Defective Senses in Eliot's The Cocktail Party
T.S. Eliot's play The Cocktail Party, among all its banal or peculiar occurrences, is laced with images of defective senses and perception, particularly of sight. The muddle of reality and illusion confounds the main characters, and their attempts to escape drive the plot.
Within five lines of the play's beginning we are confronted with defective senses: "You haven't been listening," (p. 9) complains Alex to the confused Julia when she asks about the tigers in his story. Julia exhibits another confused faculty, that of taste: at first she claims "What's that? Potato crisps? No, I simply can't endure them," (p. 15), but later says "The potato crisps were really excellent" (p. 21). Soon she adds sight to the list: "I must have left my glasses here, / And I simply can't see a thing without them.... / I'm afraid I don't remember the colour, / But I'd know them, because one lens is missing" (p. 33). Even with her glasses, Julia's sight will be impaired. And the glasses turn out to have been in her handbag all along. Yet Julia's glasses, though often lost, through their very existence allow her to see better. The spectacles may indeed be a symbol for the play's theme of blindness, but for Julia they provide an excuse to "see" more -- to spy on her companions, as she admits when she says "Left anything? Oh, you mean my spectacles. / No, they're here. Besides, they're no use to me. / I'm not coming back again this evening" (p. 86).
The other characters of Eliot's play all exhibit their own failings of perception. Alex finds no mangoes or curry powder in Edward's kitchen, only eggs -- no exotic or intense tastes, only the bland and prosaic. Alex says of his egg concoction that ...
... middle of paper ...
...cent obliviousness "may remember the vision they have had" (p. 139) -- but is "vision" here an apparition or a way of seeing? Do those who retreat from Celia's discovery abandon a dream, or an entire sense? Reilly claims the retreat to normal life "I could describe in familiar terms / Because you have seen it, as we all have seen it" (p. 141), but, if Celia presses on, "the destination cannot be described.... You will journey blind" (p. 141) -- our normal senses fail us, for we need some higher perception. An illusion or mirage is a failure of vision, so what of vision and mortal existence, whose illusion Celia has pierced? Such higher senses, perhaps, belong to the Guardians of Eliot's half-hidden mythos. True sight may be granted only through travel "on the way of illumination" (p. 147).
Works Cited:
Eliot, T.S.,The Cocktail Party, Faber and Faber, 1950.
The book Blind, written by Rachel DeWoskin, is about a highschool sophomore named Emma, who went blind after being struck in the face with a firework. When she first lost her sight, Emma was placed in a hospital for over 2 months, and once she was released, she could finally go home again. DeWoskin uses the characterization of Emma throughout the beginning of the text to help the reader understand the character’s struggle more. Especially in the first few chapters, it was difficult for Emma to adapt to a world without sight. For instance, DeWoskin writes, “And sat down, numb, on our gold couch. And tried to open my eyes, rocked, counted my legs and arms and fingers. I didn’t cry. Or talk” (DeWoskin 44). As a result of losing a very important scent, she’s started to act differently from a person with sight.
In the short story, “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, the author introduces Miss Brill as a lonely and a putting on her fur scarf, and getting ready to go to the park. As she sits on the bench and listens to other people talk, she imagines herself as an audience watching the people in the park as if they are on stage. Miss Brill believes that all the action going on in the park, such as the little boy giving the thrown-away violets back to the woman is just a play. However, a closer look at Miss Brill reveals a character that is unable to distinguish between perception and reality.
Conflict with reality and appearance brings to surface the elements of the traditional commedia dell’arte in the form of mistaken identity, which enriches the farcical plot-lines that occur in the play. The very embodiment of mistaken identity establishes that what may be seem real could be quite the opposite, however the characters in the play are unable to distinguish this as their vision becomes distorted by their fall into the deception of appearance. It is this very comedic device that enables the conflict between Roscoe (Rachel) and Alan, or Charlie and Alan’s father to occur which is a significant part of the comedic nature of the play as the unproportional situation is what sparks laughter from the audience, and so it is the presence of mistaken identity alone that conveys the play into a light-hearted comedy. Furthermore, Peter O'Neill quotes that ‘using humour can provide a degree of safety for expressing difficult ideas or opinions which could be particularly effective…’. In the circumstances of the quotation Richard Bean effectively c...
