Merchant of venice
Human experiences:
Discrimination, gender inequality, Jealousy/Revenge (whatever suits the question best)
Discrimination
Quote
Technique
Analysis
Shylock is “the jew”, “dog”,
“Villain”,and “Faithless”
Pejorative insults
Derogatory adjectives
The use of pejorative insults
and derogatory adjectives
utilise criminal and
animalistic connotations to
tell the story of the Jewish
people of the collective
human experience of Jewish
people who were villansied
in the 16th-century
Jacobean society
“The devil can cite Scripture
for this purpose. An evil soul
producing holy witness is
like a villain with a smiling
cheek, a goodly apple rotten
at the heart”
Juxtaposition
Religious Allusion
By religiously alluding to
“the devil” Shakespeare is
solidifying Shylock as the
true figure of evil, Antonio of
light and dark imagery, in
“holy witness” and “evil soul”
creates a rigid hierarchy
between Christianity and
Judaism which is apparent
to modern audiences
“This poor merchant’s flesh,” Irony
(Duke, 4.1.23)
“That have of late so
huddled on his back”
(Duke, 4.1.28)
The Duke is suggesting that
Antonio is being persecuted
by Shylock, when in reality
Shylock has been
persecuted by the entirety of
Venice the whole play.
Gender inequality
Quote
Technique
analysis
“Farewell, and if my fortune
be not crossed,
I have a father, you a
daughter, lost.”
Rhyming couplet
women belong to their
fathers until they
are married, and then they
belong to their husbands.
(Jessica, 2.5.54-55)
Jessica is willing to deny her
father and become a
Christian for Lorenzo –
complexities of romantic v.
familial love
“We’ll see our husbands
Before they think of us.”
Disguise is a convention of
Shakespearean comedy.
The husbands care more
about their male friendships
than their marriages,
human experience of
gender, gender inequality.
Portia & Nerissa are willing
to sacrifice themselves –
reinforces
the message of the lead
casket, it’s only in taking
risks that one
can discover the truth about
themselves and others.
So is the will of a living
daughter curbed by the will
of a dead father
“This bond doth give thee
here no jot of blood. The
words expressly are ‘a
pound of flesh’.” (Portia,
4.1.302-303”)
-
Tone of voice
Paradox
Motif of the casket
Symbolic of her lack
of choice and
personal agency
Paradox
Portia is an intelligent,
perceptive woman – an
anomaly of the
usual women of the time.
Quote
Technique
Analysis
“If I can catch him upon the
hip,
him” (Shylock, 1.3.38-39)
Metaphor, Aside
Highlights the ongoing
growth of Shylock’s anger –
wishes to make the
Christians feel like he has.
Revenge
“That he would rather have
Antonio’s flesh Than twenty
times the value of the sum.”
Expresses Shylock’s value
of revenge being more
important than
(Jessica, 3.2.285-286)
his value of money.
Mrs Dalloway and the Hours
Themes: mental health, and the oppression of women
Values: escapism and identity
Mrs dalloway
Gender roles of women (identity)
‘felt very young; yet unspeakably aged. She sliced like a
knife through everything; at the same time was outside,
looking on.’
This is contrasting as the reader sees Mrs Dalloway
conform to her role as a 1920s housewife to the amount
that it consumes her.
Paradox
‘She had the oddest sense of herself being invisible;
unseen; unknown. There being no more marrying or
having of children now.’
A tricolon coupled with a asyndeton reflects how mrs
Dalloway views herself as obsolete and associates her
best values with youth potential and fertility
- “That being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore,
this being Mrs Richard Dalloway.”
Showing that following the societal expectations Mrs
Dalloway lacks personal identity
Mental Health (Escapism)
‘There was his hand; there the dead. White things
assembling behind the railings opposite’
The disjointed syntax structure of the sentence reflects
Woolf’s stream of consciousness style, combining both
Septimus’s inner anxiety and his outward experiences
through ‘white things assembling behind the railings’
symbolically conveying death reaching out to Septimus as
a means to escape his hellish life.
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun Nor the furious winter’s
rages.”
asserting that through death, individuals can attain peace
and liberty.
The Hours
Richard jumping out of the
window
Daldry uses costuming, in which Richard wears bright blue pyjamas with a sailboat
pattern, which alludes to his past childhood and experiences of trauma. This is then
contrasted by Clarissa who wears mature colours, which emphasise Richards'
separation from society. Furthermore Daldry links Richard to his past experiences
troubles with the use of mise-en-scene, in which the camera zooms out from a picture
of his mother that is surrounded by pill bottles and accompanied by non-diegetic voice
of Richard calling for his mother which links the two contexts. This is further shown in
Richards suicide, as similarly Septimus uses death as a means to escape his past
trauma. Daldry uses continuity editing to show how our past experiences represent our
mental state. Immediately after Richard’s death Daldry cuts to a shot of Richard as a
child celebrating his fathers birthday, this links the two story lines and and
demonstrates the barrier that the past holds over an individual's mental state,
resonating with Woolf’s original ideas as death as a means of escape from the perils of
life
Laura Brown baking a cake
(Oppression of women, self
authorship)
Daldry uses Mise-en-scene to contrast the dark brown cake with her bright blue icing
creates an unappealing lack of symmetry and aesthetics representing Laura Brown’s
inability to adhere to the societal expectations placed on her.
