3: "The Fate of Ophelia"— love story or origin story?

In this episode, we dive into “The Fate of Ophelia” — dramatic chapter one of Taylor Swift’s concept album.

At first listen, it might sound like a classic love story — a damsel saved by her hero. But if you read this song as part one of the larger narrative, it’s the inciting incident — the spark that sets off the showgirl’s rise to stardom and the struggles that follow.

Dig a little deeper, and you find Shakespearean irony, unreliable narration, and a chilling meditation on power, self-abandonment, and the price of being “rescued.”

From iambic pentameter and Dorian chords to Hamlet’s original Ophelia, we unpack how Taylor transforms an archetype into a cautionary tale about loyalty, fame, and lost agency.

Plus: a writing prompt at the end to help you reimagine your own modern-day myth.

_______________________________________

It's not too late to snag the replay for Write Like Taylor Swift: a 90-minute immersive workshop to help you apply Taylor's most powerful techniques to whatever you already write.

Get all the LIT112 writing prompts in one place: www.maraeller.com/prompts.

_______________________________________

Come join the discussion!

Instagram

TikTok

Threads

_______________________________________

Follow my new podcast, The Soul and Science of Great Writing! You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you usually listen. Weekly episodes begin dropping in January 2026.

You can find my personal writing and writing tips on Substack.

And visit my website to learn more about my editing, book coaching, and upcoming courses.

Transcript

Speaker: 1:16

Welcome to Lit 112, the Life of a Showgirl where we treat Taylor Swift's latest album like a novel, peeling back the layers of meaning from Shakespearean allusions to character arcs and auditory techniques. I'm your host, Mara Eller, a literature and writing teacher with 16 years of experience at the high school and college level. I just retired to focus on editing and book coaching, but when I started getting requests for this series on social media, I couldn't resist. Whether you're a veteran swifty or just an AP lit nerd like me who happens to like her music, all are welcome here. I've even got something for you writers, creative prompts inspired by the subject of each lesson. You can find them at the end of the episodes. So grab your metaphorical notebook and let's unpack this record together, chapter by chapter, song by song.

Speaker: 2:07

Today we get to talk about the Fate of Ophelia. Finally! I think I've gotten the most requests for this song, and I'm super excited to dive into it today. Huh? See what I did there? If you've, uh, watched the music video or thought about some of the motifs in that song, there might have been a little pun there. Totally accidental promise.

Speaker: 2:28

Okay, so the fate of Ophelia Track one. I already talked about this a little bit on my what is a concept album video because as I said, the first and last tracks, first and last chapters are going to be super important when we are trying to get a sense of what the piece of art is about as a whole. But today, of course, we're going to go into much more detail.

Speaker: 2:52

So I wanna share that the first time I listened to this, first time I was listening to the album at all, I found this track extremely misogynistic. I found it really problematic on the first listen, and I was kind of appalled, like if this was what Taylor was really singing about, being rescued by a man, I did not like that. And it also didn't fit with a lot of what I'd come to see in a lot of her other lyrics. most obviously the man, like this is not somebody who wants to be saved by a man. Of course, it could be a story about someone who wants to be saved by a man, but again, I don't think that Taylor Swift would be telling that story in a way that told us that she agreed with that narrative.

Speaker: 3:37

So remember, hopefully you've seen my previous video about the idea of an unreliable narrator. that's super important for this track, in my opinion. Is this a reliable narrator? does the author, does the writer Taylor Swift agree with what this character, this narrator in this track is saying? is her interpretation, is her perspective trustworthy? You can probably already tell, I think the answer is not entirely. So once I went through the album again and started thinking of it as a concept album and looking at it a little more critically, I picked up on a lot of irony throughout. verbal irony means when somebody is saying the opposite of what they mean. situational irony means when, a situation turns out the opposite of what one would expect. And dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that at least one of the characters does not know. These are things that Shakespeare uses ubiquitously in his plays. And then of course many other writers also use. but I think there's a lot of that going on here, which means that you can't take what is being said at face value.

Speaker: 4:45

So I think this song is actually a warning about the folly of being rescued by a man rather than promoting it. Okay. So let's go deeper I'll share why I think that you can see if you agree or what your interpretation is.

