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Literary analysis of midsummer night's dream by william shakespeare
Critical analysis of Shakespeare's play Midsummer Nights Dream
Analysis of Midsummer Night's Dream
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Throughout this school year our Honors English class has been spending time reading and analyzing multiple classic books, all of which I find intriguing. This includes "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Odyssey", "Candide", and my personal favorite, "Things Fall Apart." This book emphasizes cultural ideas of both the Europeans and the native Africans as they face conflict. The characters in "TFA" demonstrate two different ways to react to conflict. Out of the many books we've read throughout this year, "TFA" was easily the best. TFA allows readers to understand the issue from the perspective of the Africans and the Europeans. In TFA, the European's beliefs clash with the Igbos traditional beliefs. The Igbo tribe worships the earth goddess
The world of English Literature captures the minds of millions of people worldwide. The stories that are read are new and old and continue to capture the attention of people even to this day. Each piece of literature can go in-depth into settings, themes, characterizations, have great styles and the thing most people enjoy... conflict. Most people don't understand or see the messages these pieces may have in them. Hidden sometimes within complex statements or meanings that the everyday person might not recollect. These "treasures" are waiting to be found and are gold waiting to be found.
Partikian, David. "Critical Essay on Tartuffe." Drama for Students. Ed. David A. Galens. Vol. 18. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.
American Literature. 6th Edition. Vol. A. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 783-791
Hermia , Lysander , Helena and Demetrius represent young love in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream . They are potrayed as foolish and fickle , acting like children and requiring a parental figure to guide them . The parental figures are Hermia’s father , Egeus , and figuratively Theseus , the mortal ruler , and Oberon , the mystical ruler.
Everyone sees the world just a little differently, and perspective can often stand as something which sets people apart. Controversy abounds in the world, and many people do not see eye to eye, especially when cultures clash, as they do in Things Fall Apart, a novel about the African Igbo culture. This novel by Chinua Achebe tells the story of the village Umuofia, a place which stands untouched and unmarred by the hands of Europeans. In the end, the Christian Europeans and the African natives clash, resulting in a changed world for the people of Umuofia. In Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, the Igbo people are portrayed as civilized in that their way of life seems just to them, but to an outsider, their decisions seem peculiar which is due to the fact that a foreigner does not know the culture as intimately as those who are a part of it, which establishes the importance of perspective and an open mind in viewing other cultures.
Love can be quite chaotic at times. As much as poets and songwriters promote the idea of idyllic romantic love, the experience in reality is often fraught with emotional turmoil. When people are in love, they tend to make poor decisions, from disobeying authority figures to making rash, poorly thought-out choices. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses various motifs to illustrate how love, irrationality, and disobedience are thematically linked to disorder.
The quest for complex subjectivity is a process in which one shifts their perspective from objectification to individuality (pg. 63). The purpose of the quest is to address and dismantle the “historically manifest battle against the terror of fixed identity” (pg. 95) This fixed identity stems from the resonating belief of inferiority, and the perspective of being viewed as property to one’s ownership, that was perpetuated during slavery. The traditional African religion, the Orisha, is found to have originated from the Yoruba tribe of West Africa. In the video provided, we are shown how the believers of the Orisha in Brazil, perform a ceremonial offering to the gods Shango and Ogun. These Afro-Brazilians are descendants of the slaves that were stripped from their homelands in African and brought to Brazil to met out the demands of colonizers.
Shakespeare wrote his acclaimed comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream more than a thousand years after Apuleius’ Roman novel, The Golden Ass. Although separated by thousands of years and different in terms of plot and setting, these works share the common theme of a confused and vulnerable man finding direction by relying on a supernatural female. One of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s many subplots is the story of Bottom, a comical figure determined to be taken seriously in his production of a Pyramus and Thisbe. As Bottom becomes caught up in a quarrel between the king and queen of the fairies, the commanders of the enchanted forest where Bottom and his players practice, the “shrewd and knavish sprite” Puck transforms his head into an ass’ s and leads him to be enthralled in a one night stand with the queen, Titania. (2.1.33) Apuleius’s protagonist Lucius endures a similar transformation, after his mistress’s slave girl accidentally bewitches him into a donkey, leaving him even without the ability to speak. Although Lucius’ transformation lasts longer and is more severe, he and Bottom both undergo similar experiences resulting from their animal forms. Lucius’ suffering ultimately leads him to salvation through devotion the cult of Isis, and Bottom’s affair with Titania grants him clarity and a glimpse into similar divine beauty. Ultimately, both asinine characters are saved through their surrender to the goddesses.
