Hamlet and Ophelia

Hamlet’s Farewell to His Beautiful Love

Hamlet relies on language to harm others. His words stand as his weapon, because his hands, not courageous enough to take action to his minds thoughts. In act II, scene i, lines 90-140 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Hamlet has a conversation with Ophelia using honest and spiteful language to express his anguish and distrust of her present self.

Hamlet’s father murdered, his mother ignorant, and his love, Ophelia, leaves him without explanation. He meets each of these challenges with honesty to himself and feels hurt or anguished toward them, because each one tears his soul open to question his deepest morals. In this particular conversation, he questions Ophelia’s goodness by asking if she is “honest and fair”, and if she so, then her “honesty should admit no discourse to your[her] beauty” (Act II, scene i, lines 108-109). Hamlet discovers why he hurts from Ophelia: she betrayed him (pattern3). He believes that beauty takes honesty and destroys it; she cannot stay both beautiful and honest at the same time. It anguishes Hamlet to know that his Ophelia has betrayed him in these ways. Hamlet is truthful with the new Ophelia, because he “did love her once” (Act II, scene i, lines 112-113). It distresses Hamlet that he cannot love this new and different Ophelia, but he uses honesty in telling her this. He does not understand how love can seem so shallow and also so deep. Shallow in the way that the surface of love can change so easily and so quickly, but deep in the way that the bottom still lingers with the love that originally surrounded both Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet cannot help but remain hurt and it seems that the only way for him to suffice this hurt is honesty with himself and Ophelia.

As love seems so easily altered; emotion, changed (pattern 2). This Ophelia has been proven untrustworthy in Hamlet’s eyes, and as he remains honest with her during this conversation, her lies can change his language to...