Angels in America
The play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, by Tony Kushner, contained situations in which characters’ personalities underwent great changes from the beginning of the play to the end. One of the most significant and noticeable changes was that of Harper. She was married to the character named Joe, who she knew was gay and the way she dealt with this came to relate directly to her own sanity. In part one, Harper spent a lot of time with her imaginary friend and travel agent Mr. Lies. He was her escape mechanism from the horrible reality she could not deal with that was her life. In part two, Harper came to grips with her husband’s homosexuality and the fact that she was not going to change him. As Harper learned to deal with her husband’s sexuality she became more in touch with her own sanity.
In part one Millenium Approaches, everything is falling apart in Harper’s life. She is well aware that her husband is gay. Despite not being told from his mouth, Harper knows and it bothers her that she is in a marriage where her husband secretly desires a partner of the opposite sex from her. Nothing seems to be going right and instead of dealing with reality, Harper takes Valium to escape from reality. Her imaginary friend and confidante Mr. Lies becomes her only companion. She can not function in real life anymore. She takes trips all over the world (imaginary world) just to get away. In Act Mr. Lies explains “We mobilized the globe, we sent people adrift, we stir the populace and send nomads eddying across the planet. We are adept of motion acolytes of the flux. Cash, check or credit card. Name your destination.” This quote illustrates the freedom that Mr. Lies allows Harper to experience. With the help of Mr. Lies, Harper could go anywhere in the world and have any experience without the burdens of real life travel. In Harper’s mind, she gained all of the real life advantages of getting away such as the feelings of escapism and relaxation, but did not have to deal with life’s hassles to obtain them.
An example of the above is when Harper had Mr. Lies take her to Antarctica. Her reason for going there was to find people and the trip would ultimately numb her feelings and freeze her tears. “This is a retreat, a vacuum, its virtue is that it lacks everything; deep-freeze for feelings.. You can be...
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... of the play she is taking the initiative to deal with her problems and more importantly take steps towards making things better in her real life. Towards the end of the play when Harper starts working out the situation with Joe’s homosexuality, Mr. Lies is around less and less. She did not need him anymore. He was simply an escape from having to deal with her real life. After Harper learned to handle what was thrown at her by life, she did not need Mr. Lies to take her away anymore.
The interactions that Harper had with Mr. Lies represented her ability to deal with the truth. In Part One when he took her away all of the time and she went to him for advice, it was apparent that she could not handle her marriage and her life. Taking Valium and confiding in Mr. Lies was the only way that Harper knew out of her reality. In part II, Harper confronted her problems and was prepared to change what was wrong, she did not need an escape mechanism because she could now face the problems of her life that she could not admit and take care of when she would run to Mr. Lies. Harper grew from part I to part I, and the more she grew was the less she needed Mr. Lies to take her away.
Many teens think it is cool to drink so they can fit in, some even are pressured to drink and some even drive after drinking which causes more deaths and problems between a family. Teens often do not understand the effects of alcohol on the body and many people do not know how drinking occasionally has a good effect on the body. I truly believe that these problems will still continue as long as our society continues to look at drinking as a solution to their problems with little side effects or as an independent activity and it not being categorized as a drug. We must make an impact to change the attitudes and behavior patterns not only of teens, but the entire society.
“Fallen Angels”, written by Walter Dean Myers, is a novel that tells about the story of young boys going into battle during the Vietnam War. There are many themes in “Fallen Angels” but the main theme is the loss of innocence. The title makes reference to these themes. And the boys in the book have dreams of losing their virginity and drinking alcohol for the first time. They are thrown into a harsh reality when they are shown the trials of war. In the end, they understand that the movies that depict heroicness and honor are just images of a false idea; that war is full of chaos and horror.
Tony Kushner, in his play Angels in America, explores a multitude of issues pertaining to modern American society including, but not limited to, race, religion, and sexual orientation. Through his diverse character selection, he is able to compare and contrast the many varied experiences that Americans might face today. Through it all, the characters’ lives are all linked together through a common thread: progress, both personal and public. Kushner offers insight on this topic by allowing his characters to discuss what it means to make progress and allowing them to change in their own ways. Careful observation of certain patterns reveals that, in the scope of the play, progress is cyclical in that it follows a sequential process of rootlessness, desire, and sacrifice, which repeats itself.
Lies play a central part in the play as the story is based around lies
To begin with, the narrator husband name is John, who shows male dominance early in the story as he picked the house they stayed in and the room he kept his wife in, even though his wife felt uneasy about the house. He is also her doctor and orders her to do nothing but rest; thinking she is just fine. John is the antagonist because he is trying to control
Writing in her journal is the only thing that keeps her sane; yet John takes that away from her: “I must put this away-he hates to have me write” (Gilman 41). The narrator yearns to confess to John how she really feels, but she prefers to keep her feelings bottled up: “I think sometimes that if I were to write a little it would relieve the pressure of ideas and rest me” (Gilman 42). Instead, she is passive and hides her emotions. “I cry at nothing and cry most of the time. Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else,” only “when I am alone” (Gilman 44). She tells us that “John doesn’t know how much I really suffer” (Gilman 41). Even when the narrator tries to communicate with him, he immediately dismisses her: “I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him,” but “John wouldn’t hear of it” (Gilman 40). Instead of speaking her mind and standing up for herself, she withdraws and does “not say another word”(Gilman 47).
