Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, reports in her monologue that Ophelia had climbed into a willow tree, and then a branch broke and dropped Ophelia into the brook, where she drowned. Gertrude says that Ophelia appeared incapable of her own distress.
In this essay I examine the boundaries between life and death, between the air we breathe and the ability to breathe underwater, in a metaphoric sense.
When the head does not see or hear, can he deal better with pain and despair ?
