How I learned to Drive

Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive jumps around in time with a great deal of purpose. The play has several mainstays, one of which is the "Men, Sex and Woman" conversations. The conversations about women, sex and men with the Female and Teenage Greek choruses, who portray her very unhelpful mother and grandmother, tell the audience the kind of "advice" that Li'l Bit has been given on these subjects. Clearly her relationship with her uncle, and all the intimacy and abuse that it included, isn't the only thing that warped her views on relationships between men and women. The conversations also tell the audience that abuse isn't the only vicious cycle that appears in this play.

Li'l Bit is being talked to by two generations of women who are told that any sexual abuse is their fault, and help will not be available when they need it. In part II, mother confronts grandmother, yelling that if she had been given any useful advice about sex, she wouldn't have had to marry Li'l Bit's horrible father. "You could have helped me! You could have told me something about the facts of life!" And the male Greek chorus, as grandfather, answers "You made your bed, now lie on it." The conversations also indicate that Li'l Bit has been taught to not have the highest opinion of men. She has a grandfather who stole her grandmother away at fifteen, and a grandmother who describes men as "big bulls" and thinks that orgasm is a myth. And she has a mother who thinks that "men are like children" and that "they'd still be crouched on their haunches over a fire in a cave if we hadn't cleaned them up." The last "On Men, Sex and Women" conversation is a conclusion of all the messages on sex in the other conversations while also analyzing why she doesn't hate Peck and commenting on Peck's affection for Playboy.

Fences

Fences explores the life and relationships of the Maxson family.
At the beginning of the script, August Wilson makes certain to mention an important prop placement. A baseball bat leans against the tree. A ball of rags is tied to a branch. Both Troy and his teenage son Cory  practice swinging at the ball. Later on in the play, when the father and son argue, the bat will be turned on Troy - though Troy will ultimately win in that confrontation. Troy Maxson was a great baseball player, at least according to his friend Bono. Although he played brilliantly for the "Negro Leagues," he was not allowed to on the "white" teams, unlike Jackie Robinson. The success of Robinson and other black players is a sore subject for Troy.Baseball serves as Troy's main way of explaining his actions. When he talks about facing death, he uses baseball terminology, comparing a face-off with the grim reaper to a duel between a pitcher and a batter. When he bullies his son Cory, he warns him: "You swung and you missed. That's strike one. Don't you strike out"

 Another conflict in the novel is the conflict between being a Loving Father and being a Providing Father. In the eyes of Troy he feels no need to be a loving father as long as he provides for his children. Troy's kids constantly seek to be approved by him and to see his emotions to assure that he loves them. This reflection on society is another generational commentary in that the older generation saw more value in providing and teaching while the younger generation saw more value in emotional connections.

More Spooool- Krapp's Last Tape Continued...

As I was confused with what to blog for this week, I decided to write more explanation about Krapp's Last Tape. The play itself becomes more meaningful as one reads it for the second time. When I read the play for the first time last week, I was confused with the opening scenes of the play. This time, the play seemed more meaningful even with the words that did not make sense in the first place. The most astounding thing one notices about Krapp's Last Tape is the manner in which the three Krapps relate to each other. It is quite right to note that the three Krapps are entirely separate from one another, enough so that they become wholly separate entities. The young, middle-aged, and old Krapp are, at least while listening to the tapes, entirely separate people. It is not incorrect to note that, while the actions of the younger two Krapps directly influence the state of the eldest Krapp, while isolated via the tapes, each Krapp is, at least apparently, an entirely different person.

What one learns from Krapp's Last Tape applies to the self, and to everyone, it is a commentary on memory itself. When it is realized that, in memory, each and every event, each person that is thought of or imagined, is entirely separate from any related event, person, or imagining thereof. Krapp demonstrates that a person is a unique and separate individual at every point in time. Beckett seems to be showing that it is not enough to simply thing of an individual by name, but also by time and action. It is not enough to simply name a person, as that person may be entirely different depending on the time of reference. If one was to talk about "Krapp," the question arises: which Krapp? The young Krapp? The elder Krapp? A Krapp that you did not hear on the tape? Only through careful consideration can this be resolved. Besides looking at the lecture notes, I also decided to see this clip which was helpful to see the emotion that Beckett portrayed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOUf5etSTRo

Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape captures the past and present of the only character, Krapp, who is listening to a recording made thirty years earlier. The play was required us to imagine most of the stories that might have happened with Krapp and it must have been a unique experience for audiences who actually went to see the play. Unlike other plays, Krapp's Last Tape did not have a strong plotline, rather had flashbacks of events that were included within text. It was somewhat confusing to understand the play and the purpose of it on a broader scale. I think that Samuel Beckett wrote the play to emphasize the importance of small events in our lives and how each decision that we make have a huge impact on our future. As I was reading the play, I was thinking that anyone can be in Krapp's position of looking back at the past and regretting about the things that we have done wrong. As we grow older, our perspective of things change and we look back thinking if we made a better choice how different our lives would be. Krapp seems to be a character that lives a solitary life while reminiscing a lot about his old years.  The younger Krapp’s hope of sacrificing his life to become a successful writer has not been realized. The older Krapp’s attention is visibly occupied in trying to recapture an experience, heard from the taped voice, of lovemaking in a punt on a lake. This incident of Krapp attempting to savor his past experiences contrasts severely with his decision to remain alone to pursue his work. I think someone like Krapp probably tries to keep a distance from the attachments of relationship as he lets the situation taking control of his life. This can be exemplified when he was talking about his mother’s death and how was playing with the black ball gave the ball away to the dog even though he could keep it. The lines that specifically alludes to the submissive nature of Krapp are, “A small, old, black, hard, solid rubber ball……I might have kept it…But I gave it to the dog.”

The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard is very different from any other play; it is certainly not a type of comedy. On the same note, the play is not a tragedy either since it does not contain certain of its important characteristics, namely death. But we do not necessarily require death to call the play a tragedy. Marriage might have compelled us to call the play a comedy, but this too does not happen, although there are floating proposals around the place. On the other hand, some characters beg us to empathize with them, which is an indication of tragedy. To an extent, the character of Firs, Gaev and Tofimov can be called comic since they help add a sense of light-hearted humour to the play. As a result, Lyubov’s comedy is diminished as she is the only character, besides Lopakhin, who really shows genuine concern about the cherry orchard. There is undoubtedly an emotional attachment that works at the psychological level between the family members and the cherry orchard. Mrs. Ranevsky in particular cannot come to terms with her reality and refuses to accept her son’s death. Referring the orchard to as a ‘nursery’ serves to maintain this gloomy sentimentality in Mrs. Ranevsky’s mind. In the end, we are justified in calling The Cherry Orchard a mixture of tragedy and comedy, as it contains prominent elements of both.

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest clearly bears the status of being a comedic throughout the play. There is nothing earnest about this play, at least on the surface. It’s a satire of the Victorian era, when a complicated code of behavior governed everything from communication to sexuality. It was really complicated to comprehend the role of characters in The Importance of Being Earnest, who do they want to be, and how does the identity they choose affect their choice of love? It seems from the character’s description and way of talking that they are young, unattached people looking for the future.  They have the ability to define themselves. For example, Jack knows nothing about his past. Algernon cannot remember what his father looked like and says they weren’t on speaking terms. Jack and Algernon are ready to change their names. Only Gwendolen has a strong link to the past, to Lady Bracknell. With perhaps the exception of Gwendolen, these characters could choose to recreate themselves in a unique way. 

One thing I noticed in The Importance of Being Earnest was the significance of inversion and how inversion takes many forms.  There are several places where we see inversions of thought, situation, and character, as well as inversions of common notions of morality. For instance when Algernon states that, “Divorces are made in Heaven,” it is surely the inversion of the cliché about marriages being “made in heaven.” Similarly, at the end of the play, when Jack calls it “a terrible thing” for a man to discover that he’s been telling the truth all his life, he inverts conventional morality. Most of the women in the play represent an inversion of accepted Victorian practices with regard to gender roles. Lady Bracknell conquests the role of the father in interviewing Jack, since typically this was a father’s task, and Gwendolen and Cecily take charge of their own romantic lives, while the men stand by watching in a relatively passive role. I think it would be interesting to see the inversion in modern plays where characters are formed according the modern social norms. Also, the inversion will allow the characters to depict the harsh reality with less burden.