2. The first reason for this thesis stems from the point of view used in the story. The point of view exemplified is one of third person, more specifically one who is omniscient. The story’s message could not be conveyed from the first person, due to the fact that virtually everyone in the writing at hand is not only unable, but unwilling to figure out the true nature of their surroundings.
Music therapy not only works on adults in the workplace but also on premature babies, infants, and children as well.
...ne else in the play the power of language to alter reality, and the issues of conscious or unconscious deceit.
The power within the mind provides people with the opportunity to create an illusion of one’s life. These illusions sprout from dreams that often are unobtainable, as they strive to reach perfection in life which is known to be impossible. The mind crafted images provide people with an outlet to escape the terrifying truth of reality. Shielding oneself from reality is only a temporary solution, and can create social struggles as well as tension. The struggle between wanting to live in a fantasy of dreams to escape the world, and accepting the hardships of reality has existed in society since the beginning of time. Tennessee Williams demonstrates that many fall into the temptation to escape reality by living in an imagination where truth and responsibilities are neglected in his novel The Glass Menagerie.
“Mr. Felder is one of the people in Tuskegee that I must see whenever I visit my old alma mater; he is one of Tuskegee's natural treasures. Tuskegee wouldn't be the same without him,” says class of '92 graduate Mike Landrum. Upon entering Mr. Felder’s shop, I was not only taken aback by the enormous amount of “Skegee gear,” but by the liveliness and mobility of this elderly, slender fair-skinned man. I felt that Mr. Felder was a very humble man who is truly passionate about his work.
Smokeless tobacco (ST) is tobacco consumed orally, not smoked, and placed in the oral cavity.2 A wide variety of smokeless tobacco exists but the most commonly manufactured in the United States are loose-leaf chewing tobacco, moist snuff, and dry snu...
people on it with a brief description. There was a man by the name of
2. Consider the women, particularly with regard to their age. In light of their health and their isolation, how does Tea Party present the circumstances of the aged? How can the play be constructed as a social/political argument, with elderly as a
Vitamin E can be found in foods and dietary supplements. Natural vitamin E from food sources is called d-alpha-tocopherol. The dietary supplement for is dl-alpha-tocopherol. Vitamin E can be found in wheat germ, some nuts, seeds and oils and leafy green vegetables. Vitamin E appears in many fortified cereals as well. Wheat germ provides the highest concentration of vitamin E with sunflower seeds taking second place. One tablespoon of wheat germ oil provides one hundred percent of an adult’s RDI for vitamin E. One ounce of sunflower seeds fulfills thirty-seven of an adult’s RDI for vitamin E. Other food sources of vitamin E include sunflower, safflower, soybean and co...
Heteronormativity is a term that defines the privileging of heterosexuality through its normalization practices within society such as institutions and organizational cultures. Heteronormativity can circulate through everyday practices of the mundane such as how teachers choose to organize the setting of the classrooms by implementing books, posters and movies reflecting heterosexual common sense values.
Illusion vs. reality has been a major running theme in all the plays we have read in class. By interpretation, the idea of illusion is a way to build an alternate fantasy world for oneself where he/she can escape from reality. From all the characters analyzed in class, Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire would definitely be the one character who is so steadfast on illusion that she lets it shape her life as she believes it is her only way towards a happier life. As seen in the above quote, Blanche chooses to dwell in illusion, for it is her primary defense against the troubles in her life. Illusion has had a freeing enchantment that protects her from the tragedies she has had to endure. However, Blanche is not the only character with this fixation on illusion. In this paper, I will be analyzing other characters like Nora from A Doll’s House, Eliza from Pygmalion and Mrs. Hale from Trifles, who just like Blanche have also succumbed to the world of illusion as opposed to reality.
...American Dream as odd, even a little scary”18. I hate this idea. It shows that Americans think themselves better than the rest of the world, or that they are supposed to be some kind of Eden where everything is handed to them. This part made me so frustrated that America would just raise themselves above the world, and ignore the history of the Jewish 'chosen people' of God, thinking that they as Americans are better and deserve more. This sub-chapter shows America vs the other (aka the world), even more than the comparison of America to Europe that the book is based on. It is so weird reading this book as a Canadian, because I feel as if we are a mixture between Europe and America, which is really off-putting.