Parallels between Snape and Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice"

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 134975

 "Mari" wrote:
> 
> To make this summary as short as possible, my main argument 
> is that Snape and Shylock function in a *very similar way* in 
> narrative terms in their respective stories. They serve a similar 
> function for the writer, and inspire similar kinds of arguments 
> and debates.
> 
> <snip> 
> Readers respond to Shylock in the same way as readers 
> respond to Snape; both characters are unsettling and 
> ambiguous.
> <snip>

There is nothing ambiguous about Shylock. He's bent on revenge and 
wants – quite literally – to cut out Antonio's heart. I'd say it's 
as straightforward and unequivoqual as it possibly gets. It is not 
Shylock who "unsettling and ambiguous" it is the moral message of 
the play that makes one extremely uneasy (unless one is a hardened 
racist, of course). For three and a half acts we can't help but 
empathize with Shylock's plight and then in the end of the fourth 
the old prejudice is once again reasserted and we are invited to 
laugh at his final humiliation. You think it's "one of the best 
Shakespearian's comedies"? I find it singularly unfunny. Then the 
whole matter is dismissed and we are invited to this lovers' 
paradise – Belmont to celebrate with the three happy couples and one 
gloomy Antonio. Could you honestly wish Jessica joy? Every time I 
reread the play I find myself hoping that Lorenzo would dump her and 
make away with the money and jewels she'd stolen from her father. 

Snape on the contrary IS ambiguous. We don't know what he is really 
up to, where his loyalties lie, why he acts as he does, why DD 
trusts him and what it is he trusts him with. He's an enigma wrapped 
in a mystery (or was it the other way round?). In any case he's not 
at all like Shylock in this respect. 

a_svirn