Conflict in All's Well That Ends Well
One of the themes that emerges from Shakespeare's comedy All's Well That Ends Well is the conflict between old and new, age and youth, wisdom and folly, reason and passion. As one critic points out, a simple glance at the characters of the play reveals an almost equally balanced cast of old and young. "In performance it is apparent that the youth of the leading characters, Helena, Bertram, Diana and Parolles, is in each case precisely balanced by the greater age of their counterparts, the Countess, the King of France, the Widow of Florence and the old counselor Lafeu."1 Indeed, the dialectic between youth and age is established in the first act as the Countess sees a mirror of her former self in Helena's love sick countenance in scene three when she exclaims "Even so it was with me when I was young," and Bertram's worthiness to the ailing King of France in the previous scene appears to hang upon his youthful resemblance to his deceased father. As the King explains, "Such a man might be a copy to these younger times,/Which followed well would demonstrate them now/But goers-backward" [I.2. 49-51].
Like so many literary youths of his day, Shakespeare went backward for his source material for All's Well and based the play on Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Boccaccio's early sixteenth-century story revolves around Giletta of Narbona, the daughter of a wealthy and respected physician. Giletta, like Helena (the daughter of the deceased--and indigent--Gerard de Narbonne), falls in love with young count Beltramo, follows him to Paris where she remedies the King's incurable disease, and, because of her newly-acquired royal favor, is granted the right to demand a husband: Beltramo. Despite ...
... middle of paper ...
...ng the confusing and difficult landscape of gender politics and postmodern deconstruction. And rather than accept Helena's all too confident statement that "All's well that ends well," we might more willingly embrace the King's more ambiguous statement," All yet seems well."
1 J.L. Styan, All's Well That Ends Well (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) 15.
2 W.W. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Problem Comedies, 1931 rpt (New York: Ungar, 1960).
3 Anne Barton, "Introduction," All's Well That Ends Well in The Riverside Shakespeare ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974) 501.
4 Ibid, 500.
5 David McCandless, "Helena's Bed-trick: Gender and Performance in All's Well That Ends Well" Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994): 455.
6 Richard A. Levin, "All's Well That Ends Well, and 'All Seems Well'," Shakespeare Studies (1980): 131.
7 McCandless, 450.
Pitt, Angela. "Women in Shakespeare's Tragedies." Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint of Shakespeare's Women. N.p.: n.p., 1981.
Barton, Anne. Introduction. Much Ado About Nothing. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. 361-365.
The distinctions between young and old, naïve and wise are very clear. There is a fiery passion for life often embedded in the young, and a sense of bittersweet reflection set in the aged. The age gap between the two is often a cause for conflict. The young want to hurry up and live only to eventually die; the old want to slow down their rate of living and postpone death. With such divergent circumstances, conflicts are almost impossible to avoid. The question of how one can grow old while keeping youthful idealism and integrity seems to be the source of most conflicts. Jean Anouilh, in his version of the Greek classic play Antigone, firmly captures and reflects the disparity between old and young through the use of the characters of Antigone and Creon.
Mack, Maynard. Everybody’s Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Schizophrenia is a major psychiatric disorder, or cluster of disorders, characterised by psychotic symptoms that alter a person’s perception, thoughts, affect and behaviour (NICE, 2009). Tai and Turkington (2009) define Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) as an evidence-based talking therapy that attempts cognitive and behavioural change based on an individualised formulation of a client’s personal history, problems and world views. CBT as a treatment for schizophrenia can be understood within a wider framework of CBT as applied to a range of mental disorders such as anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression (Tai and Turkington, 2009). CBT was built on behavioural principles that emphasised clear relationships between cognition, physiology and emotion (Beck, 1952). This essay will analyse CBT as a therapy for individual suffering from schizophrenia. It will discuss briefly the historical background and the development of CBT, the aims and principles, the evidence base of the strengths and weaknesses of the therapy. It will discuss as well the implication to mental health nursing practice. The focus of this essay is on intervention and psychosocial in nature which will be brought together in the conclusion.
