Essay Sample on Antonio's Loyalty: Facing Challenges to Help a Friend

Introduction

Antonio is a wealthy middle-aged businessman who loves and trusts his friends (Szendy 68). He is faced with a task to help a friend Bassanio. He agrees to give a pound of his flesh to Shylock as security for a loan. He accepts because he could not let his friend miss an opportunity to marry Portia. He later faced challenges in paying Shylock back. Shylock demands the portion of flesh as it was dictated in the contract. To settle this, they went to the Duke of Venice. He was acquitted since the agreement did not mention him to lose any blood in settlement of the pact and was inevitable that he was to be cut and eventually die to settle the scores. Shylock is fined for speculating a murder. He is kind-hearted, and he saves some of the cash for Jessica, the daughter to Shylock, who had escaped from her father. Antonio's unwavering love and trust to Salarino, Salanio, and Bassanio make him devote his life to offering help to them whenever they show a need.

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Antonio's actions are motivated by many things. One, he loves Bassanio, and both maintain deep trust and will to help each other in any moment of need. This trust becomes his motivation, and they both make sacrifices for each other. Also, Antonio is motivated by his faith being a Christian, thus making him full of generosity as per the Christian values of fairness and discouragement of exploitation by lenders. That is the main reason he had insulted Shylock in the streets and interfered with his business by helping friends and other Christians secure loans from his enormous profit from trades. Here he believed that Shylock needed to be stopped. Also, Antonio regarded the law very high. That is the source of his motivation to follow its dictates. This is seen when he says, "the duke cannot deny the course of the law." Moreover, he confirms that he is ready to suffer quietly. He says, "I will pay presently with all my heart."

Other characters in the play trust and love Antonio. Bassanio refers to Antonio as the kindest man, among others. For instance, Bassanio trust and love him as noted in the following lines;

"The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, the best conditioned and unwearied spirit in doing courtesies, and one in whom, the ancient Roman honor more appears, than any that draws breath in Italy."

For Portia, her view of trust for Antonio is noticed when she asked,

"it your dear friend that is thus in trouble?"

All Christian friends refer to Antonio as a nobleman, who acts as their buddy and is more than willing to keep up with their needs. They also refer to Antonio as their role model in terms of financial management and in management of work, which makes him not to take debts. Setiawan and Muhid (13) state that Shylock does not like Antonio as stated out by this statement:

"I hate him, as I hate all Christian blood, but more particularly him because He lends out money gratis and brings down the rate of interest here with us in Venice."

The multidimensional nature of Antonio is seen through his personal life, wealth, and relationship with his friends. He is used to portraying different emotions. First, he has bitterness in his hurt and is not able to say what is worrying him. When a friend suggested it might be the love, he denies it and does not defend himself when taken to the dukes of Venice for the settlement of the loan bargaining agreement, thus proofing even if he is a successful businessman, he has not been able to sustain his personal life. In terms of wealth, he is a wealthy man with fleets of ships which he sends to various parts of the world to do business. Despite all these riches, he can relate well with his friends who are not as rich, and he helps them when they come with a request. Additionally, from the scene I, it is also okay to confirm that he is hopeless and depressed about his personal life. To be precise, we have not identified his wife; we can guess he is homophilic.

Arciniegas (129), describes Antonio as from whom the title of this play is retrieved. He acts the foundation of the clean merchant whose values are to be emulated by others in helping friends secure their goals, either by giving them loans or helping them to seek it from those who have it. Being a clean merchant who does not engage in corrupt deeds, he urges other merchants to fall in line and stop exploiting the poor people. He was also to portray the Christian values that needed to be observed at any time. As he is characterized in this work, we audiences learn of the problem of not balancing between personal and professional life, which leads merchants into stress and depression as they build wealth. They do not have any descendants of their own to take care of it. The Merchants ends up frustrated and survive by giving it to any friend who needs it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Antonio is a symbolic character that is used to portray the way a rich person may be motivated by love and trust to help his or her friends who look up to him as their role model and trust him with their burdens. Antonio is a Christian who maintain high values despite being a merchant to the extent of using his wealth to lend people money and save them from the exploitation through interests by corrupt Shylock. His goodwill is challenged when he lost some ships, but his friends come and help when he is about to be executed.

Work Cited

Arciniegas, Diego. "Retracing Antonio: In Search of The Merchant of Venice." Taylor & Francis, 2020, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315608778/chapters/10.4324/9781315608778-14. Accessed 7 Apr 2020.

Setiawan, Andri, and Ahmad Muhid. "Rusty Hatred in Shakespeare's Comedy The Merchant Of Venice." Unaki.Ac.Id. 2020, http://www.unaki.ac.id/ejournal/index.php/jurnal-culture/article/view/173. Accessed 7 Apr 2020.

Szendy, Peter. "Derivative Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice and Dividual Capitalism." Diacritics, vol. 47 no. 1, 2019, p. 62-79. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/dia.2019.0011. Accessed 7 Apr 2020.