Motifs in Midsummer Night's Dream

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.