Speaker: 4:59

A couple fun things to mention about this song. there's some iambic pentameter and tetrameter. iambic pentameter is famously what Shakespeare wrote all of his plays in and sonnets where you have this rhythm to the language in each line where it's ba bum, ba bum, ba bum in a series of five ba bums. I'll spare you any more technical details, but it's not consistent. I think it's entirely possible that Taylor Swift wanted to do some of that in this song, but you should also keep in mind that Iam big pentameter is also the most common phrasing for pop music in general. It just feels good. Sounds good. So, that's cool. I don't think we need to make too big of a deal of that.

Speaker: 5:42

Another interesting thing about this song that is actually more unusual is that it has five bars instead of the typical four found in pop music. And if you wanna learn more about what that means, you know, Google's your friend. But basically usually, there's a set of four sort of units and in this song there's a set of five sets of five, so that's why it might seem a little bit almost like wonky at times where you're expecting it to go into the next verse, but it doesn't quite yet. That might be what's going on there.

Speaker: 6:16

Another interesting thing is that there little hat tips towards the other songs. For example, she mentions Skies, which has an obvious tie in with Opalite. she's almost giving us little previews of what is to come, which is a thing that is often done with the first chapter of a larger work or the first act of a play, where it introduces all the motifs that are going to be coming up again. That's also done musically in musicals with the Overture.

Speaker: 6:45

Anyway, let's dive into the actual song. It starts with a very simple drum line and then a very simple piano chord progression. Very, very simple. apart from the drum line, could even be almost classical. It's actually a Dorian chord, which was common in the Renaissance, i.e. when Shakespeare was writing. And then it breaks into this sort of base synth driven groove. Then the voice enters. It's a deep alto voice, kind of the opposite of what you'd expect from Ophelia if you've, seen the name of the track and you know a little bit about Hamlet. young naive girl, you would expect maybe a higher, lighter. less mature sounding voice. So already she's playing with our expectations, and I think that keeps going throughout the track.

Speaker: 7:39

Okay, here's the lyrics. "I heard you calling on the megaphone. You wanna see me all alone." Right off the bat, megaphone is clearly modern. This is not a classic version of Ophelia. We are in the 20th century, maybe not the 21st because nobody uses megaphones anymore. which may be sort of harkens back to the golden age of Hollywood getting us ready for Elizabeth Taylor. Next line. "You wanna see me all alone." That's kind of creepy, combined with the way she sings it. the melody is kind of creepy. It's a minor key. my, Watch out for yourself radar is going up right off the bat there with those first two lines. Then she says, you know, "legend has it you're a pyro." Pyro is someone who plays it with fire, but usually in an obsessive way. Light the match to watch it blow," plays with our expectations again. We'd expect, lights a match to watch it burn. That's the more common phrase, blow still, starts with a B, but it's much more explosive, much more destructive. By the way, I'm gonna have to do a whole separate episode on the video itself, which I think I will do 'cause it's super interesting. but we're gonna try to focus mainly on the actual song and lyrics today.

Speaker: 8:54

Next line. And if you'd never come for me, I might have drowned in the melancholy." Melancholy is a prolonged sadness, like depression, but sometimes with a little bit of a sweet tinge to it. It's very reminiscent of the romantic poets of the 1800s. I swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I right before you let my sky up." Loyalty, big time motif for the album. And her loyalty is to who? to herself until this guy calls her? Calls her to what? Exactly. How is her loyalty changed by this call? If it was to herself until this moment, who is she loyal to now? There's almost a sense of self abandonment here, which is I think really important and relates to Ophelia. women historically, their role in society, in life, has been only to serve the men around them. They were literally property. You know, they needed to sacrifice all of their own desires, ambitions, even like thoughts and feelings to be pure servants of men and maybe their children.

Speaker: 10:06

Okay. Then we get to the chorus. "All that time. I sat alone in my tower." Alone, isolated, sad. but the tower has connotations too of like Rapunzel being trapped and imprisoned. Then she says, "you were just honing your powers." Powers has this connotation of like magic, casting a spell, but also brings in the motif of power as in like power play and control. She says, "now I can see it all." She thinks she's seeing it clearly, but is she? we should be questioning her perspective here? "Late one night," again, kind of creepy, if this is a young girl, you dug me out of my grave." Gave her new life, maybe rebirth. Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia." So saved her heart. Definitely has a romantic tone there. so maybe that's part of it, but is that all of it if this is the life of a showgirl? Let's keep going.

