Immortal term, "Discrimination"

The main purpose of this essay is to show how discrimination takes place in some literary works. Shakespeare and Chaucer were two of the most important literary authors in the past. Works like; “The Tempest”, “The Merchant of Venice” (Shakespeare) or “The Wife of Bath” and “Truth” (Chaucer) are excellent inventions from which we can extract very good examples of old discrimination. At the end of this paper there will be some important question to make, in order to establish a relationship between literature, discrimination and education. For example; Do we human beings still suffer or commit discrimination? Is discrimination the same that was in the past? Is there a method to avoid discrimination? Do we find this problem in the educational field? These questions are essential to reach the main aim or purpose of this essay.
In order to understand the discriminatory practices in these literary works, it is necessary to present a definition of the word discrimination. From my point of view, discrimination is neither something new nor old. As the Anti-Discrimination act (1991) says, “In general terms, discrimination is any practice that makes distinctions between individuals or groups that disadvantage some and advantage others.” It could be also understood as an act against a person of a certain group determined by beliefs (religion), racial characteristics (color of skin), gender, education, social status, etc. This act goes beyond the individual merit because it is full of prejudices. In our world we have different types of discrimination related to; age, disability, national origin, race based, religion, etc.

Having presented a brief definition of what is discrimination, the next step would be to introduce the first of the two authors that we are going to see in this paper. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, England on 1564 (as Galileo). His father was a trader in agricultural goods and a farmer. Shakespeare family was in the middle of the social system. William Shakespeare studied at the Stratford Grammar School. During his early twenties, he wrote lots of plays, about thirty six. He wrote histories of love, romance and romantic tragicomedies and poems. Shakespeare was not a typical poet and he was successful economically. He finally died in Stratford on April 23 when he was fifty two years old. It is good to say that Shakespeare does not have any descendants, because all his children died pretty young.
After all these antecedents, we can start working of Shakespeare works. This time, we are going to start talking about “The Tempest”. In “The Tempest”, Shakespeare presented two main characters that develop the whole story, Caliban and Prospero. Caliban was the unknown element or character in front of Prospero. Caliban’s appearance was weird and his life style was totally different comparing to Prospero. For example, Caliban did not name thing as Prospero did. This situation could be understood as the non-educated action that Caliban had, what made him inferior in front of Prospero’s eyes. It is obvious that we have discrimination in this relationship between Caliban and Prospero, because as Prospero was more educated than Caliban, he committed discriminatory practices punishing Caliban or showing him that he was inferior. In this situation we can say that there is more than one type of discrimination. If we talk about appearance we can be talking about racial discrimination. We can also say that there is some social discrimination, because as Caliban is not as educated as Prospero, he is condemned to obey and follow Prospero’s rules. If we stop to think about this, maybe we will found that in today’s world the same happen between Latin American populations and the United States, because they think they are more educated than us and they commit so many times discrimination against us.
In addition to the previous analysis, Shakespeare also is the author of “The Merchant of Venice”, in which we can find evident and horrible acts of discrimination. In “The Merchant of Venice”, there are a lot of discriminatory practices. For example, if we stop and analyze what happened with Jews and Christians in Venice, we can see that Christians made Jews go to live in places called ghettos, and Jews were kept there all night long. Jewish people also were not able to have any possession, for that reason they were obligated to practice the usury. If we want to label this kind of discrimination in a more contemporary way, we can name these acts as Anti-Semitism (famous term in the Nazis’ times).
Following with the act of discrimination in literary works, we can say that another important author was Chaucer. In his well-known work called “Truth”, he tried to tell the humanity how they had to live their lives in order to reach the heaven. From my point of view, he is discriminating because for those people that did not live “properly” or under these rules, they were not be saved or reached the heaven. This could be discrimination focused on ways of living and religious beliefs.
Chaucer also created “The Wife of Bath”, which from my point of view criticize the way that Alison (the main character) lived. Alison was a woman that had had more than one husband. In the past if a woman had more than one man during her life, she was condemned and mistreated. According to this, the kind of discrimination that we can identify here would be related to “gender”, because due to the fact that Alison was a woman she was prejudiced.
After this overview of some literally works, it is extremely necessary making a conclusion of all these events and try to find a solution. As I said at the beginning of the paper, “discrimination is neither something new nor old”, because unfortunately we can still see discriminatory practices in our world and in our schools, and maybe we will see them in the future. If we want to avoid discrimination, I think we have to follow two main steps. First of all, we have to make our students conscious that we have to “accept” that there are differences in the world, in order to assimilate these differences among people and live with them. Once we accepted these thousands or millions of differences, we have to “respect” them. It is very obvious that we will face discriminatory problems at school for many reasons. Our objective has to be that students must know how bad it is to commit these acts, and one way to do it is showing it through Literature.
“I think that discrimination will not disappear, but it has to evolve in order to be controlled and managed”.

Has the world change as we think?

Outline:


1.- Introduction
2.- Summary
3.- Christians and Jews, how was the context?
4.- The importance of women virginity for Christians
5.- Opinion and Conclusion of the film review. Why would be comedy and drama?

I would like to start saying that in this Merchant of Venice’s review I will try to describe and make a comparison with today’s world and the world presented in the film, in terms of believes, thoughts or ways of think. In both kinds of “times” we can see discrimination, roles, and things like these but anyway this contains differences.

