Portia

In Billy Budd, a novella written by Herman Melville, the main character is portrayed as a Christ-like figure. Christ is brought into this story through the personality, actions, and persecution of Billy Budd, a sailor who was impressed into service on a British naval ship the Bellipotent. Christ, as God, is the epitome of human perfection and flawlessness. Similarly, Billy Budd is described as a man of "unpretentious good looks" (Melville 8) and innocence. Like Christ, Billy Budd gives "no…

There is a fine line between those with malicious intent and good people succumbing to the physical and emotional stress that society puts on them. Such is the case in the drama, The Merchant of Venice by WIlliam Shakespeare; here, Shylock conveys that societal mistreatment along with tempting situations can cause a person to walk this line, and ultimately, can create a bad person where a good one once was. Throughout the entirety of his life, Shylock faces dehumanization, due to the fact that…

This is a critique of the production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo. The Last Night of Ballyhoo is Alfred Uhry’s glance back into Southern Jewish nostalgia based on his life’s experiences. The Last Night of Ballyhoo won the 1997 Tony Award for Best Play. Ballyhoo is established only a couple of months after Hitler’s military occupied Poland. However, as a amount of Ballyhoo characters propose, Hitler and Europe are too distant to be of life-threatening alarm This play was written by Alfred Uhry,…

The bullfights find another form of significance in their paralleling of events in the characters’ lives. For instance, the first time they see the bulls as they are being unloaded into the corrals the first bull gores and kills a steer. This could be seen as parallel to the ensuing fight Mike and Cohn have. Mike himself compares Cohn to a steer—a castrated bull calf that grows into an ox—which fits on more than one level. Cohn is already an outsider to the group simply by being Jewish, as the…

Firstly, Shylock is treated in an inhumane way. Antonio is at Shylock’s house, trying to get a loan from him. Then, Shylock angrily replies with: “Fair sir, you spat on Wednesday last, you spurn’d me such a day, another time you call’d me dog: and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much monies” (1.3.121-124). Clearly, Shylock shows he is not happy with Antonio as his previous experiences with him were not pleasant. He was spat on, insulted, and treated like a dog. If one was previously…

Imagine that you have a Jewish friend who is persecuted and hated because of his or her race. And he or she is looking for a place to hide, but no one is willing to provide shelter. Then he comes up to you and tells you that you are the last hope. Would you help the Jew despite knowing that you may end up in prison or at a Nazi concentration camp? Well, Corrie ten Boom, a non-Jewish Dutch woman, risked her life and suffered to save the lives of many Jews by taking them into her home to protect…

The conflict between the laws of the state and the laws of indivdual consciene is a hard decision to face. However, both characters in, Antigone by Sophocles and Sarah’s Key by Tatiana DeRosnay come face to face with this difficult desicion. The charcters experience similar situations of facing against injustices. Similar to Antigone, Sarah is forbidden to see her brother, but is wiling to do anything to see him and goes against unfair laws put in place. These similar concpets connects the two…

Despite the social problems affecting Lampedusa, the message portrayed by Crialese is clear. People should work towards helping those that reach Italy, even if the Italian government says that they should not, and call the Carabinieri to turn them away from Italy. He does this by stirring empathy from characters, and gets characters to feel compassion for these African migrants, even if they had different feelings at first. This compassion is first shown by the sailors who declare that as law…

The main female characters of Christopher Marlow’s The Jew of Malta and William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice serve the same purpose in their respective plays. Despite their power differences, Abigail and Portia fulfill the same function of humiliating the Jewish main character. These women also perform comparable actions which feed into the execution of their implicit main purpose. These actions and consequences include the following: going in disguise to protect financial statuses when…

Lorenzo’s importance in the Merchant of Venice It’s common for fathers to grant a blessing for the elopement of two individuals. This blessing is usually given if they approve of the two who are wishing to be married. However, if the father doesn’t want his daughter to be married, then his wish should be respected. This is hardly the case in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Lorenzo, a minor character, intends to elope and run off with Jessica, the daughter of a rich Jew named Shylock.…