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A Midsummer Night's Dream

 

Helena tells Demetrius about the elopement plans of Hermia and Lysander, thinking that he'll react with gratitude. Of course, his actual reaction is to take off in pursuit of Hermia, insulting Helena as she follows him into the woods. When Hermia's boyfriend, transformed by the love-juice, falls in love with Helena, she can hardly believe it, and thinks, in a typically self-pitying way, that she's being mocked by him. After the same thing happens to Demetrius, Helena concludes that all three of the others have joined forces to make her look ridiculous. Luckily, Lysander's spell is reversed, but Demetrius' isn't. By the end of the play, Helena simply accepts that Demetrius has fallen back in love with her, forgets all about his abusive behavior, and marries him. .
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             Lysander.
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             Hermia's boyfriend, Lysander, is just as brave as Hermia herself; he stands up to Theseus and Egeus when they insist that his girlfriend marry another man, Demetrius. When these men refuse to listen to reason, Lysander doesn't take it lying down. Instead, he comes up with a plan by which he and Hermia can escape to safety and marry at his aunt's house outside Athens. When in the woods, Lysander is the first victim of Puck's love-juice mischief. He falls in love with Helena instantly, and abandons Hermia without a second thought - treating his former beloved quite cruelly when she asks why he's done so, and even offering to fight a duel with Demetrius when they both end up loving the other woman, Helena. Lysander's madness is reasonably short-lived however, and he is soon himself again. He marries Hermia, and seems just as reluctant as she is to ask himself why, for even a small period of time, he loved someone completely different. .
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             Demetrius.
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             At the beginning of the play, Demetrius comes across as kind of a jerk. He has dumped Helena for no good reason, follows Hermia around even though she doesn't love him, and even uses her father and the Athenian law to force her to marry him unwillingly.


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