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Extreme Apathy in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation
Many authors go to great lengths to explore the limits of human experience, testing realms beyond the imagination. Anything from physical boundaries to social boundaries are broken and thus redefined; Kafka explores the life of a man turned into a bug, Nabokov examines the life of a man ruled by a sexual desire that is taboo. With so much effort focused on the extremes of life, one work, a play by John Guare entitled Six Degrees of Separation, stands out. Certainly, the events are extraordinary; based on a true story, Six Degrees is the tale of a young con man, professing to be the son of Sidney Poitier, and his effect on the lives of several New York socialites. Paul is the Eliza Doolittle of the modern age, adopting all the skills, stories, and styles that make him the perfect houseguest. Paul's charisma ensures that at every encounter, his presence leaves its mark. One broke and broken young man named Rick, after losing his last dime and last shred of dignity to an encounter with Paul, throws himself from his third floor tenement apartment. From the way that the New Yorkers speak of their experiences with Paul, one would think that Guare has crafted yet another story exploring the range of human experience, probing the impact and significance of encounters among friends and strangers. However, as much as some incidents, such as Rick's suicide, suggest the extreme and most violent ends of the interaction, Guare's play leads us down a too familiar path to a rather harrowing conclusion: that the most unnerving edge of human experience is not, in fact, the most extreme and violent, but the most common and natural to human nature. Guare's play is peopled with characters ...
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...e to present ourselves and have some hand in our own destiny, we are paralyzed. As Paul says, the end of Waiting for Godot is "Let's go. Yes, let's. They do not move" (25). At the end of the play, Ouisa is about to go to Sotheby's, but then pauses to watch Paul in her own mind. The lights go down as she remains on stage. Ouisa is not saved, and in the end we must doubt that she will find momentum enough to collect the substance that is required to have a life. Instead of moving into a life of meaning, she will float to Sotheby's, with a drink in hand and an urbane smile. One can picture the unwritten end to follow, Ouisa at Sotheby's "We had the strangest call tonight, that imposter that came into our lives, and you know, I had such a revelation about our lives . . ."
NOTES
[1] John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation. New York: Dramatist's Play Service, 1992.
Throughout a lifetime, one can run through many different personalities that transform constantly due to experience and growing maturity, whether he or she becomes the quiet, brooding type, or tries out being the wild, party maniac. Richard Yates examines acting and role-playing—recurring themes throughout the ages—in his fictional novel Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living miserably in suburbia, experience relationship difficulties as their desire to escape grows. Despite their search for something different, the couple’s lack of communication causes their planned move to Europe to fall through. Frank and April Wheeler play roles not only in their individual searches for identity, but also in their search for a healthy couple identity; however, the more the Wheelers hide behind their desired roles, the more they lose sense of their true selves as individuals and as a pair.
In relation to the theme of isolation in this novel, Anderson uses this chapter to illustrate how the characters in the town of Winesburg should be perceived. Characters that are “grotesque” because they live their lives by a single “truth” that prevents them from maturing, developing, and ultimately growing into what Anderson...
Bad choices are made every day by everybody. Those bad choices could lead to consequences that are going to bother a person for a long time. Even more, that person may try various ways to correct that error. The intention is good, but things can go even worse if the effort is based on unrealistic fantasies. This effort is presented as a part of modernist ideas. Modernist writers dramatize this effort through the tragic outcomes of the characters. Three modernist pieces, A Street Car Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, The Great Gatsby, all of them sent out a message to the audience, the loss of past and how it cannot be recovered. Each piece features a character who lost hope, strived to recover the hope, and ended with a tragic outcome. A Street Car Named Desire featured Blanche; Blanche spent her whole life trying to get some attentions. Death of a Salesman featured Willy; Willy spent his whole life trying to apply the idea “Be Well Liked.” The Great Gatsby featured Jay Gatsby; Gatsby spent his whole life trying to win back Daisy. All of those characters ended with tragic outcome. Blanche was sent to asylum by her own sister. Willy committed suicide after felt humiliated by his sons. Gatsby was murdered with a gunshot planned by Tom Buchanan. Blanche, Willy, and Gatsby’s tragic fates are caused by their false beliefs about life, which are proven wrong by the contradictions between the reality and the illusion.
Charlie Goldman, as portrayed in Ann Packer’s Nerves, is a thirty-something man-child who is losing his wife and comes to realize that it is he who is lost, somewhere in the streets of New York City. Gripped with overwhelming fears and psychosomatic ailments or hypochondria, Charlie suppresses the true causes of his condition while making a futile attempt to save his marriage. His childlike approach to life and his obsessive approach to marriage pushes his wife Linda towards a career in San Francisco and ultimately divorce. This essay will explore the broader themes of growing up, obsession and love.
Throughout Rajiv Joseph’s play, Gruesome Playground Injuries, the two characters, Doug and Kayleen, sporadically meet throughout the course of 30 years due to injuries ranging from getting “beaten up pretty badly” (Joseph 31) to going into a “coma” (Joseph 27). The play starts out with the two characters first meeting in the school nurse’s office with injuries of their own. This is the start of a relationship that is full of pain and healing throughout the years. Told in a very unique structure of five year increments, the play shows how injuries, a reoccurring image that may be self-inflicted or inflicted upon one, bring the pair together when either is in a dire situation.
