As history has proven on a vast number of occasions, societies around the world have the capability to distort people’s minds, planting feelings of superiority in places undeveloped and unprepared for their presence. While a society can instill a mind with any idea it chooses, a surprisingly large number of communities in the world have developed a deep-seated hate for Jewish people and culture for a variety of complex reasons. In the sixteenth century, William Shakespeare witnessed the injustices committed toward Jewish populations by the Christian majority and later transcribed these events into The Merchant of Venice. Portraying the Jewish communities through a character named Shylock and the Christian communities through the majority of the other characters, Shakespeare develops each group of characters based on how he and society viewed them in the 1500s. While Shakespeare may have seen Shylock as the villain of his play, deeper analysis by the reader can allow one to overcome the writer’s bias and discover that the true villain is a Christian woman named Portia. She, as well as the other Christians in the play, are favored in nearly every aspect of society, including the judicial system. Portia, however, abuses this fact and uses a corrupt system to cruelly assert her superiority over Shylock. This same problem was highlighted in the Scottsboro Trials in the 1930s where two social groups clashed over the verdicts of a series of court cases. While Shakespeare and other readers may view Shylock the Jew as the villain of The Merchant of Venice, a closer evaluation of the actions of each character and events in history reveal that Portia is the true antagonist who abuses the flaws in society for her own benefit.
The manner in...
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...e. Portia disguises herself as a male lawyer, clearly caring very little for maintaining her integrity, and uses a corrupt system to rob Shylock of everything he values in life. Such a blatant manipulation of power was witnessed in the Scottsboro Trials in Alabama, and for that reason, these cases are looked upon as a dark part in American history. While society tends to favor one social or racial group over another in today’s world, it is essential for each citizen to not use this unfortunate fact for personal gain, for doing so will only result in a worsening of the system. Sometimes, it is left to an individual to make a difference, and in the case of The Merchant of Venice, it is the reader’s obligation to overcome the distorted story of the evil Jew fed to them by Shakespeare and see the true villainy in the Christian population, and more specifically, Portia.
that the current Commander in Chief is a villain with the emotive grounds that threats and insults are spewed by the president. Ultimately, the metaphor used as the grounds of the claim reveals irony because the president is ridiculed, which harmonises suitably with the depiction of “The Donald” as a villain. Furthermore, the metonymy itself is an indication of the rhetorical devices irony and satire. Naturally, the implicit warrant is that only a villain spews threats and insults to be heard by
Hidden within the play, there are various junctures of loss that demonstrate significant change and glimpses of hope, explicitly shown through behavioural changes and interactions. As heard in the listening stimulus, Lear to Gloucester, “A man may see how
woman in a cape pushing against all odds to save people and the people they love. When you hear villain, you might think of your favorite comic or movie with the guy or girl that’s absolutely deranged and evil. In real life the heroes and the villains are not so easy to spot they are often hidden and sometimes they aren't even people at all but circumstances people are put in. You find heroes and villains in all walks and in all mediums. Protagonist and antagonist are in literature and they exist in
alcohol and pride are factors in the downfalls of one of the main characters. While the crime in “The Cask of Amontillado” takes place in a catacomb and “The Black Cat” in a house, the victims in both stories are hidden behind walls built in a cold, dark, and damp area. Lastly, both villains acknowledge their actions but place accountability on another character rather than accepting the blame for their horrific deeds. These two stories could even be said to be a window into Poe’s dark and twisted life
He is seen as the villain because it looks like he tries to manipulate the miller’s daughter when in actuality he was just lending her his services at a specific price. Who’s to say that Rumplestiltskin is the bad guy because she couldn’t pay her dues? In fact, the real villains of the story were the king and the miller. They both let greed and the want for power get to their heads. The miller exploited
Allegory is used in written works to reveal a hidden meaning of something. Typically the hidden meaning is a political or moral one. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser and King Lear by William Shakespeare use allegorical references within its sentences. Spenser once wrote to Sir John Walter Raleigh about his planned structure of his epic poem and revealed that each character and event is supposed to be an allegorical meaning behind it. Shakespeare and Spenser’s characters and events within the epic
true villainy is more so in question. Claudius shows traits that stray from traditional idea of a heartless, animal-like villain working for evil, while also representing villainous qualities of the foulest kinds that ultimately overpower his humane soul. This complexity in Claudius’ character helps Shakespeare transcend the traditional villain. Unlike traditional villains, facts suggest that Claudius does have conscience, despite not following it. Though his negative qualities ultimately overweigh
another. For example the heroes are usually brave, muscular, good looking, and fairly popular. On the other hand you have villains. Villains are usually brave as well; however they usually have some kind of deformity such as the villain in spider man. They have different beliefs than that of most other people. These are more modern villains, back in Shakespeare’s time villains were just normal people. Examples of these characters are Lago from Othello, this is a story where Lago makes a plot to take
As expected, this type of malicious deception finds its roots from Don John, the villain, who plays an essential role for nearly all of the evil trickery and deception in this play. He acts as a catalyst and an instigator for trouble whose sole aim is to ruin the love and happiness between Claudio and Hero to get revenge on his brother
daughter is safe from harm. This supports my point because it exemplifies how disney movies portray young and pretty women to be extremely weak to the point where they must be supervised at all times. Moving on, in every classic disney film, if the villain is a female; it is common and somewhat expected to picture her as extremely hideous and seek to be gorgeous. This was clearly seen in Little Mermaid. Ursula, the movie's main vill... ... middle of paper ... ... portrayed to be ugly and seek to
a dark or hidden thing in their life. Their choices can either make them seem like a hero or a villain. Bill Cosby was known as a person who was able to break down walls between white and black people in his shows and was a known hero dad. Even though he did a lot of good things, he has done a lot of things that were wrong with his life to make him a villain. From raping and sexual harassing 60 women to forcing them into silence, His Actions have made him more of a hero than a villain. Bill Cosby
use’s many different techniques to write good stories for example he uses personification, to describe settings, imaginative characters etc… Doyle makes his characters resemble animals, this is so the reader can immediately identify the hero, villain and victim. One of the factors that enables readers to appreciate Sherlock Holmes stories is Watson, His role as narrator is important because he asks the questions that the reader wants to know. For example in the red- headed league Watson
portrait of a man who became a villain by means of ambition, desire and an imbalance of good and evil. “Macbeth” is a play composed of the disintegration of a noble man’s world. The play begins by offering the audience Macbeth, a war hero, with a high regard from Duncan, the king of Scotland. By the end of the play Macbeth transforms into a universally despised man without a place in the social community. Shakespeare draws an amazing face of a man made to be a villain by ambition, desire and an imbalance
Victorian women. In Stoker’s Dracula, it showed the fear of feminine sexuality within the Victorians. Stocker was able to give sexual freedom to women through the creation of a creature such as Dracula, who is viewed as the villain as being capable of exposing all the hidden sexual desires of all the characters to play on these fears, especially the way Dracula had an influence over women. Victorian women only had two options either to stay a virgin or be married and a mother. If she decided to not
clean as you would expect of a Hero. He lives in a dirty swamp and washes his teeth with the ooze from bugs. This is effective because it makes the audience find the Ogre funny and friendly, unlike most of the other characters in the story. The villain of the fairytale is Lord Farquaad. He is introduced near the beginning or the tale and when he is introduced he is shown from a low camera angle to make him seem superior and evil above the audience. There is also music with a slow pace that makes