The Jew of Malta: Similes 6 key examples

Agamemnon and Iphigeneia are prominent tragic figures in Greek mythology: the king is best known for sacrificing his daughter to the goddess Artemis in exchange for the safe passage of his naval fleet to Troy, with the intent to besiege the city. In the above passage, Marlowe combines simile and allusion for the purpose of foreshadowing Abigail's fate. Though Barabas compliments his daughter in this passage, seemingly pleased at the prospect of her inheriting his wealth, he later murders her as punishment for joining a nunnery and leaving Judaism. She is a casualty on his quest for revenge; much like Iphigeneia, her death is imagined by her father as a necessary sacrifice for the greater good of the mission.

Marlowe is not alone in his allusion: many Greek plays reference Iphigeneia as a tragic figure, including the Electra of Sophocles. This passage therefore also serves the larger purpose of placing The Jew of Malta solidly in the tragedy genre, establishing its place within a lineage of similar works.

As Barabas enters a period of grief, mourning the loss of his wealth, he compares the memory of his former riches to a "soldier's scar." This simile is meant to imply that a kind of bodily trauma has taken place. Though Barabas was no doubt violated by the Maltese authorities when they took all of his possessions, this violation was not—at least literally—a physical one. That Barabas views it as such reveals how fundamental material possessions and wealth are to his individual identity. To Barabas, the seizure of his goods is an infringement on his bodily autonomy, leaving behind a physical scar.

The establishment of such a strong metaphorical connection between Barabas's body and his material possessions places him as a character firmly in the corporeal realm. Whereas other characters, like Abigail, have more meaningful connections to that which is unseen and incorporeal, Barabas's spirituality can be reduced to simple rhetoric. To put it another way, he feels no physical connection to God because money is his God.

Interestingly, Barabas uses the third-person perspective in this passage, distancing himself from the emotions expressed therein and adopting the role of a narrator. The choice of having Barabas take on such a role in his own soliloquy works well in tandem with the raven simile, exposing several facets of Barabas's self-image. On the one hand, he perceives himself as a harbinger of godly vengeance: the Greeks believed that ravens were bad omens, forewarning pain or death. He is an omen, embodied. This simile, accompanied by the temporary switch to third-person narration, reveals Barabas's identification with the vengeful God of the Old Testament. This mentality is at odds with the victim complex Barabas displays, as he otherwise characterizes himself as "vexed and tormented." He therefore simultaneously wishes to be God and a victim, perhaps hoping to benefit from the direct power of godliness while simultaneously exerting a more subtle form of power by claiming victim status.

Barabas asserts that he and other Jewish people are "spaniels" in sheep's clothing—that is, he says they're capable of appearing innocent but equally equipped to shed that facade and inflict violence on another person should the occasion call for it. In yet another instance of Barabas misusing figurative language from the Bible, he seems proud of the idea that lamb-like innocence can be nothing more than a mere form of deception. In scripture, however, Jesus is likened favorably to a lamb and is often called the Lamb of God.

It is also important to note in this passage and others the antisemitic overtones in Barabas's characterization. Through simile, Marlowe has Barabas characterize himself as duplicitous and cunning—traits that are often negatively attributed to Jewish people in an attempt to lend credence to alarmist theories about their purported "control" of various cultural landscapes. These characterization choices are deliberate on Marlowe's part and speak to the deeply entrenched nature of antisemitism in his society.

Barabas alludes heavily to several figures from Greek mythology in this passage: Hydra (a giant snake-like monster with nine heads, which was rumored to have lived in the marshes of Lerna, near Argos); Cocytus (the river of lamentation in the underworld and one of the five rivers surrounding Hades); and the "poisons of the Stygian pool" (this refers to the river Styx, the river separating Hades from the mortal realm). In Barabas's mind, his daughter has abandoned him and deserves the worst that hell has to offer. She is no longer a loved one, as evidenced by the fact that Barabas uses a simile to compare her to a "fiend." Barabas constructs this elaborate series of allusions and similes to characterize his daughter in this way and, in doing so, he effectively tries to justify murdering her.

The betrayal Barabas feels and exhibits in this passage is palpable: for a man so obsessed with his wealth and legacy, disinheriting Abigail may be the most extreme condemnation Barabas could enact—short of murder, which, of course, he perpetrates later on. Feeling the sorrow of familial betrayal, Barabas invokes yet another biblical passage, this time referencing the story of Cain and Abel. Yet again, Barabas inscribes his circumstances onto scripture but fails to grasp how dissimilar this situation is from his point of comparison. In Genesis, Cain is condemned by his father, Adam, for murdering his brother, Abel. Barabas effectively places himself in Adam's situation, likening Abigail to Cain for her choice to abandon him and join the nunnery. In reality, Abigail made this choice because of her father's quest for revenge, in the course of which he used her as a tool to manipulate two men into killing one another. Therefore, Barabas is the murderer in this scenario, not Abigail.