Eyes are often thought of as the windows to the soul that can help you see the truth. William Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, explores this idea by integrating the themes of love and truth into a story about human life. It follows the lives of characters who are not willing to look at life through another person’s eyes. These characters, blinded by their own desires and judgements, make decisions based only on their own truths. Throughout the play, the manipulation of their sight hinders their ability to separate dreams, or appearances, from reality. Shakespeare uses eyes as a symbol for truth. They are used to represent a character’s sight, but they are also used to help the reader understand the contrasting perspectives of the main characters. Eyes act as a symbol that is used to further convey the themes of love and the difference between appearance and reality. In the beginning of the play, Hermia is distraught because her father will not allow her to marry Lysander, the man she is in love with. Her father, Egeus, …show more content…
Many of the characters’ actions are inspired by love. Hermia and Lysander believe that the only way to be married is to leave Athens, so they attempt to leave Athens and escape to the forest. Helena is motivated by her love for Demetrius to divulge their plan to him. The judgements of these characters are impaired by their desire for love, “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind,” (Shakespeare 248-249). Eyes are a symbol for the truth, and these characters recognize that love is not based on what they see with their eyes. When it comes to love, characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream often choose not to see the truth. Hermia refuses to accept the truth of her father’s demands, and Helena betrays her closest friend for love. Their actions prove that love is
Eyes In William Shakespeares play A Midsummer Nights dream. The symbol eyes comes up often in the play. Eyes are a symbol for lack of perception because the book states that eyes are a symbol for lack of perception. For instance in the play when Hermia is talking to Thesus and says " I would [but] my father looked but with my eyes"(1.1.55-60).
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander of love’s complications in an exchange with Hermia (Shakespeare I.i.136). Although the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly deals with the difficulty of romance, it is not considered a true love story like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, as he unfolds the story, intentionally distances the audience from the emotions of the characters so he can caricature the anguish and burdens endured by the lovers. Through his masterful use of figurative language, Shakespeare examines the theme of the capricious and irrational nature of love.
Four lovers each with his or her own challenge in love, Lysander and Hermia who love each other but may never be together, and Demetrius who loves Hermia and rejects Helena’s truthful devotion. Shakespeare’s writing style is the essence that brings forth the emotions within his works. Throughout a Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, commonplace literary devices are used to emphasize his style of writing. , Shakespeare depicts the theme of love’s difficulty, especially with the use of figurative language, such as metaphor and personification, to show that though complications arise in complex situations, the ability to overcome becomes the true meaning of love. wise
Love is such an abstract and intangible thing, yet it is something that everyone longs for. In Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the difficulty of love is explored through the obstacles that characters have to face while pursuing their loved ones. Those characters that are in love in the play were conflicted with troubles; however, the obstacles of love do not seem to stop them from being infatuated with each other. The concept of true love is examined throughout this play. By creating obstacles using authority and a higher power, Shakespeare examines the power of love. Through Hermia and Lysander’s loving words, it is reasonable to conclude that love conquers all if you believe in it.
Shakespeare presents love through the relationship shared by Hermia and Lysander. This relationship, at the start of the play, is portrayed as the traditional true love;
Shakespeare’s usage of metaphor and simile in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is best understood as an attempt to provide some useful context for relationships and emotions, most often love and friendship, or the lack thereof. One example of such a usage is in Act 3, Scene 2 of the play. Here, the two Athenian couples wake up in the forest and fall under the effects of the flower, thus confusing the romantic relationships between them. Hermia comes to find her Lysander has fallen for Helena. Hermia suspects that the two have both conspired against her in some cruel joke, and begins lashing out against Helena. She says “We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, / Have with our needles created both one flower, / Both one sampler sitting on one cushion, / Both warbling of one song, both in one key; / As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, / Had been incorporate. So we grew together, / Like a double cherry, seeming parted; / But yet a union in partition / Two lovely berries moulded on one stem: / So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; / Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, / Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.” (Shakespeare 2.3.206-13). Shakespeare writes this list of vibrant metaphors to establish the prior relationship between these two characters and to make it evident how affected Helena is by this unexpected turn of events, as well as to add a greater range of emotion to the comedy, thereby lending it more literary and popular appeal.
