Hamlet Act 2 Thoughts

This is definitely one of the larger acts in the novel in which there are two scenes. Just to recap, Polonius sends his servant Reynaldo to France with money and notes for Laertes. However, his primary motive for sending him is so he can spy on Laertes. After Reynaldo leaves, Ophelia enters with an upset attitude. She tells her father that Hamlet came to her, grabbed her, and sighed heavily but did not speak to her. Polonius thinks that Hamlet is madly in love wit her but must distance himself from her because of Polonius. polonius believes that his lack of love causes Hamlet's weird mood and goes to Claudius to tell of his opinion. One of the main questions that I had with the Act was what is the purpose of Hamlet acting so madly in love for Ophelia? For example, in Act 2 Scene 1, Polonius claims, "Affection, put! You speak like a green girl/Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. Do you believe his "tenders" as you call them."Tenders is an important word in this scene that has a multitude of denotations such as a boat used to ferry people and supplies to and from a ship or a rail car connected to a steam locomotive to carry fuel and water. These denotations are so interesting because they display how the "tender" is used to carry out a specific task that connects two aspects that are distanced from each other. Maybe Hamlet is using Ophelia as his tender to connect himself with Polonius in order to carry out his task of restoring the order within the Danish society. This is further exemplified through the connotation of the color green which is how Ophelia is described. Green has the connotation of inexperience and thus represents Ophelia's ability to be taken advantage of. Another question that I had about this scene was what Hamlet's true motive or rather the ghost's true motive is within the Danish society. In act 1 scene 1, Hamlet claims to "obey" his mother on not going to Wittenberg. Similarly, in Act 2 Scene 2, Ophelia claims to "obey" her father on not going to see Hamlet anymore. The word obey is used throughout the text and has an interesting denotation which is to behave in accordance with a general principle or natural law. During this time, order and structure was everything and was modeled after teh Great Chain of Being which displays the hierarchy and order that society should follow. It is interesting to note that this Great Chain of Being is completely corrupt with much disorder in the Denmark system. For example, the throne was not passed on to Hamlet who was the rightful heir and even more disorder is caused by the Ghost. This theme and motif of disorder combined with the denotation of obey places light upon the potential purpose of Hamlet's actions which are to restore order within the Danish society through revenge for his ghostly father.