The Sexist Issue in Surfing
The Shakespearian play, Merchant of Venice, is a world-famous play that focuses on a world with elements of love, discrimination and revenge in addition to the bigotry attitudes between the Christian and Jewish population of past Venice. The Venetian moneylender, the Shylock, is used to show how the treatment of Jews affected them and their own personality. This feature article will explore the attributes and personality of Shylock in addition to how his character is portrayed and changes throughout the play.
Shylock’s monologue is one with an extremely strong argument. The message of his speech was both of his bond between Antonio and himself but primarily the common humanity and likeness of Jews and Christians, he also says he'll learn from Christian example and seek revenge as they do. This monologue may complicate the audience’s perspective of Shylock, due to the misrepresentation of whether he is a good Jew or a flesh-hungry merchant. What Shylock truly wishes is to obtain one pound of Antonio’s flesh, and this is not only a way of revenge on Antonio but also a way to bait revenge on the Christians of Venice. This revenge could be hoped to destroy the discrimination of the Jews. This monologue is full of built-up emotion from which came from being spat on like a dog and being discriminated against by the Christians, as we can clearly pick up from his chosen words and tone, that he was treated without respect was treated the worst by Antonio. The speech makes his hate for Antonio clear. Shylock insists that the Christians are no purer than the Jews and no more human. This bold statement begins with his rhetorical question “Hath not a Jew eyes?” To continue, Shylock speaks with emotion stating that Jew and Christians are the same. His use of pathos is to appeal humanly appeal to Christians. The Christians show little to no pathos to Shylock in this speech so his speech changes from pathos to logos. He uses lines such as “If you prick us, do we not bleed” as a symbol of how he is just as human as the rest of the Venetian population. The effect of This logo is carried out for many more lines which are mentally and emotionally stationed to side with Shylock and better understand his want for revenge and his hate for Antonio.
Shylock is a character of most evidently, three attributes, in the merchant of Venice. The Jew can be argued as greedy, stubborn and victimized.
- To expand on how it is exactly that the Jewish moneylender is greedy is to focus on how he seems to be more distraught over the money that Jessica took than the fact that she’d run away. He’s also greedy in that he continues to seek his pound of flesh till the very last second.
- The point of this also leads to the stubbornness of Shylock. The moment that news of Antonio’s hard luck in regard to his lack of funding to pay back the bond gets to Shylock, he becomes set on obtaining his pound of Antonio’s flesh. Shylock knows that claiming his bond will likely kill his client; but is that not the intent, to claim revenge?
- The victimization of Shylock is the most hard-hitting and evident attribute of the character. He is hated by the Christian merchants of Venice. This is not only due to his methods of making money, but rather primarily because he is a Jew. But despite his past, is Shylock the victim or the villain of the play.
He stays vulnerable and arrogant for the whole movie, but he grows impatient as he comes closer to getting his pound of flesh. He is first introduced as a neutral character but it's very evident that he has something against the Christians, as the bond was first made, it was shown at how he was the antagonist. He becomes villainy enough to seriously damage people’s lives and relationships. He is not a natural-born monster, but rather one made of circumstance. A few other changes in characters in regard to the Jew would include how at first he is quick to reject Bassanio’s invitation to tea, but in the latter of the play he will make lengthy speeches and monologues directed toward the Christians. Another change in character that is picked up from the play is how in the beginning Shylock seems to be phased only by materialistic possessions like money, but later an emotional side of the Jew is shown when he is distraught by Jessica selling her mother’s turquoise ring. Finally, the arguably most obsessive and important change in character is in how as the play progresses, Shylock becomes more and more obsessive over claiming his bond.
