William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare is the story of a man who

wishes to wed a woman, in order o do so he needs to borrow money from

his good friend. The play is that of an anti-semitic one. The play

is an anti-semitic one because the Jews are looked upon as evil and

untrustworthy. For the entire play the Jew is never meant to look as

a good person, and he is abused by almost everyone in the play. When

the Jew does have his sympathetic lines, they were actually meant to

be comedic. Only because of his religion is he discriminated against,

people of this time would have found this amusing. Through the way

that Jews are looked upon as the racist ones, Jewish people are only

care of wealth; which makes them materialistic, Jewish people can

suddenly turn Christian overnight, abuse should not cause hate from

the Jews, the Jew suffers great loss in the end.

The Jews in the story are looked upon as the racist ones. Shylock,

the villain in the story, is depicted as the one being racist at some

points. When he does Shakespeare makes it look as though he doesn’t

have the right to be racist, for he is a mere Jew. He is equal to a

dog in this story from a Christian’s point of view. He makes the

audience feel sorrow for Antonio, the merchant, for having to borrow

money from someone beneath him by saying it was done as a last resort,

so that Antonio, out of his good heart, could help out a friend. When

Bassanio asks Shylock to dine with the Christian’s he denies him the

offer (p.20). This makes Shylock look bad because he turns down the

Christian’s kind offer to dine with them simply because he does not

want to eat pork.

Jew’s are looked upon as greedy people, only lending money out so that

they can make more in the long run, where the Christian, one of a