Wild Roses Character Analysis

Psychological Illnesses Having a clinical psychological illness is not uncommon- whether it was one hundred years ago, or in the present today. Many people go through traumas, horrifying experiences, or crippling deaths of a loved one every day, and a lot of the time, it leaves a grave scar on a person, changing their outlook on everything in life. Ophelia, in Shakespeare's famous play Hamlet, goes through awfully painful experiences in a short period of time, causing her to spiral into the deep darkness of depression and clinical schizophrenia. The two illnesses, being one of the most drastically encapsulating disorders, unfortunately bring Ophelia to her calamitous death in act four. Parallel to Ophelia’s illnesses, a character named Dino in the novel Wild Roses by Deb Caletti succumbs to the same symptoms, yet the causes of his diseases are quite different. Dino, being a famous violinist, suffers under great pressure when a huge performance slowly crawls forward. On top of that, he lives in the constant paranoia that his ex-agent William Tiero …show more content…
His condition was continuously growing, and “he was only his usual depressed self, this morose person who was becoming our usual household companion, this man on a constant hunt for the ways he was sure he was being harmed” (Caletti 178) more and more often. Cassie relates well with Laertes in Hamlet, in the way that they had observed and noticed their families conditions overtaking them. When Laertes storms the Danish Castle after his father’s death furiously, he sees his sick sister and cries in misery, “Oh heat, dry up my brains! Salty tears, burn my eyes! By heaven, I’ll get revenge for your madness! Oh, you springtime rose, dear maiden, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! Is it possible that a young woman’s mind could fade away as easily as an old man’s life?” (Shakespeare