Throughout our readings over this quarter we have been introduced to characters varying greatly in personality. We were shown characters such as the gorgeous Margot Macomber, who is a controlling wife who is thought to have murdered her husband in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, to others such as the kind-hearted Gonzola from The Tempest. We have met various others with some much more differing characteristics. Throughout all of these stories, however, we have seen two characters, in more recent readings, that closely resemble each other in how they act. These two characters are Caliban, who we met in The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, and Abner who we just discovered in “Barn Burning,” by William Faulkner. These characters are
What we see from both these characters is how they have a greater value than what society expects from them. In Caliban’s character we see this in his relationship with Miranda, which is brought up early on in the story. When Caliban is talking with Prospero and Miranda, Prospero brings up how Caliban seeked “to violate the honor of [his] his,” but Caliban wanted only to have repopulated “the isle with Calibans” (20). Caliban does not see the wrong in his action that society would see, but rather he believes that he is right and just since Miranda is of age to repopulate and he was currently the only male on the island. On the other hand Prospero lives alongside society’s views that Miranda should not give up her innocence to a man who is not a prince. From this scene we really see how Caliban does not agree with what society expects, but rather acts on his own naturalistic beliefs. The from their we see the same characteristic with Abner and his personal values. We see this from how Abner acts extremely aggressively through burning people’s barns rather than handling matters more justly, but we see this even more through his personal beliefs. As Abner explains to Sarty he feels that you have to “stick to your own blood” referring to family blood (Faulkner, 3). From this scene we understand how Abner essentially places his family over society’s values and throughout the story we see Sarty being pulled between these two sides. Overall, Abner’s actions show that he does not hold society’s values to be important at all and rather sees his family’s values to be far superior. From both these characters we see how similar they are in their ideals and can understand how closely related their actions are to one
Rochette-Crawley, S. (2004) James T. Farrell. The Literary Encyclopedia. April 2, 2004. Retrieved on May 13, 2009 from http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1487
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
In the short stories ‘Gimpel the Fool” and “Death of a Traveling Salesman” we meet two characters that are vastly different and yet very similar. One is Gimpel, a naïve Jew living in Russia that is the joke of the town, Frampol. The other is R.J. Bowman, a traveling salesman, who is judgmental and rather suspicious about most things. Bowman in the story is very sick and has had a car accident where he needs to retrieve his car from a ditch and receives help from a couple that lives in the area. The two are very similar in that they both change in personality, Bowman becomes less cynical and suspicious by being helped, while Gimpel becomes much less naïve by being neglected and mistreated. Gimpel is portrayed by Singer as a role model, while is sharp contrast Welty depicts Bowman as the opposite, who realizes his inequities too late.
Shakespeare's Influence on the Audience's Response to Caliban in The Tempest My essay hopes to draw into focus one of the most complex characters in Shakespeare's play The Tempest, - Caliban. Shakespeare influences the audience's response to Caliban using in turn, humour and pathos to make the audience relate to the various strands of his character. Caliban can be interpreted in many ways, and only when examining his character as a whole, can we truly understand how Shakespeare wanted us to interpret him. I will now further examine how he accomplishes this. Our first introduction to Caliban is not in person but instead, he is described by Prospero as "a freckled whelp,
works of literature have tremendous amounts of similarity especially in the characters. Each character is usually unique and symbolizes the quality of a person in the real world. But in both stories, each character was alike, they represented honor, loyalty, chivalry, strength and wisdom. Each character is faced with a difficult decision as well as a journey in which they have to determine how to save their own lives. Both these pieces of literatures are exquisite and extremely interesting in their own ways.
The Trials of Othello & nbsp; & nbsp; In Shakespeare's Othello, there are three main trials that build the plot of the play. In each of these "trials", Iago, though not always the judge, tries to be the puppet master. He does this by focusing on each character's fatal flaw. & nbsp; In the play the three main trails go as follows. First there is Othello's trial where he is being judged by the Duke and Brabantio regarding what happened with himself and Desdemona. The second and main trial is that of Othello judging Cassio, though it is not much of a trial per say because Othello is merely listening to what Iago has to say and does not even confront Cassio.
