The Little Black Boy & Madonna of Port Lligat

I think that the word that appears in the poem, for me, is “Eternity”, because the mother is telling to her son that in heaven, in other words, when he dies, he will be in another place, where God lives and all the people look the same. What she said to her son is a brief definiton of the Eternal Life according to the Catholic church that is why I chose this word.

I chose Madonna of Port Iligat by Dali, because in the poem the mother knows that there is something bothering to her little black boy, so she tries to protect him telling him those things. In the painting the boy is inside the belly of his mother, so the boy is being protected by the mother, because it does not exist a safer place in earth for a son, because there he / she has the protection of the mother, no one can touch him / her.

Final Essay: Discrimination in Shakespeare’s work and inside the Schools.

Outline

I Introduction

- Purpose of the essay

II Summary of the movie

- How Discrimination is shown inside the movie

III What is Discrimination?

- Definition of Discrimination

- Different types of Discrimination

IV Discrimination inside the school

- How teacher discriminate students

V Conclusion

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The following essay will be about the movie “The Merchant of Venice” directed by Michael Radford, but orinally written by William Shakespeare between the years 1594 and 1597, but published in 1600. The main issue that I will develop it is going to be Discrimination, which it is very explicit in the movie. Then I will explain discrimination in today’s world, specifically inside the schools, and how we can avoid it, in order to accept others and respect them in the same way that we expect respect from others.

In the movie we can see that Shylock, the main character, and all the Jewish people were discriminated by Catholic people, because they had a different religion, customs and traditions. In order to have the movie’s plot clear I am going to give a brief summary of it and also, to see how Discrimination was lived by Jews in that time.

Bassanio was a noble and poor Venetian, who asked to his friend Antonio (to some people he was his lover too), a rich treader, three thousand ducats as a loan, because he wanted to get married to Portia, a rich heiress. Antonio, who had all his money invested in his ships abroad decides to ask for the money to Shylock, a Jew usurer. Shylock said yes, but if Antonio does not pay at the agreed date, he will pay with a pound of his own flesh, the closest piece of fles to his heart. He asked this, because he wanted revenge for all the bad things that Catholic people have done to him and to all the Jewish people. Shylock did not care too much for the money that had lended to Antonio, the only thing that really matter to him was revenge.

They had to asked a Jew for a loan, because in those times Jewish people could not have any property, they were not allow to have nothing, so to live they had to work as usurers, they were the ones that gave money as a loan. Also, they had to ask for the money to shylock, because he was the only Jew that had that amount of money.
After a while, there were news about Antonio’s ships, but there were not good news, his ships had wrecked and the debt have not been paid by Bassanio, thus Shylock asked for his pound of flesh as a payment. This situation causes a trial in which is decided that if Shylock cut the pound of flesh, he coul not shed a single drop of blood, because blood was not in the contract. So he could not cut Antonio and to make worst the life of Shylock, the judge made him give half of his money to Antonio and the other half to the state. So he lost all his money as a punishment.
As we could see, the main conflict in the movie was Discrimination, but, first of all, I am going to give a definition of Discrimination to have clear the concept and understand in a better way the main aim of this essay. According to the web page www.discrimination.com, Discrimination means: “Treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination”. Taking in consideration this definition we can say that in the movie Catholic people was against Jewish people, because of religious intolerance.

There are different types of Discimination, for example, we can be discriminated by others because of our clothes, beliefs, colour of skin or anything that can be different, even if we like a certain type of music we can be discriminated by people. For example, if we see a person in the street that is dressed in a different way or in a “funny” way to us, we tend to talk or laugh at that person. Other people tend to discriminate, because of the different religious that a person could have. In our country, Chile, there has always been rivality between Catholics and Evangelical people, which comes from both sides, becoming this into a vicious circle. A circle that never ends, because either of the sides give up their prejudices.

As I said before, there are many types of discrimination that can be good or bad, but I am going to focus in the Discrimination that exists inside the classroom and that I have experienced in my work experience.
Last year, I went to a school, in which there were a lot of Peruvian kids studying there. Most of the teachers were fine with the fact that they were there, but some others did not like those kids, so in class they were almost invisible to those teachers and when they needed some extra help, those teachers did not help them at all; in fact, they were excluded by those teachers. Teachers can not discriminate students, even if they do not agree with their way of dressing, talking, beliefs, sex, colour of skin, or,in this case, nationality.

As teacher, we have to be neutral, because during our entire lives we are going to be in touch with lot of people that is going to be different to us., they can be different in their way of speak, dress, ideas, and many other things. We have to accept the different characteristics that people can have, specially if they are our students, because they deserve the same respect that we expect from them to us. Also, because of the most important thing, they are human beings just like anyone else in the world, just like us, they only have different cultures and ways of thinking, due to the fact that we are different genetically, but spiritually and physically we are the same, we are all God’s children.

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Work Cited


- Movie: “The Merchant of Venice”

- http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_mercader_de_Venecia
- http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discrimination

Film Review: The Merchant of Venice

In this film review I am going to talk about the movie “The Merchant of Venice”. I’m going to give you a brief summary about it, then I will discuss about the relationship between Shylock and Antonio. After that I will try to answer the question, Are in today’s world problems between different Religions.

