Brighton Beach Memoirs Family’s Struggle
Brighton Beach Memoirs is the story of one family's struggle to survive in the pre-World War II age of the "Great Depression". This was a time of great hardship where pain and suffering were eminent. In this play, Neil Simon gives us a painfully realistic view of life during the late 1930s.
The setting takes place in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York, in the fall of 1937. It is a lower-income area inhabited by mostly Jews, Irish, and Germans. The house is described as a wooden-framed, 2 floor, establishment near the beach.
The main character and narrator is Eugene Jerome. Eugene is a 15-year-old boy who is in the midst of going through puberty. Like Rusty-James in Rumble Fish, Eugene looks up to his older brother Stanley. His hobbies and hopes include playing baseball in hopes of becoming a New York Yankee, writing, and to see the "Golden Palace of the Himalayas", which in other words is seeing a naked woman. Eugene always feels as if he is being blamed for everything that goes wrong. He finds liberation from a household of seven by writing in his diary, which he calls his memoirs.
Stanley is Eugene's 18-year-old, older brother. Stanley can be described as a person who stands up for his principles. Eugene is constantly looking to him for advice with his pubescent "problems". Stanley had to work young to support the family. We later see him losing his paycheck from gambling and almost joining the army.
Kate and Jack Jerome are Eugene's parents. They are constantly looking to Eugene for things to be done. They have it very hard supporting their own family and her sister Blanche's family. Jack had to take up many jobs to support everybody, which resulted in a heart attack. We later see Jacks relatives escaping from the Nazi occupation in Poland to come and live with him.
Blanche is Eugene's aunt and Kate's sister. When Blanche's husband David died, she found she could not support her family. Kate and Jack agreed to take her and her two daughters, Nora and Laurie, in and support them. We see that Blanche has many problems of being independent. Her daughters, Nora and Laurie, have their own share of problems.
The main character is Judith Ellis, a fifteen-year-old who lives with her mother in New York. Then second character of importance is Jonathan, the troubled boy who lives in Judith’s building and often meets with her to play their made up game. Judith’s mother is what most people would call
... while she still has time (257). She fails at first, thinking her father is “bereft of his senses” in his second marriage (258). She believes this despite the Torah saying, “a man must have a wife to keep him pure, otherwise his eyes are tempted by evil” (259). Gradually, Sara begins to understand her father: the only thing he has in life is his fanatical adherence to traditions; “In a world where all is changed, he alone remained unchanged” (296). Reb has a deep and true fear of God, to expect him to change beliefs that he believes have been handed down by God, beliefs that have persisted for thousands of years, is illogical. It is impossible to reconcile fully the New World with the Old, and it is the responsibility of the New to be the more flexible, unfair as it may be.
the play. It looks at the person he is and the person he becomes. It
The first chapter focuses on Brazil’s founding and history up until present. When the Portuguese were blown off course to Asia onto the coasts of Brazil in 1500, the Portuguese knew they had found a land filled with opportunities. The main attraction was the abundance of brazilwood which could be used for manufacturing luxurious fabrics in Europe. Over the centuries, exploration led to the discovery of more resources such as sugar, coffee, and precious metals that had made it a sought after country for colonization. Even to this day, Brazil maintains the image of a land with limitless resources since the recent discovery of oil and gas reserves and other commodities.
Anzia uses the narrator Sarah, to tell the story of family who newly moved to America and is living in New York City. From Sarah’s narration, we can see the idea that some first-generation immigrants had a resistance to assimilating to American culture, whereas their children quickly became Americanized. Sarah describes her father Reb Smolinsky as the patriarch of the family, who is often accused of keeping his children only for their wages. By her father relying on his daughters to bring in money for the family, he can continue to practice Torah like he did in the old country. We can further see this resistance to assimilate by Sarah’s father when he says “Sell my religion for money? Become a false prophet to the Americanized Jews! No. My religion is not for sale” (111,cite). By Sarah’s father refusing to get a job and contributing to his families American Dream, it shows that he has no desire to assimilate to new American ideals. Reb Smolinsky becomes a representation of a generation that is so deeply rooted in the past and has no intention to move forward. Sarah and her sisters are the newer generation and their view of assimilation is clearly different. Sarah recognizes that her father is stubborn and his difference in ideas of how life is supposed to be when she states that “he was the old world. I was the New” (cite). Unlike her father, her sisters work to further themselves and fulfill the American Dream. Sarah engages in hard work and doesn’t want to beg on the street for food, instead she has the desire “to go into business like a person” and proves this when she buys herring to resell on the street and despite her little knowledge of business she ends up earning an unexpected twenty-five cents profit (21
Blanche was awfully spoiled as a young girl. She lived in a huge house named Belle Reve, where servants would wait on her every want and need. This led her to never experience any hardships or adversity as a child. She had no previous experience of when she was forced to deal with any difficulties. She just had other people to take care of them for her. This is why, as an adult, Blanche doesn’t know how to overcome adve...