Big Love

This whole time I thought we will have a huge discussion on Othello and even wrote a blog about Othello until I saw other people's post and realized that we should be reading "Big Love" instead. I was glad that "Big Love" was a easy reading and I could understand the play much easily due to the usage of colloquial language. After reading about many love stories and especially analyzing Medea, I think this play has given new dynamics to the meaning of love. It was really sad as the brides killed their grooms to take revenge on  forcing them to get married. Lydia and Nikos' relationship in the play showed us that love is above all the rights. Even though Lydia agreed to kill her husband along with her forty nine sisters, her realization about the meaning of love has prevented her from killing Nikos and she valued love over the her rights. This realization has given her reasons not to kill Nikos as she figured that her feelings toward Nikos were not to gain rights but rather a mutual love relationship.

This play has portrayed equal values to the role of both man and woman in love. To have a successful relationship, it is really important to have mutual understanding and love from both sides. It was not clear whether other grooms felt the same love as Nikos did towards Lydia, except Constantine who wanted to marry forcefully to fulfill his dream. As readers, we did not get to know the characters well enough and there was not enough conversation to judge them all as equally. What was most interesting that, both men and women were blaming each other for the lack of love, and it is very common problem in any relationship. Another point was that, sometimes people does not not realize what they are loosing or what they want out of themselves because they constantly listen to other rather listening to their own feelings. Olympia was a perfect example of a confused persona in the play, since she never used her own judgement to do anything. In a way, this play serves as a modern tale of love and proves that nobody can be forced to love against their will.

Othello

Once again we are analyzing the tragedies of love and Othello has been one of my most favorite Shakespeare’s plays. Unlike Medea, the protagonist of Othello is a man. However, we still see how love and revenge stands next to each other. One important aspect that I have noticed in both of the plays were the role of society in shaping the plot. Desdemona is a prominent white girl who is connected throughout a Venetian society that looks down upon Othello, making him feel like he does not deserve someone as good as her. In Othello, society has played a big role in the tragic hero’s downfall. His faults are those that have been experienced by many people, but society rather than himself largely causes his downfall. The state cannot do without him in time of war, and he embarrasses society in time of peace, a black outsider. It was similar to the idea of isolating the outsider as we saw in Medea, when Medea was ordered to be exiled from the society. Even though, Othello does not portray explicit violent behaviors as we have seen in the character of Medea, however he ends up taking revenge of his love through same act of murdering.

Unlike Medea who had concrete reasons to take revenge, I believe that Othello’s reasons were not strong enough as he was in an illusion created by vicious Iago. Othello pretty much made his decision based on other people’s orders as we saw him carrying out order from the army and also listening to other’s thoughts despite his own beliefs. It was interesting to consider how Othello being a famous warrior made his decisions by relying on others. As an audience, even though we knew the truth, I liked how Shakespeare was able to carry out the play in a simpler way to keep the audiences interested and aware of the inner feelings among the characters.

Aristotle's Poetics and Tragedy

What is tragedy? The answer to this question is more difficult than just simply answering in one word. After reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the definition of tragedy has become more complex than I ever learnt. Aristotle’s analysis of tragedy as a literary genre has given new dynamics to the definition of tragedy that I have known so far. In a sense, I used to see tragedy only part of the story, but now it is the tragedy that generates the story and other elements. Aristotle defines that tragedy has six elements, which are: plot, characters, thought, verbal expression, song-composition, and visual adornment.

Aristotle ranks plot as “the heart and soul” of tragedy out of all the elements. However, I think characters should be the one that carries more significance towards the meaning of tragedy. If a character is not portrayed well enough or does not have a strong role in the play, the magnitude of tragedy may fail. In Medea, we saw how strongly the character of Medea has been portrayed and the plot formulated based on the character’s motive. Also, the verbal expression, emotional appeal and visual adornment were related to Medea’s ultimate goal of revenge. Despite the norm of having protagonist and antagonist as the main characters and the focus of the tragedy, each and every character can contribute the elements of tragedy. As we have seen in Fires in the Mirror, all the characters contributed important themes and elements to the inter-racial conflict and the tragedy was portrayed explicitly. One question that remains unanswered, why does tragedy take place? Is it always the characters who cause it?