Speaker: 11:02

Okay. Once we hear this chorus, it's also the title of the track, the Fate of Ophelia. What is that fate? So let's talk about the play for a minute here. Ophelia is in Shakespeare's Hamlet in love with Hamlet, the main character who is the heir to the Danish throne. His father, the king, suddenly dies and it turns out he was murdered by his brother who was having an affair with the queen. Now, the brother, who is Hamlet's uncle, is King and is married, well, shortly after the play begins, marries his dead brother's wife. Pretty creepy. a ghost of Hamlet's father tells Hamlet this. This is basically how the play starts, and he is super freaked out, as you might imagine. He becomes suspicious of everyone. And he starts going a little bonkers himself. He tries to find out if Ophelia is in on it, he doesn't trust anyone. So this also again, brings up questions of loyalty, betrayal, trust. he tells Ophelia that he never loved her after basically like groping her and then he calls her a whore and a fool. So that's a fun moment for Ophelia. Okay. she thought she was gonna marry him, basically. And there's implications that she went a little physically too far with him. We don't know what it means exactly, but whatever it was, she was willing to make herself vulnerable emotionally and physically because she trusted him and she thought that they had a future together. And then he's like, yeah, you made that up. You're an idiot and a slut. Rough. Right. Okay. So then as if that weren't enough, her father is an advisor to the king and they decide they're going to use her to find out what's going on with Hamlet, since he started acting so weird. So they make her go talk to him, which then makes Hamlet even more suspicious. things happen. Then Hamlet kills Ophelia's father. Thinking he was the uncle King. Ophelia goes crazy with grief. Yeah, sorry, spoilers, but hopefully maybe you've known the basics here already. That's not really the main point of the play anyways. still worth watching or reading. Ophelia goes crazy with grief. Her brother meanwhile is away at graduate school. and then her most famous scene, she gives flowers to each of the main characters who are still alive, each of the flowers representing something and implying an insult to each of the characters and naming them for what they are, like traitorous and fickle and all those things. So it's kind of her way of speaking the truth. But through poetry, she's sings during that time. You've got the flowers, but they're all like, oh, poor Ophelia's gone crazy. There's some speculation, are we supposed to think she's actually crazy or is it just that they think she is crazy because she's speaking the truth. And nobody does that. Especially not a young girl. Then she drowns not in the text. We hear about her drowning. Was it suicide maybe? Was it murder? Possibly. No one knows for sure. that image of her drowning is of course, the basis for the first scene in the music video. But again, I'm gonna save that video for its own deep dive.

Speaker: 14:13

So the fate of Ophelia is to be driven mad by being used, manipulated, and gaslit by all the men in her life, including her romantic partner, and her father figure the king, and her literal father, and then to die of sadness, maybe. Dies of something. What she lacked, what she needed was agency, power. She had none, zero. She was completely at the mercy of these men who had all the power. She didn't even have any female protectors or friends. So I think that's a really important aspect to remember here.

Speaker: 14:51

Some of the critique that has come up about this song is that, she didn't need to be saved by a man, she needed agency. Well, yeah, exactly. Which is what I think this song is all about.

Speaker: 15:00

Okay, so let's keep going with the lyrics. Keep it 100" means be truthful, honest, genuine. Yes. It also refers to Taylor and Travis's numbers. Her number is 13, his number is 87, and when you combine them, it makes a hundred, but I don't think we need to consider that the entirety of the meaning here. On the land, the sea, the sky." Three levels or different sets, settings for the album maybe, like we've got drowning in the sea, living maybe surviving on the land, soaring in the sky, you know, comes up in other songs.

Speaker: 15:34

"Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes." Okay, so where's her loyalty now? At the beginning of the song, she said she had pledged her loyalty to herself. Now it's to the team. But what team, and yes, I know, sure, there's probably a Travis reference here, but I see those as fun Easter eggs that she threw in rather than thematic anchors to tell us what the song is really all about. And then she says, "Don't care where the hell you've been. 'cause now you're mine." You're mine, has this sense of possession, ownership being trapped now only in a different way. "it's about to be the sleepless night you've been dreaming of." Again, kind of creepy, or like borderline sexual, but also maybe referencing late night concerts, et cetera, 'cause again, this album is called The Life of a Showgirl. We're starting out with the assumption that this main character is the aspiring showgirl. Okay, so you have to also consider with the lyrics I just talked about, it's called the post chorus, if it's still the girl speaking or if this is the person who called her on the megaphone speaking. I could see it both ways. I tend to go really more with the latter, that he's like, now, be honest, be genuine. Pledge allegiance to the team. Sacrifice yourself. I don't care about your past 'cause now you're mine and it's about to be sleepless nights. Definitely creepy vibes, setting us up for father figure.

