Jake
O’Brien
February
10, 2012
English
9
Yellow
Motifs in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Motifs
are literary terms used in Shakespeare literature that can still be found
today in every book and movie you see.
According to Wikipedia motifs
are “any recurring
element that has symbolic significance in a story”. Authors can use motifs in very obvious
ways or subtle ways for the reader’s interpretation. Shakespeare uses motifs to display a vastly
deeper meaning in his plays and to show his themes in Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Shakespeare uses motifs throughout his play Midsummer Night’s Dream to display
themes such as magic, dreams, and blind love.
The first motif in midsummer
night’s dream is magic. Magic was
used throughout the play but at one point of the play it was the main
focus. Oberon stated, “The juice of
it[flower] on sleeping eyelids laid will make or man, or woman madly dote upon
the next live creature that it sees.”(2.1, 176-178) This quote is about the flower that Puck puts
on the lovers eyes. The next motif in
this story is about blind love, which also has to do with magic. The term blind love is used throughout this
story but was made prominent when the flower’s nectar was placed on the lovers
eyes. Demetrious pleaded to Helen, “O Helen,
goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine
eyne? This shows blind love because Demetrious doesn’t actually love Helen
because he loves Hermia, but because he is under a spell, he is blindly in love
with Helen. Dreams are obviously a main
part of this story because the title of the book has dream in it but that’s not
the only reason. Throughout the play
many characters have dreams either good or bad sometimes even foreshadowing.
In Midsummer
night’s dream Hermia had a dream where she was being eaten by a snake and
when she was getting eaten Lysander didn’t help her. This dream foreshadowed the event in which
Lysander started loving Helen and not Hermia.
Overall, Shakespeare was a great author who knew how to implement good
motifs into his writing.
Motifs are not only a thing of the past,
but are still occurring in this modern world in almost every book written and
movie filmed. Not only are Motifs used
in books but also in commercials.
Advertisers use the same message to get a point across to the
viewers. An example would be Geico,
Geico uses the same message over and over in their commercials to get the same
message about saving money. A modern day
book example would be Harry Potter six, in that book the main character Harry,
needs to trust his friends over and over to achieve a goal throughout the
book. A modern movie example would be
Spiderman 2, like Midsummer Night’s Dream
the theme in this movie is love. The main character Peter does anything he can
do for a girl he loves a lot like Lysander.
Motifs are obviously not just a thing of the past but are still going on
today.
Any story ever made can’t be well
made and completely enjoyable without motifs.
Without motifs a story would just be events happening without any
meaning. Shakespeare was great at
implementing many motifs in all of his stories, which in turn gave his stories
deeper meaning. Currently many stories
have motifs like Shakespeare about love and other mystical things like magic.
Motifs can be found anywhere and everywhere in any story, book, or movie, back
in Shakespeare’s time and in this modern world.
Works Cited:
Silver, Alain. "Motif (narrative)." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.
8 Dec. 2011. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(narrative)>.
Shakespeare,
William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul
Werstine. New York: Washington Square P, 2003.
