Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
reflection of society in literature
a birthday party essay
reflection of society in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: reflection of society in literature
Spring Awakening, The Birthday Party, Entertaining Mr. Sloane; despite the fact that Spring Awakening was written a century before The Birthday Party and Entertaining Mister Sloane, and The Birthday Party and Entertaining Mister Sloane were written a decade apart, all three of the plays have common themes underscoring the most sinister predilections of the human experience. Intentions are obscure, hypocrisy is commonplace, and distorted moralism is prevalent throughout all three plays. However, it is the exploitation within each play that resonates strongest within me, reminding me intensely of vampires. Wedekind, Pinter, and Orton did not write Fantasy novels, all of their characters are acutely human. However, it because of this humanity that the vampiric-like exploitation of their characters both horrifies and fascinates.
The underlying exploitation in Spring Awakening is first hinted upon during the third scene of Act One. It is the conversation between three young women. Martha has just told the reader that her family abuses her, “ For God’s sake Wendla! Papa beats me till I’m crippled and mama locks me up in he coal cellar for three nights at a time” (Wedekind 8). It is her next line that suggests exploitation; “Sometimes I think they’d miss something if they didn’t have a disgraceful brat like me!” (Wedekind 8) Miss what exactly, having a punching bag? [Having someone to take their frustrations out on?] Even though it’s subtle Wendla is being exploited by her parents, she’s being used in an unjust manner because of their overwhelming fervor.
The next case of subtle exploitation seen in Spring Awakening is also parental. It is between Wendla and Frau Bergmann in Act Two. Wendla is asking her mother about where babies come...
... middle of paper ...
...on utilizes Ed and Kath’s hunger for Sloane to take exploitation to another peak, a peak reminiscent of vampirism. Ed and Kath aren’t subconsciously or unknowingly taking away Sloane’s rights. They aren’t wrapped up in a passion-filled thoughtless frenzy that causes them to act a certain way. Ed and Kath are calm and rational as they use the brutal murder of their father to further their own licentious sexual desires. They are denying Sloane is right to live because of their lewd appetite for his flesh. They’re going to pass him back and forth like the child of divorced parents for “as long as the agreement lasts.” This implies that they’re going to use him, and until they use him up. They’ve stuck their claws into his flesh will not let him go until they have sucked the life out of him and rendered him useless—a corpse much like those that Dracula leaves behind.
What would one expect to be the sentiment of a young women who worked in the Lowell textile mills? It is just such a depressing story; and the sad heroines are the young women of Lowell - Lucy Larcom- who Stephen Yafa portrays in his excerpt “Camelot on the Merrimack.” A perception through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old Lucy Larcom reveals that, “For her and the other young girls, the long and tedious hours they spent tending to demanding machines robbed them of their childhood.” The imagery in “Camelot on the Merrimack,” from Big Cotton by Stephen H. Yafa disclose the working conditions in those sordid mills.
Bales and Soodalter use this to their advantage very effectively by using a multitude of personal stories from people who went through slavery. They tug at your heart strings by starting with Maria, who was 12 years old when she was taken into slavery for seven months by Sandra Bearden. During that time she was reportedly “ . . . dragged into hell. Sandra Bearden used violence to squeeze work and obedience from the child.” (722). Bales and Soodalter begin by giving you an emotional connection with Maria by telling a short story of her life growing up with her two loving parents, and small details of their house and living conditions. After the backstory is established, it goes straight into the accounts of beatings and torture endured by Maria, to quote “ . . . Sandra would blast pepper spray into Maria’s eyes. A broom was broken over the girl’s back, and a few days later, a bottle against her head . . . Bearden tortured the twelve year old by jamming a garden tool up her vagina.” (722-723). The inclusion of the tortures paints an image of how horrible slavery is, and evokes a sense of dread, despair, and helplessness for Maria. Bales and Soodalter not only state the tortures but they follow the text immediately by stating “That was Maria’s workday; her “time off” was worse.”
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a comedy that has been interpreted in different ways, enabling one to receive multiple experiences of the same story. Due to the content and themes of the play, it can be creatively challenging to producers and their casting strategies. Instead of being a hindrance, I find the ability for one to experiment exciting as people try to discover strategies that best represent entertainment for the audience, as well as the best ways to interpret Shakespeare’s work.
The owners of the factories in New England, like in Lowell, Massachusetts, oppressed young girls by being careless with their safety. It was already terrible that women made one-eighth of what men made; their affordability for employers made girls, especially immigrants, desirable to save money. That could be the cause of the employer’s lack of regard for their safety. In the factories, from sunrise to sunset, women, men, and children had to breathe in unhealthy and unventilated air. In addition, men and women were being injured and killed because of hazardous surroundings, as Mary S. Paul writes to her father, “My life and health are spared while others are cut off.” Workers have been breaking their necks and ribs and being killed by cars (Doc F). It is an employer’s responsibility to keep his/her employees safe because, in reality, it would be in their interest to keep their workers alive to make them money. Still the girl’s well-being and interests were ignored because it would trouble the factory owners. As a result of the owner’s profiteering, employees were dying.
