Ophelia's Loss Of Innocence In Hamlet Analysis

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A final examination of the role of guilt and innocence within Hamlet questions the concept of accountability. There are characters such as Ophelia, whose madness makes her irrational. Is it fair for her to feel or assume guilt if she is not in a healthy state of mind? Ophelia’s situation is helplessly tragic as Gertrude poetically describes her death “as one incapable of her own distress” (4.4.177). Gertrude, arguably, does two things when she makes this claim of Ophelia’s death: she was trying to soften the blow for the grief-stricken Laertes, and soothe her own conscience of guilt over Ophelia’s fate. However, the question still stands whether Ophelia did commit suicide knowingly or is she so lost in her mental illness, in her failure to understand her situation…show more content…
It is likely they had no choice but to be loyal to Claudius. The question of their wanting to be complicit in spying on Hamlet strikes a serious chord for those who support Hamlet. If they had no choice, then their murders were unjust. Are all crimes worthy of punishment? Shakespeare, although showing the complexity and obscurity of human nature within Hamlet, kills off most of the cast at the end of the play. He does this to reinforce the ideology that although morality is ambiguous and no one is perfectly good or evil, all crimes deserve punishment and justice. All those who murdered or lied or tricked in the play are dead by the end of the pay in a move unsurprising, but still chilling. In Hamlet, it seems there is little room for redemption from even the most innocuous of crimes; all sins have consequences and whether their weight suffocates the characters does not matter in the scheme of events. Justice must be served, those who are guilty must be reprimanded, so that the “rottenness” of Denmark and its court are somehow purged clean and yet forever blemished by the actions of its
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