Hypocrisy, the
Love-Hate Relationship
So, I
personally am not the biggest fan of anyone in this play to be honest with you.
The very concept that we have to be talking about Claudio being sentenced to
death for the same thing that Angelo is now trying to get from his sister is
simply outrageous to me. However, as much as we hate hypocrisy, it is what
keeps us reading. Do you guys agree? Give me your thoughts! Also, in a sense I
feel like the person that is watching creepily in the bushes, as we have seen
by a couple of characters in this play as well. And no matter what I do
obviously I cannot leap out of the bushes and tell these people how idiotic
they all are, Angelo especially.
Anyway,
back to the play, as some of you posted about already (I got myself behind
because I misread the schedule) the entire issue of Claudio asking Isabella to give herself up to let him
live, especially when he knows how meaningful of a "sin" in this
manner affects her and her "purity" I believe is fairly selfish.
Asking Isabella to give up her body to some creep that is trying to corrupt the
very structure as to why you are in jail from the start just seems ridiculous
to me. If I were you I would be asking her to simply start going around telling
everybody you know what Angelo is doing. I feel like that is far less of a sin
to tell someone Angelo is trying to just use you than to consider backing away
from everything you believe in and have worked this hard for. And I do feel for
Isabella because she has just been thrown into this lose-lose situation because
a couple of guys can't seem to hold their horniness to themselves. And one just
happened to be her brother so she HAD to care. I hate this situation because I
know for a fact that if I were in Claudio's position I could never ask for my
sister to do such a thing, and maybe just maybe I would have not had sex RIGHT
before I was going to get married anyway, knowing that if I did that I would
have gotten in trouble. Who do you guys think was in the right here? Who was in
the wrong? Do you see an escape from this? Let me know what you think!
I completely agree with you, Rory. I think this entire situation is ridiculous. First of all, the fact that Claudio is facing death for bedding his fiancée is absolutely unnecessary. I understand that at this time premarital sex was a huge no-no, but they were engaged! It's not like they didn't know each other and this was just a one night stand. They were engaged to be married and I think at that point he should not be punished for expressing his love for his wife. Second, Angelo is a hypocrite. But we already knew that so there is no need to go into detail. Although, it doesn't make it any less irritating. Third, the fact that Claudio actually ASKS Isabella to take up Angelo on his offer is absolutely insane. Like you said, I would never EVER ask anyone I cared about to give up something I knew was so sacred to them to save my life. Especially if I knew the consequences of my actions when I did them.
ReplyDeleteRory, I don't think there is an escape from this situation, and, while I don't think any of the characters are in the right (except Isabella - I mean, really, can we blame her for wanting to turn Angelo down?), I think we are meant to recognize their humanly faults. Of course, no one is perfect, or perfectly moral, but these people are really dropping the ball.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that there is an escape from this situation. If Isabella were to go and tell everyone what Angelo proposed, people might not have believed her. Angelo is described, in the play, as being a stern person with a clean reputation. If Isabella were to go against that reputation people might think that she is crazy and put her in an insane asylum, I don’t know if they had insane asylums back then, or it might dampen her reputation and prevent her from being a nun. I think that Isabella was in the right to refuse Angelo and tell her brother. I, personally, blame everything that happened on the Duke. I think that it was his fault for not enforcing the laws in the first place, then putting Angelo in the Dukes position, and the manipulating events under his disguise as a Friar. If the Duke had enforced the laws from the beginning none of these events would have occurred in the messed up way that they occurred.
ReplyDelete