In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice loss is portrayed in various different ways. The character Shylock, who does not have much to begin with, suffers numerous losses as the play progresses. Some of the losses he experiences are also experienced by the characters in the poems. The character Shylock is constantly dehumanised by the other characters as he was a Jew in a predominantly Christian society, this also happens in the poem ‘Refugee Blues’ by W.H. Auden, which is a poem written in the voice of a German Jew fleeing from the Nazis. Shylock loses his daughter, his only family, when she chooses to run away with Lorenzo and in the poem ‘What Has Happened to Lulu?’ by Charles Causley the narrator loses a sibling. The most important thing to
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They repeatedly dehumanise Shylock by comparing him to animals, referring to him as ‘the Jew’ and associating him to the devil. The other characters refer to him as ‘the Jew’ instead of by name therefore he does not have much of an identity apart from his religion. At the end of the play Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity and loses a large part of his identity. The other characters mistreat Shylock by calling him animal names such as ‘dog’ and ‘cur’; this belittles him by lessening him in the Great Chain of Being and reducing him to something other than human. They also equated him with the devil for example when Solanio says ‘lest the devil cross my prayer for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew’. The noun ‘likeness’ means resemblance so this quotation insinuates that Shylock was the devil incarnate. Shylock being Jewish was not the only reason they mistreated him, it was because he was not Christian like the rest of the characters and they thought that Christianity was the only correct religion The other characters call him things like ‘misbeliever’ and ‘infidel’. The prefix ‘mis-’ means wrong or wrongly and ‘infidel’ means unfaithful so they thought his religion was wrong. They even believed that only Christians were capable of kindness, we can infer this from when Antonio says ‘the Hebrew grows Christian he grows kind’, this suggests that they believed that because Shylock had performed an act of kindness he must be turning Christian as kindness was a Christian
They repeatedly dehumanise Shylock by comparing him to animals, referring to him as ‘the Jew’ and associating him to the devil. The other characters refer to him as ‘the Jew’ instead of by name therefore he does not have much of an identity apart from his religion. At the end of the play Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity and loses a large part of his identity. The other characters mistreat Shylock by calling him animal names such as ‘dog’ and ‘cur’; this belittles him by lessening him in the Great Chain of Being and reducing him to something other than human. They also equated him with the devil for example when Solanio says ‘lest the devil cross my prayer for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew’. The noun ‘likeness’ means resemblance so this quotation insinuates that Shylock was the devil incarnate. Shylock being Jewish was not the only reason they mistreated him, it was because he was not Christian like the rest of the characters and they thought that Christianity was the only correct religion The other characters call him things like ‘misbeliever’ and ‘infidel’. The prefix ‘mis-’ means wrong or wrongly and ‘infidel’ means unfaithful so they thought his religion was wrong. They even believed that only Christians were capable of kindness, we can infer this from when Antonio says ‘the Hebrew grows Christian he grows kind’, this suggests that they believed that because Shylock had performed an act of kindness he must be turning Christian as kindness was a Christian