Personal motive is visible in two specific situations as a cause of oppression, involving Abigail as well as the Putnams. Abigail Williams, a young woman, is one of the oppressors
Fairies, mortals, magic, love, and hate all intertwine to make A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare a very enchanting tale, that takes the reader on a truly dream-like adventure. The action takes place in Athens, Greece in ancient times, but has the atmosphere of a land of fantasy and illusion which could be anywhere. The mischievousness and the emotions exhibited by characters in the play, along with their attempts to double-cross destiny, not only make the tale entertaining, but also help solidify one of the play’s major themes; that true love and it’s cleverly disguised counterparts can drive beings to do seemingly irrational things.
Even his lightest plays have serious undertones to them. Each one depicts life as it once was, complete with the rules and expectations which were common at the time. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare reflects society’s views on love and gender, both in his own time and in ancient Athens.
Williams Jr., Porter. “Mistakes in Twelfth Night and Their Resolution: A Study in Some Relationships of Plot and Theme.” PMLA 76.3 (1961): 193-99. Print.
The everyday life of a slave was a harsh reality. The typical slave working on a plantation would wake-up at sunrise and start picking cotton. Much of the cotton cultivated in the South was sold to England, fueling their industrial revolution and enriching the plantation owners. A “privileged” slave might be seen working in the house of a plantation owner as a nurse to their children, a cook, or a housekeeper. While it may appear that working in the home of the slave owner was preferred over the grueling physical labor taking place in the hot and humid Southern climate, such was not the case. In the book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs recounts her experiences working in the home of Dr. Flint.
Slavery in the middle of the 19th century was well known by every American in the country, but despite the acknowledgment of slavery the average citizen did not realize the severity of the lifestyle of the slave before slave narratives began to arise. In Incidents in the life of a slave girl, Harriet Jacobs uses an explicit tone to argue the general life of slave compared to a free person, as well as the hardships one endured on one’s path to freedom. Jacobs fought hard in order to expand the abolitionist movement with her narrative. She was able to draw in the readers by elements of slave culture that helped the slaves endure the hardships like religion and leisure and the middle class ideals of the women being “submissive, past, domestic,
Molière’s play “Tartuffe and Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Earnest” both demonstrate a comical portrait of hypocrisy. In “Tartuffe”, the main character Tartuffe is seen as a religious hypocrite who takes advantage of Orgon’s wealth and agrees to marry his daughter, Mariane against her wishes. In “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Jack and Algernon both lie about their identity to get the woman of their dreams. The authors use the concept of double personalities in the play to reveal the deceit and lies to represent the theme of hypocrisy. In fact, hypocrisy is not only displayed in the characters but in the play as a whole. Additionally, the plays are both hypocrital in ways that they do not follow the structure of comedy.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most popular and frequently performed comical plays (Berardinelli). The play transformed into a cinematic production by Michael Hoffman has not changed in its basic plot and dialogue, but the setting and some character traits have. The play setting has been gracefully moved from 16th century Greece to 19th century Tuscany (Berardinelli). The addition of bicycles to the play affects the characters in that they no longer have to chase each other around the woods, but can take chase in a more efficient fashion. As far as characters are concerned, Demetrius is no longer the smug and somewhat rude character we find in act 1, scene 1 (Shakespeare pg. 6, line 91), but rather a seemingly indifferent gentleman placed in an unfortunate circumstance set to delay his wedding to Hermia. Perhaps the most noticeable change in the character set from stage to film occurs in the characters of Puck and Nick Bottom.
Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, there are multiple analyses that one can follow in order to reach a conclusion about the overall meaning of the play. These conclusions are reached through analyzing the play’s setting, characterization, and tone. However, when one watches the production A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Michael Hoffman, a completely different approach is taken on these aspects, leading to a vastly different analysis of the work. Though there are many similarities between the original written play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and the on-screen production of the aforementioned play which was directed by Michael Hoffman, there are differences in setting and
“Ignorance and innocence are not always synonymous” (Ziegler 5) is the moral of Frank Wedekind’s play, Frühlings Erwachen, which was first performed in 1906. Wedekind employs satire to warn against the dangers of lack of education for the youth of the play. Spring Awakening, as it is known to English audiences, tells the story of three teenagers, who are being awakened to their sexual desires. However, they are entirely unprepared to deal with these desires. Thus, “the awakening leads to death” (Boa, Spring Awakening 27) in the case of two of the characters and leads the third character to become “imprisoned as a moral degenerate.” (Ziegler 5) In 2007, Spring Awakening: A New Musical, based on Wedekind’s play, premiered on Broadway. It went on to win eight Tony Awards. This musical took most of the original scenes and interlaced modern, pop musical numbers into it. The songs served as a way to show the modernity of the issues raised in the play and to show the innermost thoughts of the characters.
The women in the novel, Great Expectations, are not given the ample opportunities that they would have liked in order to live out their lifelong dreams and hopes. Instead, they have some type of devastating impact that has been brought upon them through a situation that they themselves cannot help. This is evident in the lives of Mrs. Joe, a mere teenager who is forced to raise her brother in a time that is hard to support herself, and Miss Havisham, an elderly woman who’s dreams were torn away when she was left at the altar. Dickens’ female characters do not fit into the ideals of Victorian society as a wife and mother, which causes them to be destructive to themselves and/or men.