Shylock As A Victim In The Merchant Of Venice Essay Example

Shylock, in “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare, is portrayed as the victim. He is repeatedly abused. He suffers physical abuse by the other characters.. He is mental and emotionally abused by the other characters. He is. in addition to this.. forced to endure hardships that are meant to take away his humanity. 

Firstly, Shylock is regularly harassed. Shylock is assaulted physically and verbally. Some examples of this are when he is spit on multiple times by the protagonist Antonio and Antonio says he will do it again.  Antonio in addition to this verbally abuses Shylock by calling him dog and other insulting and offensive words used discriminatively. Antonio also kicks Shylock to prove his superiority.

Secondly, he suffers mentally. This mental abuse makes him contemplate and attempt murder. Shylock wants to murder Antonio based on the bond they made early in the play, the three thousand ducats in three months loan or Shylock gets a pound of his flesh. Shylock uses this to attempt murder. It could be noted as him being mentally anguished by Antionios abuse that pushed him to want to murder Antonio. Antonio is taken as the protagonist but from his actions he is undeliberately seen as a villain. 

Thirdly, Shylock is forced to give up his religion as punishment of the attempted murder of a Christian. By giving up his religion, Shylock is forced to give up the humans primal urge to be in a group. This  is one of the strongest urges and essentially he has to change the group he has been in his whole life, who are along the lines of his family. He has to join a completely new group of people he knows nothing about, has no interest and despises. He not only loses his family group, he loses his home as well. After losing the court case, Shylock is forced to give half of his estate to Antonio and the other half to the state he lives in. These circumstances cause him to become homeless and bankrupt.

To sum up everything I have stated so far, Shylock has his life, livelihood, and faith all taken from him. While he's once seen as the antagonist at the beginning of the play, by the end, after suffering all this abuse he becomes the protagonist and victim.