Story of a Lotus chronicles the sufferings of the protagonist, Dau, in the political and social crises of the late 1930s. Through the exploration of the main theme misery from restriction, the devised sequence aims to champion prominent values of Vietnamese women like sacrifice, willpower and purity. A storyboard of four frames (Appendix) provides guideline for the devisor to establish overarching movement construction. Narrative structure and elements of text are also concretised in this process. The four frames, ‘Misery’, ‘Despair’, ‘False hopes’, ‘Enlightenment’, trace Dau’s journey to the eventual resolution of the conflict between the need to make a living and moral righteousness. The storyboard is constantly adjusted during the experimentation …show more content…
In frame 1 (‘Mud water’), choreographed movement is used to provide the context of social and political crises. Hushing and frantic walking of the villagers (Appendix), with Dau collapsing at centre stage (Appendix), portray society’s ignorance to its own members’ agony. Simultaneously, the physical construction of a rice-grinding machine (Appendix) symbolises both the burden of agricultural work and how the ruthless system is crushing its people. Subsequently, frame 2 (‘Budding’) and frame 3 (‘Growing Stalk’), which emphasize the struggles of Dau, include repetitions of Dau’s routines (Appendix) and extensive use of floor patterns (Appendix) to signify Dau’s entrapment in the situation of social and political pressure. Finally, frame 4 focuses on portraying Dau’s declaration of her values and dignity through the full lotus dance and its lack of floor topography. The elegant and fluid dance highlights the ultimate beauty of the blooming lotus, thus championing the values of purity and morality of Dau. This is further enhanced by the abstraction of floor patterning (Appendix), which represents Dau breaking free from her internal struggle and the oppressive system to bravely declare her individualistic sense of
A beautiful, captivating, and revolutionary story, In the Time of the Butterflies, was written by Julia Alvarez and is a true account about struggle, courage, and love between four sisters, their families, and the people they encountered in their lives. This captivating story is so easy to relate to, as it’s written by a woman, about women, for women. What comes across clearly throughout the story is the Mirabal sisters’ passion for the revolution and how it overwhelmed their lives and the lives of anyone that was involved, or came into contact, with them. This resulted in the sisters being better revolutionaries than mothers, wives, sisters, or daughters. Their passion for the revolution is what drove them the most and what ultimately drove them to involuntarily put their families’ lives at risk. They participated, and were involved in the revolution in spite of the risk of imprisonment and torture. The Mirabal sisters fought until death for what they believe in and the benefit of their country.
Now, in modern times, affairs seem to be a natural phenomenon of daily life. They are popularly seen in movies, novelas—soap operas and also expressed through literature. Although they are conventionally characterized as passionate and exciting, they can also catalyze a lot of thought and uncertainty for the individuals involved. “Migration” written by Rosa Alcala is a poem that takes a different approach in describing what an affair is. In her poem she rather focuses on describing the stressful cognitive affects that occur as a result of being involved in an affair. Through figures of speech, persona and images the author is able to establishes the feeling of the poem as cautious uncertainty.
From the contrast of the slums of Hanoi and the breathtaking beauty of a natural vista, Huong has revealed the impact of this disparity on her protagonist. The author utilises the connection between the land and the villagers of Que’s birthplace to emphasise the steadiness and support the landscape gives, in times of upheaval, illuminating that it is possible to recover from disaster. Despite Huong’s criticism of Vietnam, she emphasises the resilience of the people of Vietnam and the ability for beauty and hope to flourish through oppression.
The death camp was a terrible place where people where killed. Hitler is who created the death camp for Jews. The death camp was used for extermination on Jews. This occurred on 1939 – 1945. The death camps were in the country of Europe. Hitler did all this because he didn’t like Jews and the religions. The book Night is a autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. The poem called First they came for the communist written by Martin Neimoller is a autobiography.
A strong maternal bond is crucial in one’s life; however in both Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong and Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, the authors portray the distant relationship between the mother and the daughter as a tool to critique the ‘inhuman’ traditions imposed upon the family members in their respective societies. Though Houng’s and Esquivel’s novels are set in Vietnam and Mexico respectively, they assert that family traditions are unjust and forbid family members to pursue their own dreams, ambitions, and desires as portrayed by the two teenage protagonists and their mothers, who are obligated to sacrifice their own lives for others. In order to gain their freedom, the protagonists have to detach themselves from their oppressive, domineering mothers to break away from the undesirable family traditions in their culture.
