In order to understand drama, the setting must be organized in a way that the audience can capture the true emotions of the play. Just think about sitting in a theatre and all you see is two chairs on a stage. It would be very difficult to follow the script of the play without the setting to help the audience engage on what the actors were performing. In Death of a Salesman, Trifles, and Time Flies, the playwrights use different areas of the domestic settings to help the audience look into the lives of the characters involved.
The setting of Trifles is at farmhouse kitchen in the Midwest. Instead of modern appliances, there is a hand pump at the sink for water, and a wood-burning stove for warmth and for cooking. From the kitchen, there are three doors: one to the parlor, one to the upstairs, and one to the shed and then on to the outdoors. In the middle of the room is a rustic dining table and chairs. The room has not been cleaned up and looks as if someone was interrupted in the midst of cooking a meal. Dirty pans are stacked under the sink, a loaf of bread is sitting outside the b...
Trifles is a play that shows clearly how women were treated and ridiculed by men in the 1900’s. It is a one-act play that took place at the farmhouse of John Wright.
support is a pathetic effort to protect his identity. Linda will never admit to herself,
Setting in all types of literature is a basic element that at a foundational level provides the reader with an atmosphere and physical place to position the characters. The setting in any dramatic work is an especially vital element since gives the players somewhere to bring to life the playwrights work. Furthermore, “The settings [the playwrights] describe are symbols that give the plays their meaning” (Barnet, Cain 210). Even a bare stage will contribute to the symbolism and theme presented on the stage. Every play ever written has been assigned a setting and each and every one has made an impact on the writing style, topics, and theme encompassed in the play.
Glaspell, Susan. “Trifles.” Literature: A World of Writing. Ed. David L. Pike and Ana M.
People worry about what one person or what a group of people think of him or her, students worry about what their classmates and teachers think of them, and the desperate housewives around the block are wondering what the housewives are saying of her. This housewife example is represented perfectly in Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles”. With the sheriff in town, everyone in town wants to know what is happening in John Wright’s home, and if his wife, Mrs. Wright had any involvement. The opening scene of “Trifles” is described vividly as the characters are entering John Wright’s abandoned farmhouse. The kitchen is described as “left without having been put in order--unwashed pans under the sink, a loaf of bread outside the bread-box, a dish-towel on the table--other signs of incompleted work” (Trifles 1). As the characters walk in and see the mess, they get a bad impression of Mrs. Wright; they saw her as not clean and inefficient. This impression is even more pronounced in Mrs. Peters’ mind as Mrs. Peters did not know Mrs. Wright well enough. Susan Glaspell wrote “Trifles” in 1916 and then it was expected of the majority of women to cook, clean, and do other things to take care of their household. For Mrs. Wright, leaving the kitchen without tidying up says a lot about her character. Leaving unwashed dishes in the sink and food uncovered is not healthy and implies uncleanliness. But usually people like to clean their
“The American dream is, in part, responsible for a great deal of crime and violence because people feel that the country owes them not only a living but a good living.” Said David Abrahansen. This is true and appropriate in the case of Willy Loman, and his son Biff Loman. Both are eager to obtain their American dream, even though both have completely different views of what that dream should be. The play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller shows the typical lives of typical Americans in the 1940’s. Miller’s choice of a salesman to be the main character in this play was not a coincidence, since it represents the typical middle-class working American, some of which have no technical skills what so ever. Miller’s play gives us insides on the daily lives of many Americans, this through the eyes of Willy and Biff Loman, he also shows what kind of personalities, what dreams they have, and their different points of view of what the American dream means.
Susan Glaspell highlights the settings as theatrical metaphors for male dominated society in the early 20th century. “Trifles” begins with an investigation into the murder of Mr. Wright. The crime scene is taken at his farmhouse where clues are found that reveals Minnie Wright to be a suspect of murder. In the beginning of the play, it clearly embodies the problems of subordination of women. For example, there are two main characters in this play—Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who are brought along with the sheriff and attorney to find evidence for Mr. Wright’s murder. The men gather and work together at the stove and they talk with each other in familiarity while women “stand close together near the door behind men” (Glaspell 444). Perhaps the location of the women standing behind the men near the door reflects also their secondary or inferior social standing in the eyes of the men. Moreover, it seems that the wo...
