Merchant of Venice Film

Merchant of Venice Film

  • Submitted By: honey4ever
  • Date Submitted: 11/13/2008 9:06 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1232
  • Page: 5
  • Views: 1

An important idea in the text Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare is prejudice affects the course of justice. Prejudice is a judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge of someone; and it occurred quite often in this play. Whether it was the racist relationship between Shylock and Antonio or the religious discrimination between Jews and Christian, prejudice always affected the way that people treat and thinks of each other. This idea of prejudice was also expressed thoughtfully throughout the film of Merchant of Venice. The director used film techniques such as colour, sound effect, and dialogue; helping us to understand this idea through the verbal, visual and audio aspects in the film.

The idea of prejudice affects the course of justice was described in detail throughout the play. Shakespeare has portrayed Venus in Mid-evil times as being a place filled with racism and discrimination to ‘aliens’. Prejudice occurred repeatedly with all the individuals in the play. In the text, Shylock was a Jewish money lender. He was often judged unfairly for his religion and business. He was put down and ‘spat on’ by the Christians. “You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spit upon my Jewish gabardine.” This shows that Shylock was constantly prejudiced by the Christians because of his religion. Christians did not consider if it was right to humiliate the poor Jew, they were too compelled religious prejudice to think whether if it was justice or wrong. “He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million….and what’s his reason, I am a Jew.” Despite of religious discrimination, Shylock was deeply devoted to his Jewish religion, but there was no doubt that Shylock was prejudice too. “I hate him for he is a Christian.” In this quote, he expressed his hatred against Christianity. Therefore Shylock himself does not judge people by their inner value, but by their race and religion. In comparison to Shylock, the Christian characters in the play were far...

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