The character revelation of Lady Macbeth as perhaps an even bigger evil than her husband continues as she expertly coaches Macbeth on how his weak character is expressed and can be suppressed in the form of symbolism, through his physical features, “bear welcome in your eyes” (1.5.60) and “your hand, your tongue” (1.5.64). It is said that they eyes are a key to the soul, and as she knows how strictly they will be punished if ever caught for betraying the King, she must ensure that Macbeth appears remorseful and welcoming in all parts of his façade. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth utilizes symbolism to describe Macbeth’s visually detectable and true emotions as “a book where men / May read strange matters” (1.5.61). The theme of the play Macbeth can be described not only as the display of humankind's treacherous abilities, but the internal struggle between right and wrong, and in this case, the ability to conceal what we truly
Imagery is an important factor to understanding this play, it is used for language and description that appeals to the five senses. Nature is one of the key setting for this play, it symbolizes beauty and represents time and disorder. For the collage many pictures were used to symbolize these, one of the pictures included a beautiful woman this is to showcase beauty. In "Midsummer Night's Dream" Lysander compares Helena to tiery stars in a night sky, William Shakespare uses nature to describe the beauty of many females in the play. Demetrius also compares Helena's lips to cherries and her hands to pure white snow, "Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!, That pure congealèd white, high Taurus' snow,"(Act 3 Scene 2), this shows the relationship between nature and beauty as nature's characteristics are being used to describe Helena's beauty in the play. The imagery of nature also represents time as the waxing and waning moon signifies morning, the collage showcases many pictures of natures beauty and the different seasons in the collage represent the different days and time. The clock in the collage is used to represent time shown in the play, "Four days will quickly steep themselves in night. Four nights will
Blind love is also shown through the play because Shakespeare exhibits blind love by creating a flower whose nectar blinds the characters’ eyes to the flaws of the object of his or her affection. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an example of blind love is when Robin Goodfellow places the nectar of the flower on Titania’s eyes. When Titania awakens by the sound of
These classic tropes are inverted in King Lear, producing a situation in which those with healthy eyes are ignorant of what is going on around them, and those without vision appear to "see" the clearest. While Lear's "blindness" is one which is metaphorical, the blindness of Gloucester, who carries the parallel plot of the play, is literal. Nevertheless, both characters suffer from an inability to see the true nature of their children, an ability only gained once the two patriarchs have
Love is a very common theme that is seen in literature, and love is one of the most powerful things that can be felt for someone or something. Love can drive a person to do incredible or horrible things, and we see many forms of love that take place in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is demonstrated in the book by many characters including Hermia and Lysander who demonstrate true love. Titania and Bottom show magical love. In the play, love is also the cause of a few broken hearts. While there is no one common definition of love that suits all of the characters, the romantic relationship in the play all leans to one simple rule laid out by Lysander, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
One of his plays, ‘A midsummer’s night dream’, includes the themes of love and magic,where love is represented as a force that makes people act in irrational ways to entertain the audience in a comical and dramatic way. He used different techniques throughout the play to create a tumultuous and intriguing factor. The storyline of the play follows various couples such as Hermia and Lysander and Oberon and Titania. These couples show examples of irrational behaviours with love and magic throughout the play.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, various references to sight, seeing, and eyesight serve as a constant reminder both to the play’s central characters and audience members of the flawed distortions of appearance, in juxtaposition to the true nature of things—namely reinforcing a constricting tension between appearance and reality. Numerous references to the moon also reinforce the reduced vision, as an effect of darkness, that characters must endure in a world of constant transformation and unrealistic change. In a play where the language of love heavily depends upon sight imagery ry, the magical interventions of fairies—namely, Oberon’s placement of the love juice on characters’ eyes in the play—perturbs their ability to “see” true love. In Act 2, Scene 2, xx declares that 'Reason becomes the marshal to my will / And leads me to your eyes, where I o'erlook / Love's stories written in love's richest book'. Reason and love, it appears, cannot coexist.
The human eye has many powers that help us every single day, but the power of the mind can take over causing our vision to see things that aren’t always there. The mind has to work ten times harder to try and decide what is an illusion versus reality. Shakespeare challenges our minds by presenting love, jealousy, communication, and many more themes that we could connect too. The one theme that dominated the play in my eyes was illusion vs. reality. The play Othello demonstrates how the difference in the two can have life changing alterations.
Throughout literary history, different themes have proven to be consistently popular for audiences. The desire to present an accurate reflection of reality has proven to be a major source of inspiration for both authors and readers alike. Reality as a theme is prevalent in literature, and the numerous ways that reality and illusion intertwine. In William Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the illusory world which the characters inhabit is enhanced by the supernatural. The relationship between Oberon and Titania contributes to the development of the play’s theme of reality and illusion; they are the catalyst by which the play’s action occurs, and their spontaneous natures are countered with human flaws, further