Merchant of Venice Post #2

Today in class as we listened to the NPR report on modern Italy I started to make some connections that surprised me but were reasonable and logical. Before when I thought of Italy in Elizabethan times I had a harder time understanding the tension between Shylock and Antonio as well as the motivation behind the tension. After listening to the way Blacks are treated in Italy today I am able to relate the two situations to each other as well as make other connections to other incidents. One of the first things I thought of was the equal rights movement in America not so long ago. Many of the things the Italians were saying such as, segregated schools and poor job opportunities relate exactly to what African Americans went through. Another group that I didn’t first connect to but later started to consider is women. The suffrage movement was an important change in American culture. Although women don’t come from a different country (or planet as it sometimes seems), they are different from one another and this is the starting point for tension and women’s need to stand up and achieve equal rights. Although two groups may be different from one another, that is no reason for people to feel a prejudice toward one another. This is shown through Shylock’s interactions to Christians, mainly Bassiano thus far in the book.

Merchant of Venice Post #2 »« Merchant of Venice #1