Theme Of The Hypocrite

In Tartuffe, Moliere's use's plot to defend and oppose characters that symbolize and ridicule habitual behavior's that was imposed during the neo-classical time period. His work, known as a comedy of manners, consists of flat characters, with few and similar traits and that always restore some kind of peace in the end. He down plays society as a whole by creating a microseism, where everyone in the family has to be obedient, respectful, and mindful of the head of the home, which is played by the father Orgon. Mariane shows her obedience when she replies "To please you, sir, is what delights me best." (Moliere 324,11) Shortly afterwards, Orgon commands Mariane to take Tartuffe as her husband even though she is not interested in him at all.

The play successfully conveys this message because Tartuffe is a first-class villain. He is as manipulative as Lady Macbeth, as greedy as Prince John, as underhanded as Modred, and as clever as Darth Vader. Through his every word and deed it becomes more apparent that he is thoroughly bad. More specifically, he not only wants to marry Orgon's daughter, but wants to defile his wife as well. He is not satisfied with living off of Orgon's wealth but wants to possess it. At no time in the play does Tartuffe resemble a truly pious man. The play never mocks God, but only those who use his name to prey on unsuspecting fools.

Although Dorine is depicted as rather irrational due to her strong objections to Orgon, she is arguably the more reasonable of the two. Dorine is very intuitive to Tartuffe’s character, and picks up immediately on his true intentions, urging the others to “believe [her] though, the fellow’s just a hypocrite” (Molière, 135). She advises Madame Pernelle not to trust Tartuffe, for she recognizes that he is “jealous,” and that “he’s got his eye upon [her]” (135). Therefore, Dorine is able to perceive that Tartuffe is not the man he appears to be, while the other characters are oblivious to the fact that he is deceiving them. Dorine recognizes in Tartuffe’s actions that he could not be a noble man, for she says “a man who leads a godly life, and has real worth, should not try to show off about his noble birth” (151). She therefore has the ability to see beyond that which Tartuffe wants everyone to see, as well as the ability to understand through reasoning that it is wrong. In depicting her as an instinctive and intelligent woman, Molière uses Dorine’s character as a voice of reason who has the ability to free the other characters from Tartuffe’s manipulation. The fact that Dorine objects to Mariane and Tartuffe’s marriage from the very beginning, and that she is able to reveal Tartuffe’s intentions in the end, emphasizes that she truly

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere was one of the greatest writers of the seventeenth century, being considered by many the greatest author of French comedy. In his plays, called “comedies of manners”, Moliere satirizes the morals and social conventions of his contemporaneous human society by using stock characters. In Tartuffe, a comedy of five acts, the main topic is the analysis of religious hypocrisy and leader figures of the seventeenth century, portraying Tartuffe in contrast with personages like Orgon.

Throughout time, man has used many forms of deception to get what they want. Moliere’s play Tartuffe is a classical story about deception and how a “mask” is used to hide someone’s true intentions. Moliere applies the idea of a mask and a theme of deception to exploit the power struggles within a traditional household. The character Tartuffe employs deception so he can achieve social and economical standings while Elmire, Mariane, and Dorine use deception to defy the authority of Orgon over the entire household and to help bring back family harmony.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere wrote Tartuffe during the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. One of the main characteristics of the Age of Enlightenment was a push towards using reason over emotions to make decisions. The leaders of the enlightenment truly believed that the world could be made a better place if people did this. In Tartuffe, when the characters use their emotions to make their decisions they find themselves in undesirable situations. While those who let their emotions rule them find their lives spinning out of control, there are other characters in the play who try to approach them with reason and logic. Out of these characters the lady’s maid Dorine stands out as the voice of reason.

Moliere played a huge role on how people should understand religion during that time period. “Tartuffe” was a story about a profane imposter who attempts to deceive a middle-aged man named Orgon."He lost his fortune, as he says himself because he cared for Heaven alone, and so was careless of his interests here below. I mean to get him out of his present straits and help him to recover his estates – “(2.2.17). This show how blind Orgon really was because how can a holy man become so interested in wealth. Orgon love this imposter so much that he ask him for advice anytime he has to make a decision. This did not see well with the rest of his family, who see Tartuffe as a phony. Orgon wife played a critical role in this story because of her intelligence. Tartuffe had affection for Elmire which she knows but does the clever thing of not running to tell her husband. She

The focus of this paper will be to compare and contrast the works of two playwrights. The works that will be considered are Molière’s The Would-Be Gentleman and Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro. Both considered comedies, Moliere’s is a short play that tells the tale of Monsieur Jourdain, a tradesman who desires to become a gentleman. Beaumarchais’s play, second in the Figaro trilogy, follows the series of event prior to Figaro’s wedding. Figaro and his companions scheme to ensure that his marriage occurs smoothly. Furthermore, the plays are dated 100 years apart from each other, and they deal with the representation of social hierarchy, social mobility, and gender roles in various ways. With that in mind, they become good sources to compare and contrast the changes in society that occurred within those 100 years. This paper will compare both plays to examine how Molière further endorses the social values and ideas of his time, while Beaumarchais’s presents a shift in attitude towards those values and challenges them.