Medea: A Story of Betrayal

Medea has a powerful story line which depicts the reality of relationships that has exists over ages. The character, Medea has a powerful role in the play as she is the one who expresses the strongest emotions over her divorce from her husband, Jason. Her reaction to the betrayal shows that she is extremely vocal and she is ready to do anything. As a reader, I could see the transformation that existed within Medea’s dialogue as she was going through the emotional transformation throughout the play. At the beginning of the play, Medea seemed to be filled with despair about the divorce and she was going to commit suicide. Towards the end of the play, Medea’s voice was more frantic about taking revenge and making a plot to kill the ones who has betrayed her. In this play, I think the sound played a biggest role in determining the agony and the anger that existed within the characters.

The role of Medea may have been set up in the Greek time, but her role exemplifies many women who live in the contemporary society. The plot is not unfamiliar as we know many stories which are similar to the betrayal that Medea went through. Recognizing the theme of betrayal and being able to relate to the plot are probably few of the reasons why I enjoyed reading this particular play. I thought Medea’s role shows the power that exists within a female. Even though, her acts towards betrayal cannot be regarded as a heroic act and considered normal towards the act of betrayal. Medea went to the extreme point that she even killed the loved ones who were not responsible for the betrayal and her children had to die. Her feminism, however, exists within the emotion that a woman goes through after being betrayed by their loved ones. This play shows that the pain of betrayal shatters the heart of the one being betrayed to the point that they cannot find hopes in finding love again. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I think this play has been a good motive to appreciate the love that we have and cherish the moment while it exists!

Death of a Salesman: Reality vs.Illusion

This play is filled with lots of emotions and themes of illusion that runs parallel with the idea of achieving success in reality. The author, Arthur Miller has presented the story in a creative way of describing the character's pain through changing the time frame back and forth. As a reader, I had a hard time understanding the dialogues in different phases of time while keeping my focus on the main idea of the play. However, I appreciate how Miller was able to present Willy's pain through the dreams he had. The dreams helped me a lot to understand Willey's psychology and why he acted so furiously in certain scenes. His interaction with his older son, Biff was one of the most accountable acts with lots of heated conversations. Even though Willey's wife- Linda, and his two sons- Biff and Happy are all unable to separate reality from illusion to some degree, but Willy goes through the "daydream" the most. In some ways it was confusing to think whether Willy was optimistic or was always in illusion as he believed that both he and his sons will accomplish a lot. I thought that Biff's character provided a contrast to that character of Willy's, because he always knew the reality vs. Willy, who cared a more about his dreams. Biff tried to explode Willy's illusion by stating that "Pop! I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you!" However, it did not stop Willy from the illusion of success that he has been longing for and instead of achieving through hard work, he finds an easy to provide success to Biff by committing suicide. From my perspective, illusion poses a similar meaning to suicide, because both of them are way to escape the reality. In both cases, a person is not ready to tackle the hardship and accept things as they are in reality, rather they choose to escape. It is sad that sometimes people like Willy has to give their own lives to escape the reality which seems harsher than death

Part 1: "Hair" in Fires in the Mirror

Identity crisis is a significant issue in the society. In Fires in the Mirror, it was visible that people in every race goes through some type of identity crisis. Hair was one of the racial symbols that has been portrayed in the play which can be linked to identity crisis. Rev. Al Sharpton's character signifies the reality of identity crisis as he talks about how puts up his hair. Even though he says that he combs his straight because he promised to James Brown and that it is not a "reaction to Whites," it can be seens as he is trying to justify his own identity crisis. At the video shown in lecture, we also saw that Al Sharpton's character mostly focuses on the hair to solidify how important hair plays an important rule in one's identity.

Like African American uses hair as the identity, we also learnt in the play that hair contributes to identity crisis in Jewish culture as well. For example, the Lubavitcher woman, Rivkah Siegal talks about how she fools people with her wig and it has become a serious identity issue for her. Because, she thinks they are 'fake' and it does not portray who really she is. Despite using hair as an identity crisis, I think, both communities should embrace their identity rather going through the struggle of crisis. Embracing their own identity can lead to the appreciating their own beauty and acknowledge others beauty as well. Beauty may not be the concept to overcome the real inter-racial conflict that exists in this play, but the beauty within oneself can lead to the ultimate peace overall.

Scene 1: First Publication

Character: Me
Settings: Discussion
This is my first post and first time blogging!! I am super excited to see how the class goes and where the plot of the class takes us. The rules of the play (aka discussion) is fair and consistent.