Deception

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Throughout the history of literature there have always been two sides to every story. There is the good side and the evil side. “Evil is the most serious of our moral problems. All over the world cruelty, greed, prejudice, and fanaticism ruin the lives of countless victims”(Kekes). Shakespeare follows this quite closely we see common victims as well as law breakers. The heroes usually have similar characteristics as one another. For example the heroes are usually brave, muscular, good looking, and fairly popular. On the other hand you have villains. Villains are usually brave as well; however they usually have some kind of deformity such as the villain in spider man. They have different beliefs than that of most other people. These are more modern villains, back in Shakespeare’s time villains were just normal people. Examples of these characters are Lago from Othello, this is a story where Lago makes a plot to take down Othello’s girl because he can’t have her so he makes a plan that will make her lover kill her. Another example of old villains is Claudius from Hamlet. Claudius is the King’s brother. Claudius secretly kills the king, takes his crown and causes a variety of problems. Last is Oberon from Mid Summer Nights Dream is Oberon. Oberon is another villain that causes problems by trying to punish his wife for her disobedience. These three characters are similar yet different. Besides the fact that they are all Shakespeare characters they are still very similar. Two ways that these characters are the same are their place in society and their talking skills, however they are different because of their motives.
These three characters are similar because of their place in society. These characters in Shakespeare’s time are in ...

... middle of paper ...

... of their roots of evil. We see three different levels of deception. “Since Shakespeare's Hamlet, the unity of the personality has been seen through as a pretense.”(Adorno). We continue to see models of Shakespeare’s character to this day. Look for similarities in the next text you study.

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. "The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception." Redmond, S. and Holmes, S. Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader (2007): 34-43.

Augustine, Norman R., and Kenneth L. Adelman. Shakespeare in charge: The bard's guide to leading and succeeding on the business stage. Hyperion-Talk-Miramax, 1999.

Haviland, J. B. "The" Hamlet" Coda." College Literature 2.2 (1975): 112-119.

Kekes, John. The roots of evil. Cornell University Press, 2005.

Smith, Jonathan. "The Language of Leontes." Shakespeare Quarterly 19.4 (1968): 317-327.

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