Since the beginning of civilization, man has craved power, knowledge, but most importantly, freedom. Throughout time, individuals used their assets and cunning to build empires of dominance and legions of followers, while spreading their influence throughout the world. Consequently, this led to power struggles amongst individuals to gain fame, land, glory, and ultimately power. In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, characters engage in a power struggle for freedom and sovereignty to eventually gain self-worth and authority. Shakespeare utilises his character’s temptations to power, their struggle for freedom and sovereignty, and their sense of entitlement to illustrate the human desire to obtain power.
The inmates also entered the public eye through the writings of authors like Shakespeare. These writings often boosted the public’s intrigue with madness through the additions of stereotypes that depicted the mental distress of others. In his essay, Simon Cross provides the example of Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear. In the play, Edgar disguises himself and “picks up all of the characteristics” of a madman by faking physical ailments and babbling incessantly. Through the additions of these attributes to the characters of many works, by authors like Shake...
Luigi Pirandello’s play is deemed by many literary critics to be a significant play that greatly changed how the world literature is currently viewed. The play’s plot and its dramatic setting puzzled the literary critics and the audiences that watched it because it deviated from the literary canons of play writing as many knew them. The play sets of as a realistic play and thus Pirandello introduces six individuals who allege that they are an imperfect although self-determining outcomes of an author’s imagination. The characters allege that their author disposed of them before they could be perfect characters in a complete play. They further alleged that their story was incomplete because their acting had been terminated prematurely. They asserted that they were more genuine than the other characters that were to be used in narrating their story. In this regard, the six characters asserted that they were on the theatre stage searching for an author who was going to complete their story. They wanted a literary existence that their former author had deprived of them. This play deviated from the known literary conventions because there could never be characters without an author because every author often created his own (Altman 5). Using Michel Foucault’s theory; From Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; this paper is aimed at criticising Pirandello’s play.
In The Tempest, Art is that which is composed of grace, civility and virtue. It is represented by Prospero, the other members of the nobility who belong to the court party and their servants. The world of the court is synonymous with the world of Art in the play. In contrast, Nature is bestial, brutish and evil; and manifest in the form of Caliban and the natural world. With two such extremes brought together, debate between the two is inevitable.
Among the most influential pieces of British literature in the 15th century stands Shakespeare’s Macbeth. During the 15th century in England, a new era was upon the country as a whole. Macbeth reflects one very unique idea in England at the time known as equivocation. The Gunpowder plot was also directly alluded to in Macbeth several times. The play as a whole was written to please King James, and is even thought by some as a way for Shakespeare himself to avoid suspicion by those investigating The Gunpowder Plot.
Nature he explains how propero nurtured miranda and praised her for his “melior natura”, but once it came to Caliban he had neither education nor a superior front. In the essay it is said that “It was the object of a good ruler to make his people good by his own efforts; and that he might do so it was considered necessary for him to acquire learning and to rid himself ‘of those troublous affections that intemperate feel’.” Kermode put in perspective how prospero viewed caliban, and someone that language and education was waste on, and there was no need to teach him with the same priorities as miranda. That however is almost the same thinking process of those in a patriarchy, that he oldest son is the one who matter and anyone beneath him is not as
Prospero appears to be a ruthless tyrant that strikes fear into Caliban to make him work but further on in the text we learn that this is not the case. Caliban's foul-mouthed insults,
Overall, the two characters Caliban and Ariel both play major parts in The Tempest. However, they could not be more unalike. They are treated in completely different ways by their master Prospero, they are required to take on different types of tasks, and the only similarity that seems to link the two of them together is the fact that the both desire to gain their freedom from his rule. Also the personalities of the two characters differ greatly. While Ariel seems to be more naïve, Caliban seems to realize the true intentions of Prospero and his quest for power over the island during the play.
The Tempest was written when masques were becoming exceedingly popular in England, and were often performed at weddings to honor marriages. The Tempest is heavily influenced by elements of the masque, and can be performed with the same purposes as one, although it is far too rich to be classified simply into that genre of plays.