Televising the Holocaust in America during the 1950s Essay Example for Free

Televising the Holocaust in America during the 1950s Essay usurer is a monster of condemnablety, miser, greedy, suspicious ,cunning , bloodthirsty , retaliateful, mean ,a bad father and a bad master. But it is the part that made him like this. Shylock is a tragic figure, trapped by prejudice and driven to penalize by the treatment he receives He is non cruel by nature. He is human in inner-self as the Christians are. He is therefore the most injured man, insulted, abused and disgraced by the Christians and even by his own daughter, His cruelty is made by centuries of insult and knocked out(p)rage which the Christians inflicted upon the Jews race. Shylock became hard and savage by long and cruel oppression. He suffers immensely. Shylocks humiliation and sufferings can only be deliberate by someone who has experienced the alienation of a gross minority. From the very beginning of the exemplify Shylock is a lonely man. His wife Leah ,whom he loves dearly ,is dead. His daughte r Jessica is non much of a help, and pollute adds to his loneliness. She betrays her father by robbing him of all his bullion after he had bestowed upon her the trust of his house. She not only takes the money but also marries Lorenzo, a Christian boy by changing her religion.This must have been peculiarly heart-breaking for the proud Jew. She later exchanges the turquoise ring of her mother for a monkey. Shylock is disliked by Antonio because of his anti-Semitism. Antonio in particular spits upon him and calls him a cut-throat dog. So it is but natural that such a man begins to hate those persons who hate him. His hatred of Antonio is religious, patriotic ,personal and professional. Lorenzo elopes with his daughter that makes him more revengeful . He bears insults with patience. He says sufferance is the badge of tribe. In his impassioned speech in Act III ,Scene I ,beginning with To bait fish withal he rises to the magnitude of a tragic hero, I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes ,hath not a Jew Hands ,organs, dimensions, senses , fed with the same food ,hurt with the same weapon.. It is a noble dissent against inhumanity of treatment to which the Jews as a race have been subjected through the ages. Shylock, the Jew has hatred against the Christians in popular but Antonio, the merchant of Venice in particular . He has strong reasons for it.The reason of his such revengeful situation towords the Christians and in particular towards Antonio is Christians abhorrence towards him and his race which is the false belief of the Christians that the Jews murdered Jesus Christ and therefore in league with the devil and this the Jews were actively working to soften the spread of Christianity . this belief was driven by the early church. In Merchant of Venice Antonio abhorred Shylock because of this inherited belief. Antonios treatment of Shylock is most unfri end uply and insulting.He hates the Jews in general and Shylock in particular. He has publicly condemned S hylock. He has been spitting on him at the Rialto in the past and abusing him. He has called him a mis-believer and a cut-throat dog . He has often spat upon his Jewish gabardine. He has been heaping disgrace and insult upon him. yet when he seeks for loan from Shylock from his friend Bassanio Shylock recites the various insults and injuries he has received at Antonios turn over Antonio haughtily replied I am as like to call thee so again. To spit on thee,to lower thee too. Naturally how can Shylock forget this humiliation he has received at the hands of Antonio. He is constantly abused by others as well. Gratiano calls him inexorable dog in the court infront of the Duke,and goes unpunished for slander. Even Solanio and Salerio calls him a villain and a dog. And they all hate him because he is a Jew. He survives in such a hostile environment like a man absorbing their insults ,yet never losing heart ,accumulating wealth in a fair manner no matter how much the Christians hate hi m for. Shylock is a fanatic Jew.He is a representative of the Jewish tribe . his vengeance on Antonio springs from the ancient and cruel hate which he as a Jew bears towards the Christians. Shylock is the champion of the persecuted Jewish race. He can not forget the centuries of insult and outrage heaped upon the the Jewish race by the Christians. Shylocks grudge is that Antonio abuses his dedicated race. he feels that the Jews have been denied human rights by the Christians. He fells pained that Antonio gives loans to people without charging any interest and thusly brings down the rate of interest in Venice.Shylocks profession as a Jew money-lender suffers by Antonios generosity. conserve ther is still another motive behind Shylocks revenge against Antonio. His daughter Jessica ,runs away with a Christian boy,Lorenzo,who is a friend of Antonio. The one single trait that puts him in the category of a villain is his all-consuming passion for revenge. He is prepared to kill for it . There is something horribly monstrous when he sharpens his knife to in reality carry out his barbaric job of extracting a pound of flesh from Antonios body.Critics have explained his revenge to his hostile surroundings,his constant humiliation ,the persecution of Jewish tribe and the betrayal of his daughter. Yet,all these put together can not explain the hideousness and cruelty involved in the act ,that he is bent to carry out. However,the punishment that is meted out to him at the end of the trial scene is as barbaric as his feeling for revenge. After the trial scene he is deprived of all his wealth and ahat is worse ,is ordered to convert into Christianity,if he is to save his life.According to the modern standards,the forcible conversion was a sin,for we regard the question of salvation as a personal issue on which no extraneous authority has a right to interfere. So ,from this daub of view the Christian court of Venice did injustice to this man. To have punished the Jew by confiscating his property would have been suitable to meet the end of justice but to go out of its way to force him to change the gospel singing of his forefathers would be an act of inhumanity which can not be defended according to the sense of justice.Throughout the play ,Shylocks persecution is massive and heart-rendering. We can not but feel sympathy for the man at the end of the play. But the hideous design that Shylock makes in order to take his revenge upon Antonio is not tolerable at all. _____________________________________ Reference 1)http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Merchant_of_venice 2)http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Shylock 3)http//www. britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/542457/Shylock 4)http//www. articlemyriad. com/character_analysis_shylock_merchant_venice_shakespeare. htm.