The Infant Child plays a huge role in Blanche’s early life. As a result of her mother’s death, Blanche has a fearful temperament, and
Blanche, in particular, is much more of an anachronism than Stella, who has, for the most part, adapted to the environment of Stanley Kowalski. Finally, both Stella and Blanche are or have been married. It is in their respective marriages that we can begin to trace the profound differences between these two sisters. Where Blanche's marriage, to a man whom she dearly loved (Miller 43), proved catastrophic to her, Stella's marriage seems to be fulfilling her as a woman. Blanche's marriage to a young homosexual, and the subsequent tragedy that resulted from her discovery of her husband's degeneracy and her inability to help him, has been responsible for much of the perversity in her life.
She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and shields her past. The essential conflict of the story is between Blanche, and her brother-in-law Stanley. Stanley investigates Blanche’s life to find the truth of her promiscuity, ruining her relationships with Stella, and her possible future husband Mitch, which successfully obtain his goal of getting Blanche out of his house. Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she should leave Stanley because she witnessed a fight between the two. Despite these instances, there is an essence of sexual tension between the two, leading to a suspected rape scene in which one of their arguments ends with Stanley leading Blanche to the bed.
Blanche consider herself as a Southern Belle, despite the changing of her status. Her life changed when she is facing financial difficulty and she has to pay for the cost of the funeral of her relatives.Blanche has lost Belle Reve
Brazil is located in Eastern South America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. It is slightly smaller than the U.S., with bordering countries Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, French Guyana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela. It has many natural resources, including bauxite, gold, iron ore, manganese, nickel, phosphates, platinum, tin, uranium, petroleum, hydropower, and timber. The climate is tropical in the north, but temperate in the south. The terrain consists of mostly flat to rolling lowlands, with some plains, hills, mountains, and a narrow coastal belt. In recent years, environmentalists have become increasingly concerned over the future of the Amazon region, where human life has threatened the world's largest intact rain forest. Brasilia is the capital and main source of modern industry.
Stanley (Stella's husband) represents a theme of realism in the play; he is shown as a primitive, masculine character that is irresistible to Stella and on some levels even to his "opponent" Stella's sister Blanche.
She looks for empathy in all the wrong places. She looks for it when with strangers, with Stanley, Mitch, and Stella. The tragedy of Alan’s death is a leading cause for Blanche’s desire for attention and empathy. After his death he becomes involved with the hotel “flamingo”. It is here where she mistakenly thinks that sex, is a form of empathy. This empathy causes her character to have a blackened image of how to gain empathy from others. Once she gets run out of the flamingo she attempts to gain attention from Stanley. “It 's mine, too. It 's hard to stay looking fresh. I haven 't washed or even powdered my face and here you are!” Blanche understands that Stanley is a man who can at least support his wife. She flirts with Stanley, in a desperate need to feel, safe and cared for. Stanley understands that Blanche is manipulative, and he does not give empathy towards her. The tragic Irony with Blanche is that she does not recognize true empathy when it is given to her, Mitch has a deep care for Blanche, to the extent that he is willing to marry her. “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be—you and me, Blanche?” Mitch shows a great amount of compassion towards Blanche, but blanche cannot recognize this empathy and sees it more as an opportunity to manipulate him, which doesn’t turn out well in the end. Stella is the
was lobotomised in his absence and later institutionalised leading. many critics to believe that the character of Blanche may have arisen. from events in his own life. Blanche's tragic past involving both the death of her "young" husband and her consequent promiscuity with. The "young men" created an overwhelming amount of emotion for Blanche.
One cant imagine how it must feel to lose the ones they love and hold dear, but to stay afterwards and mourn the loss of the many is unbearable. Blanche has had a streak of horrible luck. Her husband killing himself after she exposed her knowledge about his homosexuality, her advances on young men that led to her exile and finally her alcoholism that drew her life to pieces contemplated this sorrow that we could not help but feel for Blanche throughout the drama. Blanche’s desire to escape from this situation is fulfilled when she is taken away to the insane asylum. There she will have peace when in the real world she only faces pain.