An Age of Unrest
“Bang! Bang! Boom!” were a few of the agonizing sounds heard many times during the decade where firearms and explosions were used to express a national idea in an attempt to further a political cause. Within the decade of 1910-1920, many thought that national pride and respect could be gained through harming others, hurting another country’s feelings by taking away their “self-respect,” and by vanishing the lives of many. Political statements were protested and emphasized by the scientific, historical, artistic, and lyrical contents of this era. Sadly, many influenced their ideas by committing actions the cycled into many tragic events; events that led to a decade of chaos and unrest, a decade that couldn’t sleep.
The Great War as it was called, lead to many innovations in many areas. But one area has continued to lend us innovations that were derived some eighty-four years ago. The development in science and technology became quick necessities that, at the time, were needed not only to control the chaos but protect those who were innocent. Although many advancements between 1914 and 1918 we still use today, there are two that have proven to be as important today as they were during the chaotic day of the second decade of the twentieth century.
Imagine the British citizens watching large chaos covered prototypes of the ‘tank” being tested in Britain’s countryside. British officials, in order to conceal their use, told many who asked that new “tanks” were being built to carry water across the desert and named them W.C. or water carrier. The initials for this stood for the toilet and so the name water tank or tank was born (Uschon 31). In 1915 when Britain built the first tank the French were not far...
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One weapon or machine was created, and an even better one was made. New developments such as machine guns, poison gas, tanks, and new strategies to thwart trench warfare affected how WWI was fought and it came with catastrophic results. Poison gas is perhaps the most feared weapon out of all. Created to overcome the long stalemate style of trench warfare, its purpose was to draw out soldiers hiding in the trenches. One side would throw the poison gas into the enemy trenches and they would either wait for their enemy to come out into open fire or perish in the trenches.
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In the Summit High School version of the play, puck is sitting in the background with a sinister smirk on his face, which leads me to believe that he is to be taken more serious. His lines are spoken with a much harsher tone, almost like he’s trying to mock Bottom, but in a more dishearten way then even Shakespeare interpreted it. He is not as loud either, and Bottom seems almost to recognize that he is being mocked openly. Some of the gestures that Bottom was making, like shaking his head, and crossing his arms. Puck in this play did the sneaky slide into the scene from behind, like in the play it says that he enters swiftly watching over. Puck is in the back watching the fools mess up their play. Puck in the Cork Arts Theatre was played by a girl, and taken a lot more like Shakespeare intended it. Now, let me go on by saying, both plays were good at what they did but Cork Arts Theatre did a much better job at interpreting what Shakespeare was trying to say. Now when this play came out, there were no female actresses allowed to be in the plays. So there would be grown men dressing up like women and talking in a high pitched voice. I think that the way that puck was represented, in a much more comedic way, in the way she spoke, to the way her movements were. You could tell that Puck was trying to be rude, but it was more like an older sibling teasing the younger
... outlook throughout the play, Shakespeare seems to mask it through his extensive use of flowery use language, as mentioned before, and the purpose of adding inflection to Puck’s voice and hand gestures was to make those decisions protrude towards the audience. For example, when Robin said, “If shadows we have offended, think but this and all is mended” (5.1.440-441) he only lightly infers that it would only be fixed if you forgot about it and thought of it like a dream. He does not truly promise to fix the dilemma, and we emphasized that through the inflections of his voice. Another example in which Robin’s line is emphasized is when he blames this dilemma for the fairies blindly following “Hecate’s team” (5.1.132-133).
