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
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