Mack, Maynard. Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Addington, J., Piskulic, D., & Marshall, C. (n.d). Psychosocial Treatments for Schizophrenia. Current Directions In Psychological Science, 19(4), 260-263.
Mack, Maynard. Everybody’s Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
A patient who has been hospitalized is usually treated with pharmacotherapy, which is treatment prescribed by a psychiatrist through different medications. CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), family therapy and or orthomolecular therapy, which is vitamin and mineral supplements, are used to treat schizophrenia. Schizophrenia decrease life expectancy 12-15years and is one of the major causes of disability. Deinstitutionalization is a therapy treatment also, whereas the patient is able to live on his own within a gated community. The patient should not relapse as long as they are taking their medications. This shows that although your mind is split, you are still able to cope and live in society with this disease. As chaotic as schizophrenia is there is still hope and a belief that you can be helped and you can live in society.
Schizophrenia is a serious, chronic mental disorder characterized by loss of contact with reality and disturbances of thought, mood, and perception. Schizophrenia is the most common and the most potentially sever and disabling of the psychosis, a term encompassing several severe mental disorders that result in the loss of contact with reality along with major personality derangements. Schizophrenia patients experience delusions, hallucinations and often lose thought process. Schizophrenia affects an estimated one percent of the population in every country of the world. Victims share a range of symptoms that can be devastating to themselves as well as to families and friends. They may have trouble dealing with the most minor everyday stresses and insignificant changes in their surroundings. They may avoid social contact, ignore personal hygiene and behave oddly (Kass, 194). Many people outside the mental health profession believe that schizophrenia refers to a “split personality”. The word “schizophrenia” comes from the Greek schizo, meaning split and phrenia refers to the diaphragm once thought to be the location of a person’s mind and soul. When the word “schizophrenia” was established by European psychiatrists, they meant to describe a shattering, or breakdown, of basic psychological functions. Eugene Bleuler is one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time. He is best known today for his introduction of the term “schizophrenia” to describe the disorder previously known as dementia praecox and for his studies of schizophrenics. The illness can best be described as a collection of particular symptoms that usually fall into four basic categories: formal thought disorder, perception disorder, feeling/emotional disturbance, and behavior disorders (Young, 23). People with schizophrenia describe strange of unrealistic thoughts. Their speech is sometimes hard to follow because of disordered thinking. Phrases seem disconnected, and ideas move from topic to topic with no logical pattern in what is being said. In some cases, individuals with schizophrenia say that they have no idea at all or that their heads seem “empty”. Many schizophrenic patients think they possess extraordinary powers such as x-ray vision or super strength. They may believe that their thoughts are being controlled by others or that everyone knows what they are thinking. These beliefs ar...
Juan R. Bustillo, MD et al, (2001), The Psychosocial Treatment of Schizophrenia, American Journal of Psychiatry, 158, 163-175.
Schizophrenia has progressed in our society as technology and understanding of the brain have advanced. It is know widely accepted that schizophrenia is a brain disorder rather than it being cause by the devil. It is also well known that it can be treated by drugs rather torturous exorcisms. However, there are other perspectives that are helpful in treating schizophrenia that address issues that the biological perspective may not touch such as family stress. Although, these treatments are improvements from the lobotomies and exorcisms formerly performed, growth of treatments is something individuals with schizophrenia and their families await for.
Mack, Maynard. Everybody’s Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Barton, Anne. Introduction. Much Ado About Nothing. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. 361-365.
Santiago went through many turmoil’s in his life and his story is one of wisdom in defeat from the lengthy time of which he could not catch anything to that of his loss of the marlin to the sharks after such a lengthy battle to catch it then attempt to bring it back to shore. Now I could go on and on like any other paper about all the symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea but no matter what I did while reading it, in almost every aspect it screamed out to me as an impersonation or reflection of Hemingway’s own life in a multitude of ways that no one can deny. The Old Man and the Sea was an allegory referring to the Hemingway’s own struggles to preserve his writing i...