Speaker: 17:02

Okay, next verse. She mentions the eldest daughter, obvious connections to that track. "Lived in fantasy" ..."love is a cold bed of scorpions that stole her sanity." Kinda giving us a summary of Ophelia. Could this be the showgirl starting to realize what's actually going on here? I think it's kind of an interesting idea, like she's starting to recognize like, this might not be quite what I thought it was, which of course is something that we saw very clearly in Track 12, life of showgirl.

Speaker: 17:32

Then, "and if you'd never come for me, I might have lingered in purgatory." Purgatory is a Catholic concept referring to a place where you went on your way to heaven, to atone for your sins. Kinda like a holding ground, like there's definitely a sense of captivity, but also waiting, sort of languishing. You wrap around me like a chain," captivity again, clearly with chain. "A crown." Makes me think of, um, heavy is the head that wears the Crown. Which is another Shakespeare reference. it means the weight of leadership, or maybe in this case fame is heavy. It is a burden as well as a privilege. "Wrap around me like a, chain, a crown, a vine." maybe like creeping and circling and maybe a poisonous fine. Alluding to the poison flowers in another song later. So these three similes are definitely not super positive. Whatever else we might think about the song, this does not sound like a healthy relationship.

Speaker: 18:31

Okay. Next line. Pulling me into the fire." This is like the pyro fire that's going to blow up. maybe it's gonna blow up in the sense of blowing up with fame, but maybe also in less positive ways Then the bridge, "'Tis is locked inside my memory and only you possess the key. No longer drowning and deceived all because you came for me." She repeats it. We got the motif here of locks and captivity again, captivity versus freedom. Now something is locked in her memory and she can't access it. Sounds almost like brainwashing. This is also a direct paraphrase of one of Ophelia's famous lines. She says, "TIS in my memory locked, and you yourself shall keep the key of it." She says this towards the beginning of the play in regards to her brother's warning that she shouldn't trust Hamlet because he will not actually marry her. A warning that she basically ignores to her peril. So does this sound like the showgirl, is taking this warning to heart?

Speaker: 19:32

Then. "No longer drowning in melancholy." I say drowning in melancholy because when she says no longer drowning and deceived, Towards the beginning, she was drowning in melancholy. Okay, so she's no longer drowning in melancholy, but no longer deceived? well, how was she deceived before, by herself? And then it kind of gets back into brainwashing territory. Definitely questionable. And it ends on a pretty ambiguous note. literally the final musical note, that she sings is unresolved, musically speaking, it doesn't give you that nice resolution that you would look for inside that chord. It has this, uh, deep, alto note. It's in a minor key. It's pretty melancholy, you might say, and the music video here adds an important nuance. because she ends up nearly submerged in the bathtub, which should remind us of the opening scene of Ophelia drowning in a river And it's especially relevant since that's the cover of the whole album.

Speaker: 20:33

So given the fact that the album as a whole is about the life of a showgirl. Not the life of a romantic and the fact that there are such creepy, questionable aspects of these lyrics when you dig deeper, I do not think the argument can be supported to say that this is about Travis, despite the references woven into the lyrics and the music video. Rather, I think it's about being offered stardom and promised this amazing life that she dreamed of, and then finding out she's actually being used by all the men in power. I think the original fate of Ophelia that she thought she was being rescued from when she the showgirl was younger, was simple melancholy or maybe obscurity, Not having the life of fame, not being able to be the famous singer that she wanted to be. But what was really going on with Ophelia was much more complex, which the, today, Taylor, the songwriter, Taylor knows and is trying to subtly show us through the ambiguity and creepy aspects of this song. particularly with the ending of the music video, giving it kind of a circular feel and her face in that last image being anything but happy, it really seems like this showgirl isn't so much being rescued as she is jumping out of the frying pan into the fire to bring the fire motif back in there.

