Are there any foils or parallels in Sweeney Todd?

Question

Are there any foils or parallels in Sweeney Todd?

Answer 1

Uh...... no.

Answer 2

Anthony Hope could be considered a foil for Sweeney. He is quite like Benjamin Marker had been. A fool in love, naïve to what the world truly is. When you see the contrast between them, the emptiness of Sweeney becomes so much more evident. The changes he has had to go through to become the man he is now.

In relation to that, Johanna is rather similar to Lucy. Not just in appearance, but in relation to the men who love them. Lucy was taken away from Benjamin by Judge Turpin, and destroyed so that even when Sweeney did see her again she was nothing like the woman he had been dragged from. After the Judge violated her, acted upon his desire, Lucy drank arsenic, which resulted in her current unstable mental state. Turpin takes Johanna away from Anthony, also a result of his own desire. However, Turpin had already inflicted enough upon her. The girl raised in a cage has been violated, the form the audience knows of is in her privacy, and seems to have no hope for love or life, much like what Lucy must have been going through when she poisoned herself.

Hope that helps.