Moliere's Tartuffe and Religious Characters (Book Review Sample)

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In Moliere's Tartuffe, Religious Characters Are Seen To Have Impure Thoughts When Money Is Involved
Moliere's Tartuffe, first performed in 1664 was written by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. A lot of controversy surrounded the play that made its run be cut short. The satirical nature of the play made religious devotees feel threatened and thus leading to its public performances censoring. It tended to take place in the 1660s, in Paris. It also tends to poke some fun for the gullible individuals that tend to be fooled easily by Tartuffe.
Tartuffe tends to come out as a hypocrite who pretends to be so deeply religious and moral. He tends to be seen as an excellent scoundrel who is truly much able to get into any pose and play it out particularly well. He is able to convince Madame Pernelle and Orgon, as a religious ascetic, that he is a humble and devoutly pious man. This hypocrisy tends to be outward to the audience. Tartuffe has the ability to analyze accurately his victim’s weaknesses, and finally exploit the weaknesses to his advantage, and this is where his superiority exposes itself. He is a skillful and alert hypocrite who is capable of using any means possible to achieve his success and, therefore, wrong to consider him an ignorant or simple charlatan.
Orgon is the husband of Elmire and a son to Madame Pernelle. He s father to Damis and Mariane. He is also the center character of the play who gets under the entire influence of Tartuffe the hypocrite. Orgon tends to be a much more complex character, whereas Tartuffe is an obvious scoundrel and hypocrite. Ogron’s nature as characterized by Cleante is that of being uncontrolled and extravagant in all respects which tends to be directly correlated to his religious fanaticism. Due to the adopting of a piety life, Orgon tends to try to become the essence of the virtuous individual and goes to the extreme of his deeds and words. After his discovery of Tartuffe’s hypocrisy, he tends to reverse himself and decides to persecute and hate all virtuous men.
He tends to be protagonist of the play and tends to be comically clueless. He devotedly believes in Tartuffe’s piety despite the warnings given by his family members and his truly talkative maid. It is evident that he is fooled throughout most of the parts of the play by Tartuffe. Even when his son, Damis, tends to accuse Tartuffe of attempting to seduce his wife, Elmire, he does not believe him. In the end, he comes to witness Tartuffe’s true character. Which is too ate as in his effort to punish Damis, his son he had handed over his earthly properties to Tartuffe who had the intention of kicking Orgon and his family out of the house. To their luck Louis XIV, the king of France had been well informed of Tartuffe’s cunning nature and happens to arrest him as the play ends.
Elmire is portrayed as a loyal wife in the play despite being frustrated by her often stupid husband. A comical moment in the play is when she asks her husband Orgon to hide under the table and watch Tartuffe’s behavior in secret, to finally reveal his lustful nature, as he attempts to seduce Elmire. Thanks to his wife, Orgon is able to figure out how gullible he is. Madame Pernelle tends to be Orgon’s self-righteous mother. She commences the play by reprimanding her family members. She too is convinced that Tartuffe is a pious and wise man and that everyone else ought to follow his instructions. She tends to be the last one to realize Tartuffe’s hypocrisy. Mariane tends to be Orgon’s daughter. Her father had originally approved her engagement to the handsome Valere, her true love. However, he decides to cancel the arrangement and compels her to marry Tartuffe. She tends to believe that a proper daughter should obey her father despite the fact that she has no urge to marry the hypocrite.
Valère is insanely in love with Mariane and is headstrong. His heart is broken when she suggests they call of their engagement, but Dorine their maid come to the rescue, and salvages their relationship before it is destroyed by the cunning Tartuffe. Dorine tends to be the maid of Mariane who is highly vocal. Despite her humble social status, she is the wittiest and wisest character in the play despite her social status that is humble. She is able to see through Tartuffe’s schemes, more promptly than everyone else. She is also not afraid of speaking freely what is in her mind, despite risking a scolding from Orgon. She assists Elmire and the others come up with schemes to expose Tartuffe’s cunningness when reasoning and open communication fail.
The other characters as outlined above tend to talk about Tartuffe extensively, as they realized his true nature of being a loathsome hypocrite, who tends to pretend to be a religious evangelist. Despite this, Orgon and his mother who tend to be considered wealthy fall for his illusions. Tartuffe arrived at Orgon’s house as a simple vagrant before the plays action. He charades as a religious evangelist and is able to convince Orgon, the master of the house to indefinitely stay as a guest. It is evident that Orgon tends to adhere to every whim that Tartuffe gives him in his belief that he is leading them on heavens pathway. He is not aware of Tartuffe’s scheming plan of stealing away his house, the fidelity of his wife and lastly the daughters hand in marriage. We find Orgon’s family angry due to the fact that, Orgon together with his mother tend to have fallen prey to Tartuffe’s influence, who tends to be a pious fraud. He tends to pretend to talk expressing divine authority and also to be virtuous. It has come to the point that Orgon and his mother can take no action without first seeking opinion from him.
The other members of the family and friends are not fooled by Tartuffe’s antics, and they truly much detest him. We find the stakes rising when Orgon announces his daughter’s marriage to Tartuffe, who was already engaged to Valere. She feels truly much offended by the news and everyone, that includes friends and other family members, gets to realize the extent to which Tartuffe has gotten his claws into Orgon’s family. The family in an effort to prove to Orgon how bad Tartuffe was tends to devise a plan that is meant to lead Tartuffe into admitting to Elmire of his feelings and desire towards her and, therefore, trap him.
As a guest and a virtuous man, he was not supposed to have such desire and feeling towards the lady of the home. The hope of the family and friends was that on hearing the confession, Orgon would get his senses back and throw out Tartuffe from the house. The plan goes in action and Tartuffe unknowingly tries to seduce Elmire. However, Damis, Orgon’s son disrupts the interview as he had been eavesdropping and was not able to control his anger as he stepped out of his place of hiding ready to denounce Tartuffe. Tartuffe is initially shocked but soon recovers soon and truly well in deed. At the moment of Orgon’s entry into the room, Damis reports of the incident triumphantly, but Tartuffe plays reverse psychology in that he accuses himself to be the worst sinner accepting he is an evil doer and a guilty man. He also adds on and says he is an unhappy sinner who is full of iniquity in part three.
Orgon ends up believing in Tartuffe and believes that his son was lying to him and he ends up exiling him from the house. He asks Orgon in order to teach his son a lesson he should be accompanying Elmire more often and frequently. To make matters worse, he gifts Tartuffe by signing over all his earthly possessions to Tartuffe. This is also meant to further punish his son and also the other members of the family who had planned against Tartuffe.
The above is clearly showing Tartuffe's character, and how he is not a typical religious being and of all the things he is doing all for the gain of money and to have his way. Religious characters are seen to h...