The Loss of Magic Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, there are multiple analyses that one can follow in order to reach a conclusion about the overall meaning of the play. These conclusions are reached through analyzing the play’s setting, characterization, and tone. However, when one watches the production A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Michael Hoffman, a completely different approach is taken on these aspects, leading to a vastly different analysis of the work. Though there are many similarities between the original written play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and the on-screen production of the aforementioned play which was directed by Michael Hoffman, there are differences in setting and
Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known. Chinua Achebe takes this idea into account when he wrote Things Fall Apart. He shows in this novel that unless you know about African culture, you can’t love it or hate it. He shows that Africans aren’t savages like the world thinks they are, and that the Eurocentric world that we live in isn’t correct.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is, in a way, Romeo and Juliet turned inside out--a tragedy turned farcical. The tragedy both are based on is the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe." In one, Ovid's story is treated as a melodrama (in Romeo and Juliet) and in another, it is fodder for comedy (in A Midsummer Night's Dream).
the laws of man and kept in check by society's own norms. The human struggle to
The concept of contrast plays an important role throughout Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare provides many examples of contrast signifying it as a motif. He groups the ideas of contrast together into those of some of the most important roles in the play. Helena is portrayed as tall and Hermia is short. Titania is a beautiful fairy who falls in love with Bottom, who is portrayed as graceless. Moreover, the main sets of characters even have differences. Fairies are graceful and magical creatures, yet tradesmen are clumsy and mortal. Additionally, the tradesmen are always overjoyed while the lovers are always serious with their emotions. Contrast layers throughout the whole play, as examples are shown in nearly every scene. Contrast becomes a constant, important motif to Shakespeare’s playwrite.
William Shakespeare, born in 1594, is one of the greatest writers in literature. He dies in 1616 after completing many sonnets and plays. One of which is "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." They say that this play is the most purely romantic of Shakespeare’s comedies. The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This extraordinary play is a play-with-in-a-play, which master writers only write successfully. Shakespeare proves here to be a master writer. Critics find it a task to explain the intricateness of the play, audiences find it very pleasing to read and watch. "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" is a comedy combining elements of love, fairies, magic, and dreams. This play is a comedy about five couples who suffer through love’s strange games and the evil behind the devious tricks. This play begins as Theseus, the Duke, is preparing to marry Hippolyta. He woos her with his sword. Hermia is in love with Lysander. Egeus, Hermia’s father, forbids the relationship with Lysander and orders her to marry Demetrius. Demetrius loves Hermia, but she does not love him. On the other hand, Helena is in love with Demetrius. To settle the confusion, Theseus decides that Hermia must marry Demetrius or become a nun. In retaliation to her father’s command, Hermia and Lysander run away together. Amidst all the problems in the human world, Titania and Oberon, the fairy queen and king, continually argue about their various relationships that they have taken part in. (Scott 336) Titania leaves Oberon as a result of the arguments. Oberon is hurt and wants revenge on Titania. So he tells Puck, Oberon’s servant, to put a magic flower juice on her eyelids while she is sleeping. This potion causes the victim to desperately in love with the first creature that they see. Oberon’s plan is carried out, but the potion is also placed on Lysander’s eyes. Lysander awakes to see Helena, who is aimlessly walking through the woods, and instantly falls in love with her. She thinks that he is making fun of her being in love with Demetrius, so she leaves and Lysander follows. This leaves Hermia to wake up alone. Puck now has journeyed to the area where several actors are rehearsing. He uses his magic to turn one of them into a donkey, in hopes that Titania will awake to see it.
My favourite text is a play titled “Anowa” by Ama Ataa Aidoo which was published in 1969. This book was first given to me by my father on my twelfth birthday. Although I was disappointed initially because I was expecting something “girly” on my birthday, I liked it when I read it because of the moral lessons it portrayed and the language used in the play. However, I got a deeper understanding of the test after I did a post-colonial and a feminist analysis of the text. In my post-colonial analysis, I saw that in a sense Anowa represents the beauty of the formal African society which was destroyed as a result of colonialism.