The merchant of Venice, a movie in which the main characters are Shylock, a jewish; Antonio, a rich merchant, and Basanio, Antonio’s best friend who asks Antonio for a loan in order to get merry to the heir of Belmont throne, Porcia. Nevertheless, as Antonio had invested all his money on merchant navy expeditions, he doesn’t have money and he has to ask Shylock for it in order to help Basanio. Now the worst comes. Shylock accepts to lend the money to Antonio but with a condition because he had been humiliated by Antonio due to being jewish, therefore it is his chance to take revenge on him. The contract they both agreed is that if Antonio doesn’t give the money back on time, he will have to pay with a pound of meat from his body.
Days before Antonio went to Shylock’s house, he had spat on Shylock’s face by saying that jewish people had to be treated as dogs because they did not deserve to be treated as christians were treated. Therefore, Shylock decided to lend the money not as a favor to help Antonio but to take revenge on him for what he had done. Whether Antonio did not have the money on time to pay the loan, then it was Shylock’s chance to return all the pain and humiliation he had lived because of belonging to a different religion.
The struggle between religions is what called my attention , especially when jewish were humiliated by christians. It happened because christians wanted to persuade all the people to follow their beliefs and it didn’t matter if it was violently, what they really cared about was to get more people into their religion. But jews kept their faith strong even though they were embarrased in front of everybody. All this invited Shylock to have the desire of revenge, but it got stronger when he knew that his only daughter left him by running away with a man in Basanio’s navy. Thus, now Shylock’s desire of revenge changed into desire of justice because they had taken his daughter, Jessica away from him. Money was not so important now but he only wanted his daughter back and hurt Antonio. It is really reasonable that Shylock wanted Antonio to pay for all the humiliation and also because Jessica had escaped with a Basanio’s man in order to have justice, because he loved his daughter and he had the need to have someone to pay for that.
When the deadline for Antonio to give the money back came, he felt desperate because his business didn’t go well, so he didn’t have money to pay and he probably would die. Antonio is takenb to court by Shylock, where he has to be judged according to what was stipulated in the contract. Here is when Basanio arrives and with the money to the court, and he even brings twice the money that Antonio has to pay. Minutes later, Porcia, Basanio’s wife, arrives but dressed as a man and takes over of the judgement. She tries to persuade Shylock to not take the pound of meat he wants from Antonio, but Shylock just wants to take the piece of meat. Finally, the judgement resul is that first, he can not take any piece of meat from Antonio; second, half of the money is for Antonio and the other half for the State; and third which is more painful for Shylock, he has to give up his jew faith and become a christian. I think what happened in the judgement is the worst side of the movie because Shylock lost everything.
Shylock is a good character and the one I was more focused on while I was watching the movie and what I liked from him is the courage, his attitude and behavior towards christians, because he could not be nice to them after all what they did to jews.Unfortunately, he lost what he loved the most, which was his daughter and his religion. From my point of view, this movie shows how Christian religion has been taking over through time. It is totally unacceptable that some people force other to give up something really important as is religion. When Antonio said to Shylock that he had to become a christian I felt anger because I put myself in Shylock’s shoes and I thought that I could never change my Rasta faith for any religion, even though I could be killed if I deny.