The conversation is supposed to be a flashback of the past, yet it makes sense that this conversation with Ben actually takes place in the present as things he would have wanted to say to Ben. Somehow, Willy has Linda enter the scene. She provides positive comforting, telling Willy that his life is okay, that he’s well liked by his sons and that, “someday . . . he’ll be a member of the firm(1957).” She provides this as a description of what can happen after honest work, unlike Ben’s own. Willy catches on and in fact begins to demonstrate that he did once believe in himself, and actually did think he could make it. A further demonstration of this is illustrated in a scene that has Willy completely sure of himself and of his boys, the day of Biff’s big football game. Miller uses Ben as a device to further the action, to move the play forward. Miller uses him as a way to re-direct the play, to get Willy out of a situation and into another. After the entire flashback sequence, the plot then shifts to Willy in Charlie’s office. Charley represents everything that Ben is not. He is a decent, hard working family man who has worked hard his life, and has achieved relative success in his older age. The opposite of Ben, yet Willy still idolizes Ben, the man who achieved immediate wealth. This can be tied to Willy’s profession as a salesman. A salesman is someone who one specific day could achieve successes, while other days not. Willy believes that this is the better way to do it, as evidenced by his belief in Ben’s method. Taylor 5 The third time Ben appears is in a complete hallucination of Willy’s. He appears completely within Willy’s mind, someone Willy is talking to about his decision of suicide. Ben is used to provide support for his decision. Willy becomes Ben in the last scene. We are able to view through him the final internal struggle that Willy goes through in his own mind, leading up to his suicide. Ben provides justification for Willy that he should commit suicide. Ben is a very materialistic person. He believes that money will do children better than love and support. He tries to persuade Willy into believing that insurance money would be better for his family than his love.
The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is type of murder mystery that takes place in the early 1900’s. The play begins when the sheriff Mr. Peters and county attorney Mr. Henderson come to attempt to piece together what had happen on the day that Mr. Wright was murder. While investigating the seen of the murder, they are accompanied by the Mr. Hale, Mrs. Hale and Mr. Peters. Mr. Hale had told that Mrs. Wright was acting strange when he found her in the kitchen. After taking information from Mr. Hale, the men leave the women in the kitchen and go upstairs at seen of the murder. The men don’t realize the plot of the murder took place in the kitchen.
Glaspell, Susan. "Trifles." The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, and Writing. By Michael Meyer. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 2011. 1366-375. Print.
“Trifles” written by Susan Glaspell explores the oppressive nature of an enduring patriarchal hierarchy within farm life throughout the 1900’s coinciding with the extensive psychological damage solitude and isolation imposed on the soul of, Mrs. Wright.
Throughout “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, the setting, stage set, societal norms, and symbolism within the play all contribute to our understanding of the wife’s central conflict. With the guilt of killing her husband, Mrs. Wright develops an internal conflict within herself. This conflict is exacerbated throughout the play due to these factors.
The title of this drama "Trifles" demonstrates how men have the assumption that women and their respective actions are seemingly unimportant. Trifles can be used in two forms in the English language. In verb form, trifle means to treat someone or something as unimportant or non-essential. The word trifle in noun form means something of little value or importance. Both definitions of this word yield an idea in this story that women are seen as trivial and are not worthy of respect by men. This idea is conveyed throughout the entire story by the belittling assumptions and attitude the men use toward the women. For example Hale says, " Well, women are used to worrying over trifles" (1003). Typically, a kitchen represents women's work and the idea of domesticity. In Glaspell's eyes, men tend to assume that nothing of importance occurs in the kitchen and this can be related to the idea that women are insignificant. As Glaspell writes,
This play shows the importance of the staging, gestures, and props making the atmosphere of a play. Without the development of these things through directions from the author, the whole point of the play will be missed. The dialog in this play only complements the unspoken. Words definitely do not tell the whole story.
“Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller in 1948 attempts to give the audience an unusual glimpse into the mind of a Willy Loman, a mercurial 60-year-old salesman, who through his endeavor to be “worth something”, finds himself struggling to endure the competitive capitalist world in which he is engulfed. Arthur Miller uses various theatrical techniques to gradually strip the protagonist down one layer at a time, each layer revealing another truth about his distorted past. By doing this, Miller succeeds in finally exposing a reasonable justification for Willy’s current state of mind. These techniques are essential to the play, as it is only through this development that Willy can realistically be driven to motives of suicide.