The story focuses on her great-grandfather, who was in disapproval of the French occupation of Vietnam, but still excelled at his job as a Mandarin under the puppet imperial court, fearing persecution of his family if he were to resign. In this section, the author also mentions more about the how the values of confusion had influenced the Vietnamese people in attempts to justify her great grandfather’s
The human condition may contain the sense of great heights, achieving great dreams and great lives, but it also contains the hellish experience that many call the limit of man. No matter the intensity of the desire or pain, cowardice and selfishness will always creep down from its dark cave, ravaging at the man before the crossroad. As a result, more often than not, man will take the path of less resistance, aware but unaware of his weak spirit. Traveling down the road, the man will soon realize that he has lost something important: his free will. He weeps, but weeps of his weakness, his lack of strength to stand up to his desires, to fight his inner demons and cowardice, to seek the light he has always desired. He dreams shortly of what could have been, the cruelty of the double-edged sword called the human condition, then falls on his knees to become his own
One of the most important differences between the classical Egyptian poem “My god my Lotus” and the Chinese poem “Fishhawk” is the representation of female sexuality. In terms of female sexuality, the ancient Egyptian poem “My god my Lotus” is clear, dramatic and visual. The physical appearance of women indicates freedom of sexual expression regardless of their gender. For instance, in the poem the girl is says “My heart longs to go down to bathe before you, that I may show you my beauty in a tunic of the finest royal linen.” here she is describing her technique of attracting her lover. She is also describing her desire for her loved one by saying “My heart desires you, Let us release it to...
Set in modern time, the play Haiku written by Kate Snodgrass is a thirty-minute drama with themes of unconditional love and deception, in the play Haiku, the audience looks on the life of a mother and her two daughters. In the play, the mother, Nell, is described as a woman in her 50’s who has been taking care of her daughter Louise, who is in 20’s and has some form of autism (possibly Tourette’s). During her time taking care of Louise, Nell discovers that sometimes Louise is more present, and when so, she is able to communicate with Nell by reciting haikus. After allowing this to go on for three years, Nell’s other daughter Billie comes to visit. During this visit, Billie is told the truth about her sister and how she has episodes of normalness
Duong’s novel depicts a Vietnam caught up from the 1950’s through the 1980’s in turmoil and chaos. Many of the ‘land owning class’ were forced to flee their homeland or were sentenced to forced labour camps, this is shown in the novel through the characters Aunt Tam and her brother Ton, both dispossessed of their property. Through Paradise of the Blind Duong is able to personalise the struggles of the working class during these times of political change and criticise the Vietnamese government, “Their fate hung from a thread; and just as an overripe fruit hangs from a branch, they could fall at any moment.” The comparison made between one’s fate and an overripe fruit that could fall at any moment depicts the power that the government had over the people and the many injustices that can occur. Despite doing no wrong, their social class is enough for them to be considered the enemy. This mirrors the lives of the Untouchables in The God of Small Things, namely Velutha whose future is determined by his social status. Duong adopts many differing literary techniques to criticise the actions of the Vietnamese government during the 1950s, “You say our dances are decadent. But haven’t you done some dancing yourself? Invisible dances, infinitely more decadent than ours.” Here Duong compares western style dance and music to the fraudulent actions of
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
Maya Angelou’s poem is structured in a quatrain format. The first few paragraphs are set out in such a way that it explains to us why she is rising; the poem compromises of a stanza of four lines, each of the same length.
The story explores many vital concepts accompanied by beautiful illustrations. I felt a strong sense of cultural understanding, spirituality and connection to family and land as though I was on this journey too. I could sense an underlying meaning in each dance, holding great importance to Bertie’s family and a strong connection to their culture. Pryor has attempted to fuse the then and now, by speaking of changes in the land, from a once spiritual gathering place, to a now busy town street where through food, they keep the culture alive (Pryor, 2010).
The theme of hunger and the theme of mothering are intertwined in the narration. To create the connection between these themes is important in understanding and visualizing the experience of the Vietnamese people during the fall of Saigon. Hunger is one of the main themes that are greatly elaborated on in the Book. As the themes of bloodshed and freedom intertwine, chaos within the Vietnamese state is also present, the people are faced with extreme hunger due to lack of food. This theme resonates with the experience of Mr. Nguyen.
This research paper speaks of the poem “The Tattooer” that talks about Japanese culture where men are superior and women are seen beneath the men of society. The poem "The Tattooer" shines the light on many of Tanizaki's standard society themes. And in this the tattooer desires the pleasure of his art; the tattooer takes much pride in the tattoos that he creates on the flesh of humans and also endures pleasure from putting pain on the empty canvases with his needle. In “The Tattooer” by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro the tattooer desires the pain inflicted on his canvas but then the perfect body is seen and he realizes that he must now tattoo for the beauty of the tattoo and is soon controlled by women.