Deception In Hamlet And Ophelia

In a world where much of what we do and say is based on social rules, at certain points, there is a need to mask what is truly passing through our minds. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, “Hamlet”, it is no different. For Hamlet, since a ghost with the figure of his father showed up to him and revealed that the new king Claudius, his father’s brother, was guilty of his own murder, Hamlet changed his entire perspective about the court and the ones who live in the castle. To worsen the tragedy, his uncle and king Claudius, was now married to Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. In a strategy to confirm the ghost’s story, Hamlet plays madness and sets a play that depicts reality to find out the truth. However, Hamlet’s greatest flaw was to believe that he could …show more content…
Ophelia and Gertrude have limited opportunities to change their fate, once both are women. Ophelia, in particular, can’t barely express herself and must obey to every order she receives while Gertrude has some voice, but not too much. Ophelia’s game of deception can be seen in two ways. First, as something she can’t deny once it was Polonius, her father, who told her to try to find out and confirm that the cause of Hamlet’s craziness was his love for her, and Ophelia only obeyed. Second, she is actually playing the game without knowing she is because she has to hide every single thought, since what happens in her life is determined by the men, both her father and brother, who control her. In addition, even though when Ophelia becomes mad she is free to speak, her fate was already decided. Regarding Gertrude, she is deceiving herself. Gertrude doesn’t evaluate her choices as bad, or her marriage with Claudius as incestuous, in fact, she is blind by love, “Gertrude is not lascivious or deceitful, but rather submissive, compliant, nurturing, and caught in the struggle between her two loves, Hamlet and Claudius” (Smith, para. 1). In a sense, Gertrude is pretending that she doesn’t see the reality because she can’t afford to lose her son or her new …show more content…
Hamlet understands that he doesn’t control what happens in his life or in the life of the ones who surround him. When the ghost of his father tells him to revenge his death, immediately Hamlet sees himself in a mission that it’s imposed on him, even though it goes against his nature. So, his kind nature now has a hard mission that he cannot just deny it, and for so many times we see Hamlet “fighting” against himself because he has to complete his mission, but in his mind, he knows that it’s frustrating. However, after a series of events, like the game of deception, he understands that this revenge and everything that could eventually happen because of it is in fact a high power guiding his fate. Some examples of Hamlet believing in fate is when he kills Polonius, “I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune. Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger” (Act III, Sc. IV) or even when he knows that he could die battling with Laertes, “If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now; yet it will come. The readiness is all” (Act V, Sc. II). His new perspective towards deception and understanding of the limitations of his perception puts him in a place of a mere mortal who is guided by a higher power, and by humbling himself like this is what turns Hamlet into a hero. In addition, Hamlet’s new understanding of deception