In Tartuffe, Moliere's use's plot to defend and oppose characters that symbolize and ridicule habitual behavior's that was imposed during the neo-classical time period. His work, known as a comedy of manners, consists of flat characters, with few and similar traits, and that always restore some kind of peace in the end. He down plays society as a whole by creating a microseism, where everyone in the family has to be obedient, respectful, and mindful of the head of the home, which is played by the father Orgon. Mariane shows her obedience when she replies "To please you, sir, is what delights me best." (Moliere 324,11) Shortly afterwards, Orgon commands Mariane to take Tartuffe as her husband even though she is not interested in him at all. Orgon's command shows how men are dominate

In Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” although many things and behaviors are satirized, the play focuses mainly on the issue of religious hypocrisy. Whereas Tartuffe is the obvious hypocrite and

The context surrounding the period in which Tartuffe was written in, the 17th Century is remembered as being a time of extreme power for the French Monarchy. King Louis XIV and Cardinal Richelieu transformed France’s feudal monarchy to an absolute monarchy. What must also be noted about this time is the fact that the Catholic Church and Politicians had a great deal of power over authors and playwrights. In this time of social and religious persecution, Molière created Tartuffe , a comedy dealing with hypocrisy and to a great extent, religion and how religion can be used in a negative way, to mask sin. The play is known to be offensive towards the Catholic Church and religion in general. When it was first performed in 1664, it was censored,

Moliere’s Tartuffe is from 17th century France, during the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. The type of Enlightenment in the western culture differed from the Eastern Asian philosophies. Enlightenment thinkers put faith in reason and analysis in the Western culture. Tartuffe was born to a culture that valued the age of rationalism, or practical thinking, which had gradually departed from religious beginnings. Furthermore, people in Paris were interested in Enlightenment values such as rationality, moderation, and order. In addition, good manners and gender roles were strictly enforced during this time period. Moliere demonstrates all of these Enlightenment values in his play.

In his most notorious play Tartuffe, Molière relates the story of an attempt, by a manipulative hypocrite, to destroy the domestic happiness of a citizen who, charmed by his seeming piety, has taken him into his home as a respectable guest. The play was disallowed after its first performance because it was deemed anti-religion. However this ruling was made unfairly since true religion is never confounded with hypocrisy, but is upheld with warmth, which shows his characteristic hatred of imposture in any shape.

Hypocrisy’ as a common theme throughout literature has often been advocated by the author’s use of concealing the true characteristics or meaning of the character. ‘Tartuffe’ by Moliere is an amazing neo-classical drama, where it portrays the contradictory relationship between appearance and reality in terms of hypocrisy. In one hand, Tartuffe, the religious hypocrite, who always wears a false mask of untrue righteousness to deceive others around him, on the other hand in reality he turns out to be the falsifier. Despite Tartuffe is treacherous in his undertakings and manages to deceive some people, however he cannot help but reveals his true nature/characteristics whenever he is confronted by sincere individuals. In another sense, he fails to realize that there are at least some people who has the right knowledge and will be able to identify his true instinct. I believe by using Tartuffe as a model of ‘religious hypocrite’, Moliere superbly demonstrates the logic that although the inherent tendency of a hypocrite is to manipulate others with his deceitful virtue, yet he will only be able to misguide individuals, who are insincere and unwise.

In Act, I scene I Madame Parnelle is irritated and irked by the servants in his son's house because they are paying the deserved attention to her even though she is not in need of any service. Her aristocracy upbringing demands that servants so are available to her beck and call and they should be nearby if a need arises. The boiling point of her anger is exemplified when Dorine who is a housemaid at Orgon’s house makes a remark against the guest Tartuffe “you may see him as a saint, but Im far less awed because I see right through him for the frauds that he is” (Moliere, p.9). This statement works to be true in the end because Tartuffe is exposed as a conniving fraud and Madame Parnelle words which had elevated Tartuffe proved to be false. In her defense of Tartuffe, Madame Parnelle had called Tartuffe “ a saint as we will ever find on this side of heaven”( Moliere, p.8). This is because Tartuffe is always quoting the bible in his conversations which make him seem pious in the eyes of the aristocrats which subscribed to religion a lot during the neo-classical period.