We are human beings !

This paper will discuss the movie that we have seen in class, which was “The Merchant of Venice”. I will focus on the opposition between the characters Shylock and Antonio. Both were the main characters of the film but they represented opposite power in it. It is important to mention how this movie began, the first images shown were texts which explained how Jews were treated to us, discriminated and hated.

In the movie the events took place in the 16th century, in Venice, which was divided into Jews and Christians. Jews were discriminated, they were forced to wear red hats in order to recognize them and they lived in a ghetto. Antonio, who was a Christian, spat in Shylock’s face, just because he was a Jew and a usurer. One day Antonio decided to borrowed money from Shylock. Why? Because Antonio had a friend, Bassanio, who needed money in order to travel where a virgin queen lived. He wanted to seduce her because she had a lot of money. Antonio and Shylock made a deal, the Jew lent him the money without any interest but if he could not pay him three months later, Shylock would cut him a piece of his flesh. Three months later Shylock and Antonio went to the court to decide if the Jew would cut part of Antonio’s flesh. Shylock was thirsty for revenge because he had lost his pride and he had lost his daughter. But if we analyze deeply why he wanted revenge, we could see that it was because he just wanted to be respected and he wanted to be treated as a human and not as Jewish dog. from this point of view, he wanted to teach to Antonio to respect Jews but maybe through revenge was not the best way to do it.

The movie showed us stereotypes of people, its characters clearly represent different types of power and ways of thoughts. So, what did Antonio represent? Probably he represented the good side. He had everything in his life, he was handsome, Christian, and he also had money and Bassanio’s friendship. On the other hand Shylock represented “the dark side of the force”, because he was ugly, usurer and Jew. First, the discrimination here is something physically. Why did the film director choose the handsome guy to represent a Christian? It’s something absolutely esthetic, because the antagonist could not be the handsome. Otherwise, the antagonist would not be represented as something bad. Second, the discrimination in this movie was basically represented by the hate against Jews. They had to live in ghettos, wore specific clothes and they did not have the same opportunities like the Christians. Something that called my attention was Shylock’s words when he was trying to explain that he was a human to Christians.

“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, as 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?...”

Those words showed the desperation that Shylock felt and they made me reflect on discrimination; which is the most stupid thing that we could do against someone. We are human beings! We have the same feelings, the same fears, etc. So, everybody must have the same rights and the same opportunities. Therefore, as future teachers, movies like this could help us to encourage students to be aware of cultural differences and similarities and teach them respect. And we could say that segregation, discrimination and racism destroy the humankind and develop hate in the human beings’ hearts and souls.


To conclude, I think that this movie had two theatrical genres, comedy and tragedy. We could recognize comedy in the love story between Bassanio and Portia, and on the other hand, we could see tragedy in opposition between Shylock and Antonio. Discrimination and segregation were important topics in this movie, too. And these types of movies can help us as future teachers to teach values, like respect because all of us are human beings and also teach us awareness of other cultures due to the fact that we live in society.

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379889/quotes