In Susan Pharr's "The Common Elements of Oppression", she defines "the other" as the outcast of society, the ones who stand up for what they believe in, no matter how 'against the grain' it may be, the ones who try the hardest to earn acceptance, yet never receive it. In Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice", Shylock, the 'villain' is portrayed as the other simply because of his faith, because he is Jewish in a predominantly Christian …showed first 75 words of 464 total…

…showed last 75 words of 464 total…Passover rituals seems to provide a potent back-drop for the demonic appellations that are heaped upon Shylock. The Christians techniques of condemning Shylock as an outcast (through stripping him of his name, reducing him to something other than human, and equating his name with the devil), inscribes those elements and cumulatively stacks them in order to define the character of Shylock less as a man and more as a cultural image of the malignant Jew.