For this paper, I knew I wanted to write on Ophelia some how. She has always been one of my favorite characters ever. I think people overlook her as a weak girl who just gave up in the end, but I think she shows courage and strength. So, when I was rereading her passages I saw that she talks a lot about flowers and people talk to her with the language or imagery of flowers. I thought this had to mean something. Since Ophelia changes a lot during the play they had to signify something changing. She looses a lot of her ideals and innocence with all the dark things that hang over head. So my thesis was that Shakespeare uses flowers as a metaphor of her innocence dying and death itself, since she dies with flowers all over her. I figured out some new things about Ophelia with this paper and about myself. With these flowers I always thought that her death was highly romantic and beautiful but really there’s nothing beautiful about the loss of innocence. You can never get it back and you are left grieving over something you never knew was there, like a phantom limb.
Writing Process
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