Theme Of Revenge In The Merchant Of Venice

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When we were little we were taught the Merchant of Venice in school. What I could grasp from the Christian version imparted to us was ' a cruel Jew wanted to harm a Christian gentleman and his subjugation to justice by Portia 's wits. ' Thus for me justice was served. However now reading it again my previous presumptions have been replaced with questions. The 'Jew ' is the question; why did the Jew did what he did?, what made him the spited Jew, Shylock?. I plan to dive deeper into the making of the Jew in this paper.
The Merchant of Venice is a play spurred into action by love and to a far extent by hate. Hate has been associated usually with Shylock ,it was hate which made him exact revenge through his profession, however, evidence points it to all of the characters of the play. It was hate which made him exact revenge through his profession. In fact, it is surprising to see that in Sherlock there is a more rational and lighter hate, a hate which was created by hate itself and not by shylock 's accused evilness. His hate was a product of the hateful treatment meted to him and his tribe by the society and the biasness of the state against him and his tribe. Jews couldn 't own land or property in 16th century Europe and they earned by money lending. Thus for Shylock to be usurer was not a choice, it was his only choice. The profession he took which the general public thought as a defiance of Christian principles, was itself given to him by the society. Shylock was thus