Some very QUICK points about
-----<<<<[[[ SHYLOCK ]]] >>>>-----
Dennis’ group (-Submitted by Dennis Tat for his group in Rhetoric R1A)
-Shylock is the anti-Christian model, the antagonist, mostly based off his Jewish background.
-He is both lonely and anti-social towards other characters. He is more lonely because most of the other characters in the novel are Christian and despise that he is a Jew. They despise this more than anything else
- He places money above other things. Most of his thoughts are based around and focused on monetary gains.
-He tries to get revenge on Antonio because Antonio steals clients from him- and because Antonio has insulted him many times in the past, degrading his character.
-because of his anti-social, pessimistic attitude towards other characters, he does not hold any true relationships including of that with his daughter . He is a very detached person in terms of his emotions, his thoughts, and his actions.
-In act 3 he holds a self-speech that makes you lose symphony towards his character even though he explains that the Jews are the same as everyone else. He says the only thing he wants is money; however with Antonio, he does not want money, but in terms of another value, he wants retribution in terms of “flesh”; in other words, he wants Antonio to suffer greatly, even die.
[[ To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me, and hinder'd me of half a million, laughed at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorn'd my nation, thwarted my bargains, cool'd my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes; hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer that a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? why revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." ]]
-** Starting in Act 3, other characters don’t even refer to Shylock by his name anymore- they refer to him by “Jew”. At this point he’s lost his identity and is regarded as nothing more than a “greedy Jew”.
- Later in the novel Shylock is marked as insane because he does grant any mercy to Antonio, when every character is on Antonio’s side, (or somehow happens to think that the ships sinking is punishment enough for the merchant), and finally he is very close to cutting up Antonio if not for the intervention of Portia in disguise (in the courtroom).
-With finding out that his daughter misused his money and left him, even calling their home “hell”, Shylock replies to Tubal, that [a dagger was stuck in him] referring to the pain he felt by the betrayal with which Jessica left him.
-Some play Shylock as the victim; some call him the villain. There is arguments for both sides of this name calling.
For those who call Shylock the victim, these arguments can be used:
When Shylock was persecuted, and finally at the end when he could not exact his revenge on Antonio, in order to keep half of the money (the other half of the money would be gone no matter what), he had to relinquish his property to Lorenzo. First, Lorenzo ‘stole’ Shylock’s daughter, possibly changing her mind against Shylock. Second, he would have to convert to Christianity- the very religion which he despised. So the penalties were harsh against him; despite him wanting Antonio’s flesh which he ‘rightfully’ deserved if we were to consider Antonio a villain in terms of how he insulted Shylock throughout the novel, and how he stole many of Shylock’s clients. But throughout the entire novel, Shylock rightfully wanted justice and to be equal, and he seeked this justice. His actions placed him as a ‘disgruntled’ individual and he wanted to give those who oppressed him the same thing, he wanted them to feel what he has felt.
For those who call Shylock the villain, there is one central/valid argument normally focused towards mercy and how he did not give any mercy to Antonio towards the end of the novel, even when offered up to six times the amount of the debt that Antonio owed him (even though Antonio lost most of his ships out in sea, and thus lost a huge percentage of his money in the process). Because he did not give any mercy, we can say that without any intervention from Portia, he would have most likely killed Antonio by extracting a “pound of flesh” (which would have caused Antonio to bleed to death). So in this way, because Shylock planned to exact his revenge, he was the villain, even with the epic speech he gave about how he was a human, and not different from anyone else. Christians and Jews should not have any hatred towards one another, he thinks. At first this tends to humanize him and make it feel as if though he is a very thoughtful, sincere person, but then many readers are said to “lose this thought” of him as he says the only thing he wants is retribution for everything Antonio has done to him.
-----<<<<[[[ SHYLOCK ]]] >>>>-----
Dennis’ group (-Submitted by Dennis Tat for his group in Rhetoric R1A)
-Shylock is the anti-Christian model, the antagonist, mostly based off his Jewish background.
-He is both lonely and anti-social towards other characters. He is more lonely because most of the other characters in the novel are Christian and despise that he is a Jew. They despise this more than anything else
- He places money above other things. Most of his thoughts are based around and focused on monetary gains.
-He tries to get revenge on Antonio because Antonio steals clients from him- and because Antonio has insulted him many times in the past, degrading his character.
-because of his anti-social, pessimistic attitude towards other characters, he does not hold any true relationships including of that with his daughter . He is a very detached person in terms of his emotions, his thoughts, and his actions.
-In act 3 he holds a self-speech that makes you lose symphony towards his character even though he explains that the Jews are the same as everyone else. He says the only thing he wants is money; however with Antonio, he does not want money, but in terms of another value, he wants retribution in terms of “flesh”; in other words, he wants Antonio to suffer greatly, even die.
[[ To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me, and hinder'd me of half a million, laughed at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorn'd my nation, thwarted my bargains, cool'd my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes; hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer that a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? why revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." ]]
-** Starting in Act 3, other characters don’t even refer to Shylock by his name anymore- they refer to him by “Jew”. At this point he’s lost his identity and is regarded as nothing more than a “greedy Jew”.
- Later in the novel Shylock is marked as insane because he does grant any mercy to Antonio, when every character is on Antonio’s side, (or somehow happens to think that the ships sinking is punishment enough for the merchant), and finally he is very close to cutting up Antonio if not for the intervention of Portia in disguise (in the courtroom).
-With finding out that his daughter misused his money and left him, even calling their home “hell”, Shylock replies to Tubal, that [a dagger was stuck in him] referring to the pain he felt by the betrayal with which Jessica left him.
-Some play Shylock as the victim; some call him the villain. There is arguments for both sides of this name calling.
For those who call Shylock the victim, these arguments can be used:
When Shylock was persecuted, and finally at the end when he could not exact his revenge on Antonio, in order to keep half of the money (the other half of the money would be gone no matter what), he had to relinquish his property to Lorenzo. First, Lorenzo ‘stole’ Shylock’s daughter, possibly changing her mind against Shylock. Second, he would have to convert to Christianity- the very religion which he despised. So the penalties were harsh against him; despite him wanting Antonio’s flesh which he ‘rightfully’ deserved if we were to consider Antonio a villain in terms of how he insulted Shylock throughout the novel, and how he stole many of Shylock’s clients. But throughout the entire novel, Shylock rightfully wanted justice and to be equal, and he seeked this justice. His actions placed him as a ‘disgruntled’ individual and he wanted to give those who oppressed him the same thing, he wanted them to feel what he has felt.
For those who call Shylock the villain, there is one central/valid argument normally focused towards mercy and how he did not give any mercy to Antonio towards the end of the novel, even when offered up to six times the amount of the debt that Antonio owed him (even though Antonio lost most of his ships out in sea, and thus lost a huge percentage of his money in the process). Because he did not give any mercy, we can say that without any intervention from Portia, he would have most likely killed Antonio by extracting a “pound of flesh” (which would have caused Antonio to bleed to death). So in this way, because Shylock planned to exact his revenge, he was the villain, even with the epic speech he gave about how he was a human, and not different from anyone else. Christians and Jews should not have any hatred towards one another, he thinks. At first this tends to humanize him and make it feel as if though he is a very thoughtful, sincere person, but then many readers are said to “lose this thought” of him as he says the only thing he wants is retribution for everything Antonio has done to him.
posted by Dennis T. at
6:24 PM
1 Comments:
personally I consider Shylock as more of a victim because he had no allies in the novel. It seemed all the other characters were forming an alliance against him, because he was a Jew, and they were all Christian.
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