First of all we should know the main idea of this story. Shylock was a Jewish rich man that lived in Venice with his daughter, he practiced usury and was criticized because of that. We also have two friends, Antonio who was a merchant in Venice was always helping his friend called Bassanio. Porthia was a kind of princess waiting for his future husband. The story started when Bassanio arrived to Venice and visited Antonio’s house because he wanted to ask him a favor. This favor was basically that Bassanio wanted money to go and get to the princess Porthia and he needed money to do it. Antonio decided to help his friend Bassanio and he went to this Jewish rich man called Shylock because he practiced usury and had enough money for Bassanio’s pretensions, so Antonio asked Shylock for the money but the Jew was discriminated and abused bye Antonio anyway he lend the money with the condition that if Antonio did not give back the money on three months Shylock will cut one pound of Antonio’s skin.

Even though Venice was one of the most powerful city-states of Europe, discrimination was there too. Jews were affected for intolerance and abuses by Christians, in fact Jews had to live in ghettos that were guarded or patrolled for Christians. At the same time Jewish people had to wear a red hat during the day in order to be recognized. The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that because of laws Jewish citizens were not able to have belongings, and for that reason they were practicing usury. Usury was hard criticized by fanatic Christians because this practice involved interests to the requested amount of money. I would say that this kind of discrimination is among us today and in some ways Jews were obligated to take this determination or decisions because laws were unfair.

Another important element that really called my attention is the fact that a woman when is virgin is considered a treasure. I think for Christians is something very important and more in those times. From my point of view the idea of making love when you are married and not before shows an old fashioned way to think today. Anyway I think that being virgin or chaste till marriage it is good but today is not very common see guys asking for virginity as an essential requirement what it is totally in my opinion justifiable.

I would like to finish this review saying that this is a very good movie to realize how was treated Jews in the past. In the film we can find very good actors and actresses so that make a better performance. Having seen this movie I just could say that discrimination, segregation and abuses with Jews was not fair and make me really get upset but I think that Shylock also acted in a non appropriated way looking for revenge and for that reason he was kind of punished. When the purpose is dark and bad the results in our lives will be the same. Another action that I disagree was when Porthia as the doctor that had saved Antonia, asked for Bassanio’s ring because that is not a legal way to play, that is why I did not like it. Finally if I have to choose between comedy or drama I would say that the Merchant of Venice has components of both, for example Porthia dressed as a man would be considered comedy, and all the Shylock's story would be drama.

The Faerie Queene

First of all is very important to say that for me this allegory is acting like a fable. Why do I say this? Because this letter is expressing real issues such as, social problem, power, etc, by a short moral story.

In the “Fairy Queen” the author is criticizing the “dominant class” or the Kingdom but in a very intelligent way. All we know that maybe when we criticize people that is in the power we can be punished, for that reason Spencer did it intrinsically and taking care of his back. This letter was very difficult to understand and if readers do it just one time and rapidly will get confused and will not pay attention on the real intention of this expression of thoughts and ideas in this letter. From my point of view the writer was very smart looking for virtues of Arthure because is tempting to concentrate the attention on the virtues and not in the hidden critic that was done.

Although it was complex to understand the letter reading it more than one time I liked it and I can label this letter as the strangest thing I have ever read.

What is women desire?

I do not think there is an answer for this question. Today’s world in mi point of view it is a little bit crazy because freedom it is confused with the word “licentiousness”. But we have to know that there is not a correct way to live this life. Having said this I think that the woman in the tale was not the typical woman for those times, but in these times she could fit perfectly because the world in general is opening its mind in these themes. I am not saying that this is bad or good I just would say that is different. The stereotype of women in the past was a conservative one and today that has change in order to equal men and women rights. According to be just the humanity without differences among us, I totally agree with the woman in the tale. No more chauvinist and feminist thoughts, I know this is something difficult at least in Chile because people is used to live with a chauvinist life style.

Destination of the trip... Heaven!

In my point of view this poem called truth by Chaucer would be seen as two remarkable roads or truths that exist. It could be related with the good side of the world which involves God. In this world we have the bad side and the good side of everything and in this poem in some ways the author wanted to make a critical thinking of society. For example with the phrase “greed entails hate and social climbing uncertainty” he is telling us that having more material belongings such as gold of fancy clothes will make us climb socially. Anyway, I think this is a religious poem because it shows us the kind of good side of life or that idea of “Be a good human being”. Only in this way you will get the heaven, but being good is very subjective at least for me.

One thing that I really love of this poem was that it is suitable in any period of our history. The idea of having more than your neighbor was in history for example through lands possession what made you powerful, or if you were traders who had more slaves was in a higher level. In today’s world we can see this situation with money or belongings like houses, cars, computers, etc. This is what makes me think we can read this poem fifty years in the future and it would be seen in some ways as a poem of those times.

My definition of an Epic Poem...

Maybe an epic poem is the way that writers tell us not real events using heroes that are the main characters of the story. Heroes would be understood like the person who learn through the peom. This character is superpowerful and incredible but is not real so we can say that stories are fiction. At the end of the heroe's life he is better and he have learnt a los of thing leaving legacy.

Linteracture...

For me, literature is all the things we represent or express through writing and then we give them some interpretation such as history, poetry etc. When we write something is based on experiences we have lived before. We write trying to show our point of view and it is necessary to make explicit our position in order to reach more credibility (ethos). When we write we want the world know what we think about a specific theme.
For me literature is the thoughts of written works such as poetry, plays, music and also fiction (they can be also spoken), because if we write something fictional we are intrinsically applying lived experiences or thoughts we have figured out by living in a society. That is why it is important to say your position in front of the reader (ethos) to let the reader know what you think or why you think what you wrote in your work.

Concluding, Literature is completely related with interaction and constructivism, because without others’ points of view Literature would not exist. I think that something is literary when it has a legacy and transcendence in a society or in other way, it would be just words in a paper and not a literary work.


“We are all formed from what other people give us: first our parents and then other people near us. Literature opens to the infinite this possibility of interaction and thus enriches us infinitely…” page 17.