His importance is underlined again when he closes the play in the first scene of the fifth act. Many mentions of nature are proclaimed again, but this time, they are all acting in harmony. The “hungry lion roars/and the wolf behowls the moon” (5.1.373), as would occur naturally. Instead of flowers and animals acting oddly and out of character, things have returned to normal; the fairies that commandeer these occurrences “[follow] darkness like a dream” (5.1.387). As Puck moves to “sweep the dust behind the door” (5.1. 393), the play closes in harmony and well-mannered dialogue. Puck begins to rhyme again, which also indicates consensus between the characters and their intentions. It is his ending monologue, however, that is the most important bit. This is what drives Shakespeare’s dialectic home. Puck promises to “scrape the serpent’s tongue” (5.1.435) all wary thoughts with his final message: All that has happened in the play is like a dream, because life with love is just that. Love is “no more yielding but a dream” (5.1.430) as Puck states. Shakespeare uses this ending monologue to “make amends ere long” to the dialectic he’s been constructing using Puck. Because he is “an honest Puck” (5.1.433), audiences are to trust what he says, as people so quickly do when love speaks to them in one way or
critique in part through the deviance of Oberon and Puck, who become the plays second “sub-
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often read as a dramatization of the incompatibility of “reason and love” (III.i. 127), yet many critics pay little attention to how Shakespeare manages to draw his audience into meditating on these notions independently (Burke 116). The play is as much about the conflict between passion and reason concerning love, as it is a warning against attempting to understand love rationally. Similarly, trying to understand the play by reason alone results in an impoverished reading of the play as a whole – it is much better suited to the kind of emotive, arbitrary understanding that is characteristic of dreams. Puck apologises directly to us, the audience, in case the play “offend[s]” us, but the primary offence we can take from it is to our rational capacity to understand the narrative, which takes place in a world of inverses and contrasts. The fantastical woods is contrasted to the order of the Athenian law, and Elizabethan values of the time are polarised throughout the narrative, such as Helena’s feeling ugly even though she is tall and fair. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is thus not solely a comedic meditation on the nature of the origin or meaning of love, it also cautions against trying to rationalise the message of the play. Puck, who by his very nature cannot exist in rational society, propels the action of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He is a manifestation of mischief and the unpredictability of nature, which governs not only the fantastical woods outside of Athens, but also the Athenians themselves when it comes to love. Yet, it is Puck, and thus nature, which rectifies the imbalance of the lovers in the beginning of the play. Rationalising, o...
Murry, John M. "The Poet of War": Rpt. in Poetry Criticisms. Ed. Carol Gaffke. Vol. 19. Detroit: Gale Research Inc. 1997. 705-707.
The forest in Midsummer Night's Dream represents imagination. Puck, a fairy servant and friend of Oberon, watches six Athenian men practice a play to be performed for Theseus' wedding in the forest. Puck turns Nick Bottom's head into that of an ass. The other players see Bottom and run away screaming. He follows them saying, "Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, a hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire, and neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn" (3.1.110-113). Puck chases the players, making them think a wild animal is chasing them. In our daily lives, people on often think in a logical and down to earth manner, but the mind wanders when a person is emotional, especially when feeling fear. Fear can cause a person mind to become unhinged. When the mind wanders, the imagination kicks in. One thing can become another--a harmless bush can become a crouching lion. Nearing the end of the play, Theseus and Hippolyta discuss how unrealistic the four lovers experience is. Theseus states, "I never may believe these antique fables, nor these fairy toys. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact" (5.1.2-3 and 5.1.7-8). Theseus does not believe in fairy tales, that what the four lovers said is not true. In his view, the lunatic, the lover, and the poet have wild imaginations. A lover's emotions can be out of control. When a person is emotional,...
A Coparison in the Ways Owen, Brooke and Sassoon Portray World War One in Their Poetry
'All we lack is the will- the will to see that the greatest threat is not change, but our continued resistance to it.'; These words, expressed by the late, Senator Edward Kennedy, display perfectly how our society is reluctant to change when a change is needed. Any change or variation, be it in education, personal attitudes, or traditions can be difficult to achieve. One specific area of our society that is disinclined to change is the social unrest that plagues public schools. The results of this unrest come in the forms of emotional instability for students that may or may not lead to murder.