xxx/ellauri059.html on line 354: However, when we take into account circumstances that took place before the play, as well as what happens over the course of the plot, Shylock begins to seem a like a victim as well as a villain, and his fate seems excessively harsh. In addition to the abuse Antonio and other Christians routinely subject him to, Shylock lost his beloved wife, Leah. His daughter, Jessica, runs away from home with money and jewels she’s stolen from him, including a ring Leah gave him before she died. Although Solanio reports that Shylock’s was equally upset by the loss of his money as his daughter (“My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!” (II. Viii.), we must remember that we are getting a second-hand view through the eyes of an anti-Semitic character who compares Shylock to the devil. As we learn from Shylock himself, the Christians of Venice are happy to borrow money from him, but refuse to accept him as part of Venetian society because they equate his religion with Satan. Shylock has been treated as less than human his whole life, because he is not a Christian. Yet when he tries to collect on a loan, the other characters insist that he act like a Christian and forgive the debt.
xxx/ellauri059.html on line 362: Shakespeare also gives us insight into the inner Shylock – not only his bitterness and anger but also his more sympathetic feelings such as the hurt he has experienced, his thoughts about the injustice of anti-Semitism and his isolation from normal society. Throughout the action of the play we see how nasty the Christians are – their shameless selfishness and brutal discrimination against Jews. Shakespeare makes Shylock’s hatred even more dramatic by having Shylock’s daughter elope with a Christian.
xxx/ellauri059.html on line 370: The ships are lost in a storm and just at that time Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, runs off with a Christian, taking money and jewellery with her. Shylock, burning for revenge against the Christians generally, takes Antonio to court to claim his pound of flesh.
xxx/ellauri059.html on line 380: In The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare is decidedly not anti-Semitic. It is just the opposite. We are definitely attracted to the Christians and we can see how horrific Shylock’s intention is but that is outweighed by the provocation he is subjected to: his social shunning, attempts to exploit him, daily insults about him and his religion, and the dramatic acts of the abduction of his daughter and the stealing of his property.
xxx/ellauri059.html on line 382: Any writer who could write Shylock’s speech about being a Jew can see the anti-Semitic dialectic of his time for what it was. Shakespeare was far more in tune with the twenty-first century attitude than the sixteenth and seventeenth century view.
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