However whilst Daldry characterises Laura Brown as restricted, the use of a close up
shot paired with non-diegetic sound transfers the mood to a one of warmth, freedom
and fulfilment, this is reinforced by Laura Brown saying “It would be wonderful to say I
regretted it, it would be easy… It was death, I chose life.” in this Daldry reflects on the
changing role of women in society and reinforces Woolf’s point of view that gender
roles form a barrier with identity.
T.S Eliot
Quote:
Key Idea
Rhapsody on a windy night
Purpose and
meaning
“ These street lamps
sputtered”
Technique
-
Personificatio
n
Repetition
Analysis
The repeated image of personified “street
lamp” becomes a motif for the eternal feeling
of a lack of purpose. The siblicance and
harsh consonants creates a lifeless
atmosphere and alludes to the lack of
communication and understanding of
individual meaning within society.
“Every street lamp I pass
beats like a fatalistic drum”
-
Hyperbole
The streetlamps are not beating, it is the
persona’s heartbeat, this highlights the
persona is so lonely he can hear his own
heartbeat and mistakes it for company.
“Prepare for life”
“The last twist of the knife”
-
Concluding
line
As the poem concludes the persona is told to
“prepare for life”. However the thought of
continuing on with a meaningless life is the
“last twist of the knife”. This provides a direct
insight into the relationship between this
persona and his world in which he seeks to
escape where the horrors of daily life in the
modern world are seemingly more
threatening than the dreamlike chaos of the
city at night.
“Like a patient etherised upon
a table”
-
Simile
The Iambic pentameter created in the first
two lines is disrupted by the simile “Like a
patient etherised upon a table” demonstrates
Prufrock's constrained personality and his
entrapment within himself.
“I grow old… I grow old”
-
Repetition
Throughout the poem Prufrock's main
conflict is not participating and taking
advantage of life. This repetition reinforces
his sense of despair as he is wasting his life.
“(They will say: How his hair
is growing thin!)”
-
Parenthesis
The use of parentheses interrupts the stanza
symbolising the disruptive nature of
self-consciousness. He never escapes this
cycle of loneliness despite desiring it as he
suffers from a high level anxiety about the
judgement of others.
“Like ancient women
gathering fuel in vacant lots”
-
Simile
The alienated image created by this simile
sums up Eliot’s view of a soulless society,
deprived of the ability to find spirituality
within.
“The smell of steaks in
passageways”
-
Olfactory
Imagery
olfactory image symbolises the polluted and
mundane environment that individuals are
forced to endure. Eliot creates vile images of
the urban environment to depict the
meaningless feelings of individuals as each
urban life as each individual was just one of
“a thousand furnished rooms”
The Lovesong of J.Alfred
Prufrock
Preludes
“A Thousand furnished
rooms”
Anxiety and
alienation
Alienation
“Feets” and “Hands
-
Synecdoche
People in preludes lack features and are
reduced to body parts. Creating a sense of
isolation and alienation from society.
“We are the hollow men. We
are the stuffed men”
-
Anaphora
Paradox
This portrays Eliot’s recognition of the
modern person’s inability to connect with
new constructs that ‘stuff’ them with false
meaning.
“Here the stone images are
raised”
-
Biblical
allusion
The stone images the hollow men are
praying to are symbolic of false idols. This
alludes to when God punished the Israelites
for worshipping false idols, suggesting that
the hollow men are like these israelites
:For thine is; Life is….”
-
Biblical
allusion
The inability for the speaker to cite the lord's
prayer highlights the lack of faith and
connection of the hollow men. This is than
contrasted by a distant voice perfectly citing
the lord's prayer suggesting a strong
connection between the distant speaker and
God.
“Six hands at an open door
dicing for pieces of silver And
feet kicking the empty
wine-skins”
-
Biblical
allusion
In a world where the Magi search for a
religious leader and conversions, others
have abandoned religion and have
consequently lost their morality. Symbol of
betrayal and religion and desire for material
items such as wealth. As Judas betrayed
Jesus similarly modern life has betrayed
religion in favour of wealth and materialism.
Religion has been abandoned and therefore
morality has become corrupt.
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the
year … The very dead of
winter”
-
Pathetic
fallacy
Seasonal
imagery
Eliot uses natural imagery to convey his
journey of conversion into the Church of
England. Winter and cold are synonymous
with death, e.g. the death of nature. ‘Dead of
winter’ is used in order to portray the death
of the old religion he practised t and the
death of the spiritual self.
“I had seen birth and
death,/But had thought they
were different”
-
Binary
opposites
In the final stanza, Eliot conveys his
consistent stance that the modern man leads
a life devoid of any significance, though the
binary opposites “I had seen birth and
death,/But had thought they were different” .
This depicts a decaying humanity in which
The Hollow men
Journey of the Magi
Religion, Faith
Religion and
Faith
-
birth is of no greater importance than death.