Karla Manea

AP English, Period 3
Sullivan
2 November 2017

Literary device: character development. This refers to a change a character undergoes during the

course of a story.

Example: “There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me.

We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. You must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a

daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died. They say a

made a good end.”(IV.v.175-180)

Analysis: Throughout this scene, Ophelia experiences a spiritual metamorphosis which

culminates with her mental insanity. However, oddly enough, this stage is represented by a state

of total lucidity, in which Ophelia anticipates and reveals the anatomy of the character’s souls by

offering them flowers. This ritual of offering flowers is rather cathartic, alienating and

edulcorating her pain. Ophelia’s “rational madness” strengthens one idea employed numerous

times across the tragedy: this barbarically incoherent and futile world seems to concede its truths

only through madness. This concept appears in Plato’s philosophical work, in the “Allegory of

the cave”, in which, after being obliged to live in a cave since birth, a man whose singular

version of reality comes from seeing shadows on the walls of the cave is freed and allowed to see

the true nature of this world. Amazed by the beauty of reality, the man realizes that the shadows

he had been seeing are a lie and he decides to came back to the cave in order to reveal to his

friends the truth he discovered. However, his friends interpret his words as madness and murder
him, which is similar to Ophelia’s diegesis. Her flowers symbolize the true nature of this world,

which the other characters are unable to see because of the intrinsic distortion of reality that

humans possess. The correlation between the characters and flowers highlights the fragile and

ephemeral anatomy of the human world. Her choice of flowers is not arbitrary, instead

emphasizing fundamental aspects of the tragedy: she offers rue, which is a symbol of regret, and

she keeps one for herself. However, Ophelia adds that whoever receives the rue must wear it

“with a difference”. This may suggest that her regret is the only one which is filled with purity

and authenticity, the other characters using it as a mask to hide their mendaciousness. When

offering a daisy (symbol of innocence), she does not seem to direct it to any person, putting

emphasis on the loss of purity of the world. She also states that all the violets (symbol of

faithfulness) withered with the death of her father, highlighting a nihilist vision of life: there is

no faith left in “the rotten state of Denmark”, which is saturated with corruption.