and Laertes continue on by taking parallel paths that compliment Hamlet’s and establish them as foils for him.
They are also representations of specific parts of Hamlets character. “Ophelia and Laertes actually pursue the courses of actions considered by Hamlet in soliloquy.
Bibliography: Alexander, Nigel. Poison, Play and Duel: A Study in Hamlet. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971. De Madariga, Salvador. On Hamlet. London: Hollis & Carter LTD, 1948.