After reading and evaluating the works of T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, there are various discussion points pertaining to the connection between tragedy and human conditions. Herein, tragedy is the result of a specific human condition, disengagement. This essay aims to identify and explain the behavioural traits between characters in two literary works which leads to a disengagement by the characters from a typical social environment.
Music has always been a way for people to express themselves, to share emotions and to escape, at least for a while, from the real world. It is, undoubtedly, an extremely important part of human life and history. On the last thirty years, music has changed radically, going from original, deep and real, to superficial and commercial stuff. In the documentary “Before the Music Dies”, directed by Andrew Shapter and produced by Joel Rasmussen in 2006, we get a whole new perspective of what is happening with the music industry nowadays, which might not be very comforting. Actually, the simple title of the video makes you wonder if music can really stop existing as we know it this days. How bad could the situation be?
Characters in the play show a great difficult finding who they are due to the fact that they have never been given an opportunity to be anything more than just slaves; because of this we the audience sees how different characters relate to this problem: " Each Character has their own way of dealing with their self-identity issue..some look for lost love o...
Disparities in health care have long provided challenges and occur in groups of people who receive less or lower quality health care than others which often results in poorer overall health outcomes (KFF.org, 2012). Health Care Disparities refers to a population of people that have a higher burden of illness, injury, disability, or mortality (KFF.org, 2012). The disparity aspect refers to the differences between groups in health coverage, access and or quality of care (KFF.org, 2012). Disparities are commonly viewed by individual races or ethnicities, but they also cross many dimensions and include socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation (KFF.org, 2012).
1. After through revision of both the book and PowerPoint there was one particular concept that stood out the most. I am now given more clarity and a better understanding on how it is used in the world of health. Like any other areas in health policy it is said that Health disparities is also a growing concern. Health disparities are known as population specific differences. Many populations such as racial and ethnic minorities, residents of rural areas, children, women, elderly, and persons with diabetes are affected by disparities. Preventions and Heath promotions were implemented in the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000, which gave authorization to several US Department of Health and Human Services to address disparities.
Whether a person’s life is something experienced authentically, or factually written down as literature, there are more complexities faced then there are simplicities on a daily basis. This multifariousness causes constant bewilderment and hesitation before any sort of important decision a person must make in his or her life. When it comes to characters of the written words, as soon sensations of ambiguity, uncertainty, and paranoia form, the outlook and actions of these characters are what usually result in regrettable decisions and added anxiety for both that character as well as the reader. Examples of these themes affecting characters in the world of fiction are found in the novel The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and the play Glengarry Glen Ross written by David Mamet. Throughout both of these texts, characters such as Oedipa Maas who allows these emotions to guide her in her journey of self discovery, and Shelly Levene who is so overcome with these emotions that they become his downfall. For both of these characters, these constant emotional themes are what guide their most impulsive actions, which can generally also become regrettable decisions. Even though it is a distinguishing factor of human beings, when these characters are portrayed in print, it somehow seems to affect the reader more, because they are able to see the fictional repercussions, and also know how they could have been avoided.
The idea that the successful health and health care organizations of the future will be those that can simultaneously deliver excellent quality of care, at lower total costs, while improving the health of their population is taking hold. The main reason is because of health disparities. Addressing health disparities has been a challenge for decades. This paper will look at a few examples of how health disparities can affect individually, thus the overall health of a population.
Humans spend their lives searching and creating meaning to their lives, Beckett, however, takes a stand against this way of living in his novel ‘Waiting for Godot’. He questions this ideal of wasting our lives by searching for a reason for our existence when there is no one to find. In his play, he showcases this ideology through a simplistic and absence of setting and repetitive dialogue. Beckett’s ability to use these key features is imperative to his ability to convey his message of human entrapment and existence. The play opens with very general stage directions “a country road, a tree, evening”.
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot has been said by many people to be a long book about nothing. The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, spend all their time sitting by a tree waiting for someone named Godot, whose identity is never revealed to the audience. It may sound pretty dull at first but by looking closely at the book, it becomes apparent that there is more than originally meets the eye. Waiting for Godot was written to be a critical allegory of religious faith, relaying that it is a natural necessity for people to have faith, but faiths such as Catholicism are misleading and corrupt.
Although Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot, has no definite meaning or interpretation, the play acts as a statement of hopelessness regarding human existence. Debate surrounds the play because, due to its simplicity, almost any interpretation is valid. The main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, are aging men who must wait for a person, being, or object named Godot, but this entity never appears to grace the men with this presence. Both characters essentially demonstrate how one must go through life when hope is nonexistent as they pointlessly attempt to entertain themselves with glum conversation in front of a solitary tree. The Theater of the Absurd, a prevalent movement associated with Waiting for Godot, serves as the basis for the message of hopelessness in his main characters. Samuel Beckett's iconic Waiting for Godot and his perception of the characteristics and influence of the Theater of the Absurd illustrate the pointlessness and hopelessness regarding existence. In the play, boredom is mistaken for hopelessness because the men have nothing to do, as they attempt to occupy themselves as, for some reason, they need to wait for Godot. No hope is present throughout the two-act play with little for Estragon and Vladimir to occupy their time while they, as the title indicates, wait for Godot.