Literature

Does Hamlet love Ophelia? Is she his "dream" or "goal"? Why?

At Ophelia's funeral, Hamlet jumps into her grave and shouts, "I loved Ophelia!" I think we should take him at his word but he did have an odd way of showing his love. He burst into her room, frightens her and then leaves without saying a thing. He attacks her and tells her to "get to a nunnery." At the Mousetrap, a play he schedules to judge Claudius' guilt, he both teases and mocks Ophelia. Then, thinking he is killing Claudius, he accidently kills her father, Polonius. Certainly, she has a right to doubt his love. To keep of the ruse that he is mad, he doesn't console Ophelia but instead makes a joke out of what he's done with Polonius' body. Perhaps he was so caught up in his search for revenge that he forgot about Ophelia's feelings. Unfortunately for both Hamlet and Ophelia, she believes she has lost both her father and Hamlet, so she kills herself. Hamlet is left without his love, who could perhaps have given him some better guidance and smoothed the hatred between Hamlet and her brother. This would have isolated Claudius but deprived the audience of a great last scene of the play.

I think Hamlet loved Ophelia in a way...Had everything been rosy in Denmark and had his father not been murdered, etc., he and Ophelia probably could have had a lovely life together.  But he didn't feel that he could really trust her.  He knew she was manipulated and used by her father, Polonius, who would give his left leg if it meant ingratiating himself to the king.  Polonius had completely control over his daughter, which meant that Hamlet felt that he could not confide his fears and concerns to her (maybe he should have anyway - maybe she would have been worthy of his trust - but then, it wouldn't have been Hamlet!).

I am sure that he felt a great deal of loss when he realized that she had drowned (and it's not conclusive in the text that she drowned herself - it could have been an accident because of her completely loss of sanity by that point - Gertrude's description does not allude to a suicide).  But he felt a much greater sense of loss at the death of his father, so I, personally, am not sure that really had a deep, mature love for her.  She definitely wasn't his "goal," as your question asked.  His goal was revenge for his father's death.

If Hamlet had to answer this question, he would probably wander off in a very long monologue on exactly what the nature of love is.  :)  For me, the real question is "If Hamlet loved Ophelia, how deeply, and when did he stop?"  It is hard to know much about their relationship before the play; it certainly insinuates a romance, with stated emotions on Hamlet's part.  Ophelia seemed upset about his rejection of her, so she was certainly under the belief that he loved her.  His rejection was either because his sentiments for her were not deep enough to tie him to her through a very difficult time for him, or because he didn't want to taint her with "things rank and gross in nature" that he felt were all around him.  If the first, no, he didn't truly love her; if the second, his love was strong enough-even if a bit misguided and naive about the nature of female happiness-for him to act in what he might have considered a "noble" manner.

If she was his "dream", I feel that she represented all that was happy and loving before the harsh reality of conniving uncles, fickle mothers, and untimely deaths tipped his world upside down.  She was the pleasant dream of what might have been, if he hadn't been infused with cynicism and melancholy from his circumstances.