One of the more romantic elements of American folklore has been the criss-crossing rail system of this country – steel rails carrying Americans to new territories across desert and mountain, through wheat fields and over great rivers. Carl Sandburg has flavored the mighty steam engine in elegant prose and Arlo Guthrie has made the roundhouse a sturdy emblem of America’s commerce.
The term angel derives from a Greek translation of the Hebrew word mal'akh, which first meant "Shadow side of God," and now means messenger (Jeremiah 59). Angels as an article of faith have become an unshakeable part of our society. One in every ten popular songs involves angels in some way (Freeman 2). They appear in paintings and in museums as sculptures. Our culture is filled with angels that appear on clothing, cards, or as souvenirs, and jewelry. It would be reasonable to assume that one might find the most information about angels in the Christian bible. However , the bible only mentions three angels by name and actually contains very little information about these beings. Almost all of the information we have about angelic attributes comes from the three great Chronicles of Enoch. In these chronicles Enoch describes his journey to the ten Heavens where he saw angels in heaven's penal and punishment area, punishing sinners. His view was that hell existed in small pockets that were distributed throughout heaven. This view was not consistent with the later Church that believed heaven and hell were two separate places. Because of this, St. Jerome declared these texts apocryphal (Godwin 9). However, a lot of material from these chronicles appears in the New Testament. Though much of what we know currently about what angels are and what they do is based on misconception and myth, the concern of this paper is with the genus Angelus Occidentalis. This is the term used to describe a number of angelic species and sub-species in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity (Godwin 7). The term angel describes not only the benevolent forces of heaven but also the malevolent forces of hell. When Lucifer fell from ...
By closing her off from the rest of the world, he is taking her away from things that important to her mental state; such as her ability to read and write, her need for human interaction, her need to make her own decisions. All of these are important to all people. This idea of forced rest and relaxation to cure temporary nervous problems was very common at the time. Many doctors prescribed it for their female patients. The narrators husband, brother, and their colleagues all feel that this is the correct way to fix her problem, which is practically nonexistent in their eyes. Throughout the beginning of the story, the narrator tends to buy into the idea that the man is always right and makes excuses for her feelings and his actions and words: "It is so hard to talk to John about my case, because he is so wise and because he loves me so," (23).
Also, In a study conducted by www.cdc.gov, youth who begin drinking before the age of 15 are 15 percent more likely to develop an addiction later in life. This can be extremely dangerous, because the more you drink, the more dependent you become. It can be extremely difficult to get rid of addictions and has severe withdrawal symptoms that could be very painful. Another effect of underage drinking is low self esteem. Many teens begin drinking because they are very easily pressured by peers. This can cause them to at first feel more confident and have higher self-esteem. Soon, however, this will wear off and they may be left with a worse feeling than before. Similar to psychological disorders, alcohol abuse can lead to many social
Consequently, he also shows us the difficulties that most do not expect upon leaving for such a journey. Many speak about the advantages, like the freedom they enjoy, and the wondrous relationships formed along the way; but even so, some disadvantages outweigh the advantages, like the It creates such a unique situation for everyone that you would have never known otherwise. Such was the case of Ronald Franz and McCandless, when their paths crossed in January of 1992. In the text, a bit of dialogue was, “When he returned to McCandless’s camp and launched into the self-improvement pitch, though, McCandless cut him off abruptly “Look, Mr Franz,” he declared, “you don’t need to worry about me. I have a college education.
... goal was to become "such a help to John" (392). She has discovered the one place where she can have supreme control, and nothing will challenge her, apart from her own mind. But she has zero capability left to even interact normally with the outer physical world, and so it is although she isn’t even there.
Henrik Ibsen created a world where marriages and rules of society are questioned, and where deceit is at every turn. In A Doll’s House, the reader meets Nora, a housewife and mother trapped in her way of life because the unspoken rules of society. Nora and the people around her decieve each other throughout the entire play, leading up to a shocking event that will change Nora and her family lives forever. Ibsen uses the theme deceit to tell a story filled with lies and betrayal.
Airline industry is affected by no. of factors such as fuel price fluctuations, high fixed costs, strong influence of external environment and excessive use of marginal costing by carriers. Recessions in the industry tend to last longer, while recovery periods are generally shorter. Over the past nine years, it is observed that industry has made losses for five years and during the profitable years margins were on a lower end. The airlines industry is acutely sensitive to external events such as wars, economic instability, government policies and environmental regulations.
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.