234 EPILOGUE

and merciful ruler who had spared his life having taken his home, his
faith, and his dignity.
Despondently, Shylock picks up his fallen skullcap from the floor, puts
it back on his head, and stares at the complacent people of Venice. The
stare begins despondent and defeated, but it strengthens and sharpens
and says: I, Shylock, adherent of the Mosaic faith, believe in a jealous and
vengeful God; I shall return to take whats lawfully mine.
Edward Said could have seen the ultimate non-European in Shylock.
Shylock refuses to speak for the God of grace. He, the weak who refuses to
be a victim, knows that the virtue of grace is imposed upon him, in order
not to act violently against the master, the master that never had mercy
on him. Shylock, who understands the rulers ruse, positions his own god
as the god of justice against the Christian god of grace. He might too seek
grace, but he soon identifies the grace as a part of the oppression mechanism to which he is subjected.
We can see Shylock as the Jew who was slaughtered in Europe and has
come back to life as the contemporary European Muslim. It is possible
that he has been resurrected only to take his revenge and be slaughtered
anew. Tragically, the new Jew, as expected, does not recognize himself in
the new European Muslim.
Whom does Shakespeare choose to send as the defender of the West
from the non-European? Who might be the one who will save civilized,
capitalist, law-abiding Venice, which believes in commerce and in an economic and political order? Shakespeare did not choose a fearless warrior
for the mission, neither did he choose a fleet loaded with treasures. In
fact, the ships in The Merchant of Venice are all lost at sea, in order to show
the transience of the capitalist system and its inseparable vanity. Shakespeare chose a woman disguised as a man to come and save Venice from
its own lawa law meant to protect the privileged, but suddenly being
used against them. The woman appears as a male judge, presented as the
law itself. Portia comes to save a member of the elite from Shylocks claws.
He, on the other hand, demands equality before the law and revenge for
the inequality and humiliation imposed on him merely for being a Jew.
The demand to be equal before the law is the revenge itself, because
true equality is a death sentence to the privileged. Therefore, the privileged always equate the demand for equality with pure violence.
In her appearance as a male judge Portia injects divine law into state
law. Ever since Antigone, and even before, women appear in Western culture as keepers of the divine law. Antigone is not only connected to the

alon15758_cl.indd 234

7/6/11 8:00 PM