Analysis Of Twelfth Night By William Shakespeare

As a child, our parents have always told us to follow what the heart desires. But, is that really the best thing to do? This brings up the question “is it better to follow your heart or your mind through topsy-turvy times?” William Shakespeare has always forced these questions upon us. A novel written by the mastermind himself, Twelfth Night, is a perfect representation of why you shouldn’t follow your heart in “topsy-turvy” times. In the Twelfth Night following your heart is a cause for suffering. Now to set the background for the play, Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night as a romantic comedy. But, what readers tend to overlook is the fact that Shakespeare was trying to show the negative side of following your heart. To have the characters

Twelfth Night’s intricate text shows an underlying theme, the fact that you should use your mind, instead of your heart, to work through hard times. According to Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, there are two different paths your mind can take, fast thinking and slow thinking. “Your fast thinking is more affected by your emotional state,” he then goes on to say “Listening to your hear is something that will more likely hurt you than not, especially if you’re under any kind of time pressure.”(www.psychologytoday.com) Shakespeare perfectly designs his plays to show this message, but underneath all the lovey-dovey “bullshit”, excuse my language lol, he sends a real message. Shakespeare goes over the top to prove that following your heart isn’t always the best way to go about things. Shakespeare takes it to a point where the Duke threatens to kill Cesario, aka Viola, for “betraying” him to become Olivia’s lover. Shakespeare uses this exaggeration as a lesson, showing just how powerful love can be. Shakespeare had diversity showing the underlying theme of his

Everyday people, even licensed practitioners, argue over this topic. Saying things like “the heart knows what it wants” and “you should listen to your first instinct”. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you were scrolling through Instagram and you see a cute girl or boy, the first thing you think is that you should message them and see how they are doing, well this first thought is what your heart thinks it wants. But, you are putting your guard down and making yourself vulnerable by doing this. According to Daniel Kahneman, www.psychologytoday.com, “decisions to take risks may in fact benefit you, but just take your time, whenever possible, to gain the most fulfillment from those decisions.” Daniel is showing the readers of his post that following your heart can lead to heartbreak, as well as help put you in “topsy turvy” times. To conclude, Shakespeare wrote the Twelfth Night not only as a rom-com but also to show the reader how powerful logic and reason is. The character development Shakespeare used helped him to push his point across, he did this by giving subtle but relevant lines from each character. By doing this Shakespeare was able to mask and coerce the reader into thinking the theme was something different. To pick up on these subtle hints, the reader had to dig deeper into the text and force themselves to use logic and reason to reveal his true purpose for writing this