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Analysis of a midsummer night's dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream and symbolism
Analysis of a midsummer night's dream
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In the play A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare, many of the characters relentlessly pursue their goals in the face of illogical decisions, and, while fictional items such as the “love-in-idleness” flower are used to explain the character’s sudden love for each other, the play does illustrate how love and ambition can lead to unforeseen consequences. For example, when Puck accidently anointed Lysander’s eyes with the “love-in-idleness” juice, he started a chain of events leading to Lysander and Demetrius fighting over Helena while Hermia is treated as though she is worthless. Moreover, at one point, Lysander and Demetrius even threatened to duel each other when Lysander awoke after being anointed with the flower 's juice and said, "Where is Demetrius? O, how fit a word is that vile name to perish on my sword" (61). This shows how the character’s love for certain other characters, and their ambition to pursue said love, can lead to the destruction of previous relationships and lead them to make dangerous decisions.
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses the motif of flowers to develop the symbolic idea of innocence. As seen in the text, Romeo, the main protagonist, is said to be "the bud bit with an envious worm" (1.1.141). Lord Montague, Romeo's father, calls him this in the first scene due to his recent sadness and compares him to a poisoned flower bud. The bud symbolizes his youth and innocence while the envious worm symbolizes the cause of Romeo's heartbreak, in this case, Rosaline, his ex-girlfriend. Rosaline poisoned his innocence when she broke his heart, and a poisoned flower bud will never open up or become a flower.
“In Aristotelian terms, the good leader must have ethos, pathos and logos. The ethos is his moral character, the source of his ability to persuade. The pathos is his ability to touch feelings to move people emotionally. The logos is his ability to give solid reasons for an action, to move people intellectually,” said Mortimer Adler. Many of the greatest artists use ethical, logical, and emotional appeals to prove their points.
Toba Beta once said: "“Justice could be as blind as love.” Shakespeare 's play A Midsummer Night 's Dream captures the blindness of both love and justice. Egeus, a respected nobleman in Athens, arranged for his daughter, Hermia, to marry nobleman Demetrius. Egeus tells his daughter that she must obey his wishes: If she does not, she can either choose to become a nun, or die.
Symbol 1: Relationship with Lysander Hermia’s relationship with Lysander is crucial, not only to the story but to her very character, and can be symbolized by a white jasmine flower. The importance of Hermia’s relationship with Lysander can be seen both through her obvious affection for him, as well as the ill-advised choices she often makes for him, which is seen in the theme that love is irrational. An instance in which Hermia is seen acting irrationally for Lysander’s sake is when, though she is very well aware of the position of women in her society, she speaks when Egeus is trying to coerce her into marrying Demetrius through Theseus, as while he claims that “Demetrius is a worthy gentleman” (1.1, 52) she replies saying, “So is Lysander”
Throughout history, women have faced many restrictions set by men. Man’s desires have overpowered the actions and thinking of women. In the past, women have only had the role of being a housewife while other professions implied a rebellious nature. The novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is set in Colombia, where women have to follow the stereotypical jobs of a woman.
Two close, best friends can be considered very similar but once love comes between their friendship, the two may seem to contrast each other and their differences begin to stand out. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, it is shown within several examples within the script of the play that love can twist the perception of man and can make someone who was very close to said man to be perceived in such a way that he or she seems opposite to said man. Shakespeare uses the motif of doubles and opposites in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to expose and sometimes accentuate the contrasts, opposing feelings and thoughts between the characters when under the influence of love. Such examples shown within the play are Helena comparing herself
William Shakespeare frequently uses dreams as a motif in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A motif is a recurring symbol, idea, or theme. The motif dream is used to represent hopes, to represent nightmares, and used to restore balance. In Act I, the motif dream is mentioned at least three times. The motif is a recurring symbol in this book and even is mentioned in the title.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare breaks down the two main themes of the story, comedy in conflict, into smaller more condensed themes to show how the uses of these themes define the nature of love through the actions and relationships of the Athenians, Rude Mechanicals, and Fairies. Body Paragraphs:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream dealt with the universal theme of love and its complications: lust, disappointment, confusion, and marriage, featuring three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. The play rotates around different forms of love, two of them being love for friendship (Philia) and romantic (Eros) or true love. Love is the most important theme of the play and the asymmetrical love seen in the play between the four Athenians and romantic encounters cause conflict within the play. There is a strong friendship love between two characters, Hermia and Helena. These two ladies are regarded as sisters as they have grown up together always having each other’s
In A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Shakespeare let the readers to explore his imagination and bring them to fantasies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream implies a world of imagination, illusion and unconsciousness through the word ‘dreams’. In the last scene of the play, act V scene I, the audience experience there is different thought of Theseus and Hippolyta in interpreting the love stories of Hermia, Lysander, Helena, Demetrius and the imaginations of many other characters. The scene of Theseus talking to Hippolyta lead to a controversy about the value of imagination and reason. From the play, the audience indeed witnesses magical incidents in the fairies’ forest, where the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, rule over the natural processes.
Unconditional love is a prevalent theme in A Midsummer Night 's Dream, and the blind nature of this love can be a great thing, especially since ignoring a romantic partner’s flaws can lead to a happier relationship. However, in A Midsummer Night 's Dream, Shakespeare takes his characters’ love to an irrational extent - so much so, that a prevalent theme of the play is the foolishness and folly of love. Context After being enchanted by Oberon’s love potion, Titania is awoken by Bottom, who she then falls madly in love with. She starts swearing her to love to him, to which Bottom responds: Analysis
In William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream the circumstances surrounding love have been put into question, this occurs when a magical nectar is put in the eyes of three major characters, and changes their feelings towards the people in their lives. Titania, Lysander and Demetrius all have had the nectar put into their eyes, though Demetrius avoids having this done to him in act 2 scene 2 which is the scene that the focus of this paper will be looking at. Throughout the play, we focus largely on the love life of Helena, which unfortunately does not seem to exist. She is in love with Demetrius, whom does not care for her in the same way, he does not cherish her at all before he is under the influence of magic. Once Lysander declares
The use and misuse of magic are of great importance in the play, A Midsummer Night 's Dream. It is a recurring theme that is mostly seen with Puck. The use of magic by Puck helps in creating conflict, humor, and balance in play. Shakespeare employs this device in his play to mainly build and establish the theme of love. The role of magic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is seen as an interference with the human world, however it is still separate from the human protagonists (Noone, 2010).
In the real world, love is a very fragile force. Love can be easily broken and manipulated by multiple other outside forces. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the two most basic themes are the chaos and order that are the causes of all the actions that take place. Chaos versus order in A Midsummer Night’s Dream also is a representation of Yin and Yang. Yin, represents the bad or darkness in the world, this is the chaos in the play.
