Question

What was the significance of the death carrion in the gold casket?

Answer 1

Critics in recent years, from James Shapiro in Shakespeare and the Jews and Janet Adelman in Blood Relations to Stephen Greenblatt in the popular biography Will in the World, have continued to focus, and with provocative results, on the centrality of Shylock and the suffering that he bears as a Jew, a usurer, a scapegoat, an outsider and an alien forced by the bad faith of his persecutors to convert and to proclaim himself content. (1) Even prior to the Holocaust, especially on the stage, Shylock dominated critical and popular discourse, whether portrayed as devil or victim. Harold Bloom's popular book on Shakespeare and the invention of the human has encouraged us to return to the criticism of literary characters and to imagine them as prescriptive paradigms of real human behavior. (2) But I will have little to say about Shylock as a character--whether he is a villain or a figure of pathos. The purpose of this essay is to ground itself in the impersonal, the non-characterological, by exploring a pattern of imagery in the play, especially the dominant motif of gold. Gold coin, ducats, is the currency that moves not only the economy of Venice but also motivates the three suitors' pursuit of the fabulously wealthy Portia. But there is more to gold than its use or exchange value, for it is steeped as well in a literary and moralizing tradition, a tradition of interpretation and allusion, which entails a proverbial rhetoric along the lines of "All that glisters is not gold" (2.7.65).

Answer 2

Answer:

End of death & start of sadness

Explanation:

This I hope from Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 7, After Morocco has choosen his casket.

Morocco has lost his luck and the chance to woo Portia, and other girls too as he had taken a oath not to talk to any girl in the subject of marriage. It signifies the lost of hope to win Portia.

Further Explanation for understanding:

"Carion death" is basically a skull. Obviously, a skull is obtained only after

death⇒destruction & devastration⇒sadness.

Hence it symbolizes the sadness, grief of Morocco as he lost his luck, labour (to reach from his place to belmont), change to marry Portia, and any other women.

Hope it helps you :)