TITUS ANDRONICUS - Essay Example

Give me a sword, I’ll chop off my hands too, for they have fought for Rome, and all in vain…’Tis well, Lavinia that thou hast no hands; for hands to do Rome service is but vain” (III, i, 65-80). At the same time, however, these lines suggest a distance from Titus and Lavinia - Lavinia was presented to Titus with no hands, no tongue and having been raped. Most fathers would react with more rage towards the attackers, and would vow revenge upon them. Instead, Titus reacts by stating that he was angry with his country, Rome, implying that he would cut off his hands because they fought for Rome in vain, and that Lavinia is better off with no hands, for her hands would have been able to help Rome.

Moreover, when he first sees Lavinia, with her hands cut off, he merely says “”Why, Marcus, so she is” (III, i, 62). This shows that Titus was detached from Lavinia – his rage and grief was not for her, but for the injustice that he had experienced in his country. However, in the next lines that Titus has, he shows his father’s grief – “It was my dear, and he that wounded her, hath hurt me more than had he kill’d me dead” (III, i, 90-92). . Titus does show his grief still further, although, in the coming stanzas, his grief is compounded by the death of his two sons unjustly – Martius and Quintus were unjustly accused of the deed of raping Lavinia and killing Bassanius.

But Titus commands Lavinia to “get some little knife between thy teeth and just against they heart make thou a hole, that all the tears that they poor eyes let fall may run into that sink and, soaking in, drown the lamenting fool, in sea-salt tears” (III, ii, 16-20). Titus also shows compassion for Lavinia when he promises that he would learn to communicate with her – “speechless complainer, I will learn thy thought; In they dumb action will I be as perfect as begging hermits in their holy prayers.

Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven…But I of these will wrest an alphabet, and by still practice learn to know they meaning” (III, ii, 39-45). Titus is desperate to understand Lavinia, for she holds the key to whom Titus needs to avenge, so he makes an effort to interpret her communicative efforts. Lavinia brings out Ovid’s Metamorphosis, to illustrate what happened to her, as there was a parallel situation in that story, in that Philomela was raped in the woods. The, she takes the staff in her mouth and writes out the names of Chiron and Demetrius.

At this point, Titus is still on Lavinia’s side – he found out through her what happened, and who did it, then decided upon vengeance. His vengeance vow is complicated, however, by the fact that his two sons were unjustly murdered because they were accused of the rape of Lavinia and the murder of Bassanius. Still, there is no indication that Titus feels contempt or anything but compassion for Lavinia at this point. Later on, in Act V, Titus