The movie is about a Christian asking for a loan to a Jew. This Christian, Antonio, had spat in the Jewish, Shylock, face at the beginning of the movie. Antonio had to ask for his help, because his friend Bassanio, wanted to get married to Portia and he needed financial backing. As they were good friends Antonio could not say no to Bassanio, but he did not have money to help him, so they had to ask for help. The Jew that could help them, because of the amount of money that they wanted, was Shylock, but once he knew that the money was for Antonio he said that in the case that they do not pay in the correct time, he wanted a piece of flesh from Antonio. He agreed because he trusted on Bassanio was going to be able to pay it before the deadline.

Meanwhile, at Portia’s house in Belmont, some Princes went to see if they could get married to her. They had to choose one chest out of three, if the one that they choose was Portia’s picture they could get married. None of them choose the correct chest. Then Bassanio arrived to Belmont to choose the correct chest and he was lucky, he did it.

Antonio had three months to pay the loan, and the three months passed. It came the day of the payment. As neither Antonio nor Bassasio had paid the loan, shylock asked for the piece of flesh from Antonio. He did this, because he wanted revenge for all the mistreats that he suffered only for being a Jewish person.

As we could see at the beginning of the movie the relationship between Antonio and Shylock was not good, they were rivals, because they had different beliefs, Shylock was a Jewish person and Antonio was a Christian. In those times Jewish people could not have properties so they had to work as usurers, so they were not treated too well by Christians.

Shylock hated Antonio, because Jewish people were mistreated a lot in those times, that is why he had hate in his heart and soul. Antonio was his revenge, was the first opportunity to hurt a Christian and he wanted to do either way.
In today’s world there are still problems between the different Religious that exist. For example, we have the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Palestinians believe that Israelis are oppressing them, so that is why they are in a “Holy War”. They say that this war is wanted by God, and leads to the ones who die in it to Salvation. Israel had built a wall to separate the two countries, in order to not have contact with Palestinians.

Another example that wee have in today’s world, is the conflict that exists between the West and Muslims. The west promotes human rights, which is the Human Dignity and it is what God wants for Human Race, but on the other hand, Muslims promote their Religion through violence. That is the main issue that they have today.

As a personal opinion, I really enjoy the movie because we could realize how Jewish people were treated in those times. We could see some problems that they used to have, not only in Venice, but in everywhere they were. Christian saw themselves as superiors, but doing this they were contradicting themselves, their beliefs and what Christianity beliefs in.

I also liked the setting and customs, because they were very appropriate to the period that the movie was settled.

The Fairy Queene

This letter was extremely difficult to read, because of the vocabulary that it is used in it. After reading the letter a couple of times and some summaries on the internet (which helped me to understand it) I could get a general idea of the main point of this letter.

In this letter Spenser is trying to show the virtues of human beings and he decided to write about the King Arthur, because he represents the twelve Virtues. He used different characters to represent those virtues.

This letter also has a hidden message, which is, in my opinion, a critique to the kingdom. He disliked social life, religious and political problems. You have to read between the lines to realize of this hidden message, because is not explicit in the letter. This characteristic makes the poem an Allegory.

He also wrote this letter, I think, because he wanted protection and the best person for this was Sir Walter Raleigh, who was a respected and powerful man.

Outline: The Merchant of Venice

Outline:

1. Introduction

2. Brief summary of the movie


3. What happened between Shylock and Antonio


4. In today’s world, are there the same problems among different Religions?


5. Personal Opinion.

What women want most?

I think that what women want in today’s world, is to be respected by men and be treated as human beings with the same rights that men have, because women are not made just to clean, take care of the children or serve to their husbands, we also work and do things that we enjoy or want to do.

We want to be treated with respect and also be understood as a person with thoughts and feelings and not as sexual objects without opinions, because we are just like men and even better. We are better than men, because we work, do the chores of the house and raise and take care of our children.

Having read Chaucer’s poem “The Wife of Bath”, we can see that what women used to want in those times is not much different from what we want in today’s world. In both ages we want to be respected and considered as human beings with the same rights that men have, because we are not different, we have opinions and feelings just like a man.

Vicious Circle.

When I read this poem for the first time, I thought that it was written many years ago, but still fits in our cultural background; because greed is everywhere we go and everywhere we look. I think that this happens, because we, as human beings, have not change our behavior, in terms of personal success. The only thing that we want in our lives is having more and more material things, in order to be more “powerful and successful” than the person who is next to us.

The greed that corrodes us is guilty of all the poverty and injustice that exist in our world, because if we care a little in our “brothers and sister” (in God’s eyes) we would not be so selfish and we would not be thinking only in having things to ourselves. We will be worried in help others to succeed in the same way that I have succeed.

I really think that this will never change, because there are people that can not tolerate that their neighbor has the same things that they have, because the human being is always competing in having more and more. This is a vicious circle that will never ends.