] About Ophelia, though - I think one of her functions is to show Hamlet what "might have been" if he'd only been willing to let sleeping dogs lie, or if he'd never found out the cause of his father's death in the first place. It's like she's the symbol of the other path he might have taken - the girl he might have married with his family's full approval, had children with, been very happy with, and had a "normal", sunlit life with.

That's interesting; I think you're right. Hamlet is so obsessed with avenging his father, he's left all normalcy, and sanity, behind. Ophelia is the one symbol of life, amid all the death around him. Maybe that's why he's so outright mean to her near the beginning; he's rejecting her, just like he rejects life, in order to plunge headlong into his obsession with death. I couldn't really otherwise account for why Hamlet was so cruel to her in his "get thee to a nunnery" speech. Does anyone know or have a theory?