Task: Choose a character from the play and explain what their works and actions reveal about their selves as a person.
In Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" Shylock is made out to be a bad person or perhaps a criminal. Possibly this is because he is of Jewish religion and at that time Jewish people were to be hated by Christians. Shylock and the Jews as they are called in the play have such hatred for Christians like Bassanio and Antonio.
It is blatantly obvious that Shylock has a good head on his shoulders for business, although he hates the Christians which he expresses in words like "I hate him for he is a Christian" he still loans money to them and acts as if nothing is wrong between them. However the interest rate for borrowing such money is extortionate, making him a seriously healthy profit, a very powerful business man. He is so fixated with his money he is afraid to leave his house in fear his money is stolen as he quotes "my house, left in the fearful guard of an unthrift nave", Shylock's servant Lancelot Gobbo complains he is being starved and this frustrates Shylock even more than he already appears to be. He is so angry he takes it out on his daughter Jessica, forbidding her to enjoy the music from the masque which will pass his house. Jessica despises her father because of his meanness and finally rejects him "our house is hell" she exclaims and later states "to be ashamed to be my father's child. But though I am a daughter to his blood I am not to his manners".
Later in the play Shylock displays yet another very bad downfall in his personality, in the trial scene Shylock really looses it, he is not interested in money or what anyone else has to say he is obsessed with getting Antonio's "pound of flesh" this is expressed by him saying "there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me" as far as he is concerned no one can say anything to change his mind all in is interested in is his pound of flesh.