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Why Did Ophelia Go Insane?

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Why Did Ophelia Go Insane?
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's most renowned tragedies. It’s a story of mortality, revenge, and most of all, madness. On Hamlet's quest for revenge, there was one death that caused Ophelia to ascend into her own madness. There are only a few signs before hinting towards Ophelia being insane, but he the days following the death she takes the plunge down the rabbit hole. This lead up to when Ophelia finally died and ended her own life.
There are two theories as to why Ophelia went insane. One being being she did truly love Hamlet and not being able to be with him affected her. The second theory was that Hamlet killing her father, Polonius, increase her depression and lead it to kill her.
The theory backed up by the mannequin challenge was the second one. The scene featured in it was the scene was Hamlet was yelling at his mother, then killed polonius
…show more content…
These moments were most prominent when involved with Hamlet. This includes the rejection and following Hamlet’s iconic ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy. She shows signs of dependence, thus why she is so distraught when Hamlet rejects and and when her father is murdered.
Following Polonius's death, there was two scenes where we saw her going down her own rabbit hole. The first scene we saw her was when she danced and singed around the room with Claudius and Gertrude. This caused Claudius to say ‘her father's death has driven her mad.’For the duration of the scene, she begins to undress herself then run out of the room. A guard is told to keep an eye on her.
In the next scene, this is where Laertes, her brother, has come to the castle and he finds out his sister has been driven mad. She walks into the room holding different weeds. She gives them to her brother first and descibes them to him and the meaning behind them. After moving onto Gertrude and Claudius, she seemed to become more outraged, then proceeded to leave the

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