Speaker: 21:58

So, however you read this song, it's going to be really important because this should be informing how you read the entire rest of the album. We talked about how the first and last songs serve as bookends, just like First and last chapters in a novel. and I think we can also see this first song functioning like the inciting incident in typical story structure. So you may be familiar with a little bit of narrative structure, but it always starts with the inciting incident. Like what sparks the conflict and sets the hero or heroine on this journey that takes place over the course of the story. You might remember that little graphic from English class with the rising action and the climax and the falling action. So this song would the exposition, who are the characters, where is the hero and starting, and what pushes her out of her ordinary world into this new life of adventure?

Speaker: 22:58

The way I'm reading this song, our story starts with a young girl who dreams of being a famous showgirl and someone, maybe a music producer or a talent agent, finds her, rescues her from this life where she's been languishing in obscurity, just longing to be discovered and to start living this life she's been dreaming of and says, you know, come with me. You can trust me. It's gonna be amazing. And she's super excited. And then pretty quickly she starts to realize maybe this person doesn't have my best interests at heart, but in this song she hasn't fully realize that yet she's still swept up in the excitement and maybe sort of struggling with the discomfort that she's feeling without being able to articulate why she's feeling it.

Speaker: 23:49

I think the pop like fun sound of this song, the excitement in it, that makes it so fun to listen to and dance along with is just one more layer of irony to point out This seems really great and wonderful and fun on the surface, but it's not all above board when you go below decks to miss mix my metaphors there. S

Speaker: 24:10

o that's the interpretation I think is most compelling when you view this song as Track one, chapter one as a larger story. But that's not the only way to read it. That's what makes this album so good, maybe even on par with great literature. Not saying she's about to win the Nobel Prize but there's a lot more going on here than most people seem to be giving her credit for.

Speaker: 24:37

So if you consider the song on its own, apart from the rest of the album, it can definitely be read as a love story, though still a much more nuanced one than what I typically hear. In this version, the showgirl has locked her heart in a tower pledging allegiance only to herself after being used and abandoned by so many men. Then along comes someone who blows up her defenses, the pyro, who wants to watch it blow only in this reading, it's in a good way. He breaks down the walls that she had constructed to protect herself, but that had also begun to isolate her meaning that she would never be able to have true intimacy, true connection, at least not with a man or a romantic partner. The fire in this case is passion, maybe even a purifying fire, which is something that comes up a lot in literature. His love doesn't save her self. It sees her heart from staying locked away forever.

Speaker: 25:37

Now, that doesn't fit as well with the original story of Ophelia, Since she did not have the problem of guarding her heart, in fact, she had the opposite problem. but maybe it's like the showgirls heart was going to drown in despair, or at least in loneliness. So she's being rescued from that fate. And yes, that interpretation would be a retelling of her relationship with Travis.

Speaker: 26:00

So which one is it? It can be both. That's the beauty of it. The fate of Ophelia works both ways As the inciting incident of the life of a showgirl that sets that larger narrative in motion when you view it as a cohesive narrative from track one to track 12, or as a love story that rescues her from cynicism when you view it as a standalone song.

Speaker: 26:22

Of course, those are just two of many interpretations that you could discover. Basically, the sky's the limit when you are interpreting literature, but the one qualification is that you have to be able to find support for your interpretation in the text.

Speaker: 26:39

So I'd love to hear yours. What does my analysis bring up for you? What else do you notice? What aspects of my interpretation would you push back on?

Speaker: 26:48

And then, as far as a writing prompt, I think this is a great opportunity to take a classic story from literature. Doesn't even have to be classic. It could be from a song, it could be from a novel, It could be a fairy tale, just a story that exists somewhere else. And see if you can play with that. Maybe set it in the modern day. use it as inspiration. Or like a lens through which you could tell a story that's closer to your heart or experience.

Speaker: 27:19

So if you're a fiction writer, you know, maybe take a, a fictional character you have and see how you could, use one of these other classic or, you know, archetypal stories to deepen or add layers to your fictional character. If you're writing memoir, is there an episode in your life where there are some parallels to some kind of classic story.

Speaker: 27:41

And that is it for today's class. If you are loving these deep dives, make sure to follow the podcast or come join the discussion on social media. My links are in the show notes. I'd love to hear your questions, comments and insights. Class is always about bringing you into the conversation, helping you to do your own thinking and come to your own conclusions. So I'd love to see you involved. Until next time, class dismissed.