Ophelia, in my opinion is one of the most interesting and deep characters in the play, that REALLY got screwed over. As the play progresses, you come to find that Ophelia loves Hamlet, (and towards the end it is confirmed that Hamlet loved her back) but her father and the King convince her to fool Hamlet into becoming mad. Between trying to please her father and Hamlet at once, she is forced in between a rock and a hard place. After her father and the king convince her Hamlet is mad, Hamlet murders her father. From here, she spirals into a madness, that is unreversable, and ends up killing her. Ophelia really loved Hamlet, but drove him, and herself crazy by obeying to her fathers orders, of spying and sneaking.
The scene of her brother Laertes returning to the castle after the murder of his father. was hard to understand in the reading, but once it was thrown into the context of the movie, it was a really moving scene. Laertes sees for the first time that his sister is mad, and this, along with the death of his father causes him to become outraged, and in the end, a little mad. But right before his death, he apologizes to Hamlet.
One of the most significant scenes is the grave digger scene, where Hamlet and Horactio meet the King Queen and Laertes burying Ophelia's body in the woods. Here is where Hamlet's madness is evidently not hiden or pretend, but his true love for Ophelia, expressed in madness is exposed.
Great post! I agree with you that Phelia is one of the more roundly abused characters in Shakespeare's canon. She may be a character you want to 'prep' in the event that the AP open-ended question has anything to do with feminism or gender (though Hester Prynn is useful in this regard, too).
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