Overarching question- How effectively, and why, does your visual amplify the exploration of the ideas in the text, enabling a deeper and richer understanding for yourself and the audience?

During my critical study of the play ‘Hamlet’, I’ve realised that the motif of corruption within the play not only impacts human mortality at a corporeal level but extends itself to the metaphorical death of the individual’s moral integrity. My visual illustrates the potential of corruption to direct people’s thoughts and actions, harming not only one’s self but also family, friends and partners. In that case, I believe Ophelia helps portray Hamlet’s weltschmerz in a corrupt world, by expressing his transition from an ideal vision of the world and himself to a world where he questions his existence in a corrupt world of intrigue and suspicion.

I feel that perhaps Hamlet’s real dilemma is to discover the appropriate course of action to take in a world that he has come to find is full of corruption and deception. He is faced with an impossible challenge to take action to cleanse the metaphorical ‘unweeded garden’ of Denmark while without compromising his vision of moral integrity which is illustrated by the hand reaching towards the ‘innocent’ violet in my visual. Ophelia plays a major role in expressing this ‘kind of fighting’ inside his personified ‘heart’, through Hamlet’s treatment towards her. In their first encounter in the play, we discover an appearance of Hamlet which Ophelia has perhaps never encountered before, ‘no hat…..stockings fouled…pale shirt…knees knocking’. Apparent by the asyndeton, this would have left her deeply distressed and shocked. I feel that this image of Hamlet reflects the despair and disillusion experienced as he realises he must relinquish his former life and identity in pursuing the obligation of revenge. Ophelia’s hyperbolic account of his ‘sigh so piteous….seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being’ reveals the very moment of surrendering the world and self he has known and confronting the challenge ahead. Perhaps his ‘antic disposition’ is expressed in this scene and is intended to protect Ophelia by pushing her away. I see this as the way for Hamlet to preserve his metaphorical identity as, asserted by Ophelia, the ‘rose of the fair state’, by pushing her away from a world that is essentially corrupt. Thus the violet and rose in my visual symbolises innocence and the ideal vision of existence, which Hamlet is fighting to maintain in himself and preserve in Ophelia.

In a way, I identify Ophelia as a mirror, reflecting Hamlet’s change in attitude and personality as a part of his paradoxical role as the country’s ‘scourge and minister’. It is in the acknowledgement of his role to exact judgement for the crime of regicide that he eventually equally realises the inevitability of his own corruption. My illustration of the drowning in the symbolic blood red water can portray the world or intrigue that, for Hamlet, makes Denmark a ‘prison’ which is shown by the shackle in my visual. Ophelia’s representation of Hamlet as a paragon of princely virtue, whom she referred to as ‘the glass of fashion and mould of form’, has provided me an essential baseline to compare with the transition to a man whose actions seems unpredictable and even callous. In effect, the ‘prison’ has forced Hamlet to become suspicious, cunning and inevitably cynical about human motivations and actions. This harsh nature in Hamlet is witnessed in his manner towards Ophelia in the nunnery scene and playlet scene with his crude sexual double entendres, ‘to lie between maids’ legs.’, and the apparent malicious denial of her presence ‘Go thee to a nunnery’. Furthermore, we notice a sense of distrust towards his former lover, ‘Where’s your father?’, suggesting, what I believe, he now sees as Ophelia betraying him by becoming a metaphorical ‘sponge’ for Polonius, just as Rosencrantz and Guilderstern have. I distinguish Ophelia’s identity is shaped by the patriarchal control over her and, combined with Hamlet’s rejection of her and the murder of her father, drives her to madness and the tragic death of herself and her identity. Thus, as well as

Hamlet, the drowning in my visual can also represent an image of Ophelia’s loss of identity and reason of existence and this also constructs an atmosphere of ambiguity in my visual, reflecting the world of intrigue in the play.

When Hamlet is confronted with Ophelia’s death, it is part of his arrival at a new level of philosophical awareness of literal human mortality. Due to the death of Polonius and Ophelia caused by his ‘journey of revenge’, he has learnt to resign himself to death in the corporeal sense. By holding Yorick’s skull, which is represented in my visual, Hamlet now has come to terms with death, knowing it is unavoidable, making everyone all equal. However, he still seeks spiritual redemption for his actions through his hyperbolic proclamation of his love for Ophelia, ‘Forty thousand brothers could not….make up my sum’, and plea for forgiveness from Laertes, symbolised by the ‘rue’ flower of repentance in my visual. This just shows Hamlet’s nature is on a fine edge between a sensitive and virtuous quality but equally capable swinging towards an extreme form of action. Hamlet now realises he cannot go back to the life he had before, as he is now a lot more than a ‘little soil'd in the working; emphasised by the text in my visual,

Helping maintain the textual integrity of the play, Ophelia provides a crucial insight of Hamlet’s contrasting characterisation and internal conflict throughout the play. The notion of mortality includes human frailty and weakness, and is without a doubt, the essence of tragedy within the play, demonstrated holistically in my visual.