The past has a funny way of catching up with people. Sometimes, those individuals relish revisiting the olden days. For others, the past is something to be hidden away and never spoken of for fear of stirring up cruel memories and disturbing secrets. For the four members of the Tyrone family, the past is an escape, but also an inescapable prison. Each character in this play longs to return to a point in the past where they were happy, yet they are also haunted by their respective pasts. Some of the Westons of Osage County are also haunted by the events that transpired in the past. But unlike the Tyrones, the Westons do not welcome the past in their home at all. It forces itself into their lives and ruins what little happiness there is to be had. The Tyrones, on the other hand sedate themselves with those memories of happier times. The older generations in both families made decisions that haunted the future generations and condemned not only themselves, but also their progeny. Not one member of either family is able to escape from the events of the past unscathed.
The patriarchs and matriarchs of each family made decisions that set the tone of tragedy for the lives of their children. The events that occurred during this generation’s younger years were the precedents by which their offspring lived. Beverly Weston and James Tyrone both committed questionable acts in the past that affect the lives of everyone else in their families. All throughout Long Day’s Journey Tyrone is reproached for being cheap; his family believes that that stinginess is what led to Mary’s morphine addiction. This accusation plagues Tyrone and when he and his wife begin discussing it, he beseeches her, “Mary! For god’s sake, forget the past!” (O’Neill 90). ...
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...ho hold them. These previous events cause a rippling effect of dysfunction that touches each generation of these households. The decisions of the parents affect the lives of the children and the choices of their children in turn. As Mary Tyrone said, “The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too” (O’Neill 90). The quote is indicative of both families’ unfortunate relationship to the past. The past always catches up to them, no matter how far away they move or how many pills they take. The Tyrones successfully escape for a short time, but it is not forever. And the Westons physical separation leads to an emotional isolation that is showcased in Violet’s final, desperate scene as she calls out for her dead husband and departed daughter. For these haunted families, the past remains both friend and fiend, a relationship from which they can never truly escape.
After the traumatic event, the Brennans are continuously mistreated, causing them to feel they are “no longer wanted” (Burke, pg 1). After feeling ostracised by the township, the alienated Brennan family are driven to leave the town of Mumbilli at 4:30am. With hardly any peer support, Tom begins to lose his sense of security, resulting in his transformation into an unconfident teen who is afraid of public opinion. It is no wonder that Tom is unable to move on in his new town as he is being held back in fear of revealing his past. Burke tactfully illustrates Tom’s emotional kaleidoscope through phrases such as “I felt the knot snap” and “my guts landing at my feet” (Burke, pg 172) when reflecting on the accident. On the contrary, with encouragement from family members, Tom begins to step out of his comfort zone and face the future that is to
“And maybe, if I had been destined to it or called to it strongly enough, it might have been for me.” Jayber was hoping that aunt Cordie and uncle Othy did not die during the winter season but there was nothing he could do when they got but take care of them both. “ By “bachelor” I mean, as was generally meant, a man old enough to be married who was not married and who had no visible chance to get married.” He wanted to marry Mattie Chatham, but she was married to Troy, and she thought Troy was the one that made her dreams come true. “ Maybe they had taken notice of my habit of keeping the shop open at night as long as people was there.” As long as people stayed at the shop after closing, hoping Jayber wanted them to stay for company. When everybody left Jayber, he was hoping for an impel and to start his own family. Jayber was looking to start a fresh new way, but he could not because he want to live the rest of his life with her. He moved along the riverside bank to be to himself, in a house that a friend had gave him with no rent. Being left alone, with nowhere to call home was the saddest thing could happen to anyone. “ By then I had no living relative, or none who was known of me.” In Port William, Jayber did not have a family because they all had died during the winter season. Jayber had taught himself how to do everything he needs to know to survive, therefore he taught himself how to be a
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
After a decade of not seeing his mother and brother, Howard returns to his hometown in Mississippi. It is evident how thrilled he is. As the train approaches town, he begins “to feel curious little movements of the heart, like a lover as he nears his sweetheart” (par. 3). He expects this visit to be a marvelous and welcoming homecoming. His career and travel have kept his schedule extremely full, causing him to previously postpone this trip to visit his family. Although he does not immediately recognize his behavior in the past ten years as neglectful, there are many factors that make him aware of it. For instance, Mrs. McLane, Howard’s mother, has aged tremendously since he last saw her. She has “grown unable to write” (par. 72). Her declining health condition is an indicator of Howard’s inattentiveness to his family; he has not been present to see her become ill. His neglect strikes him harder when he sees “a gray –haired woman” that showed “sorrow, resignation, and a sort of dumb despair in her attitude” (par. 91). Clearly, she is growing old, and Howard feels guilty for not attending her needs for such a long time period: “his throat [aches] with remorse and pity” (par. 439). He has been too occupied with his “excited and pleasurable life” that he has “neglected her” (par. 92). Another indication of Howard’s neglect is the fact that his family no longer owns the farm and house where he grew up. They now reside in a poorly conditioned home:
not only a family but a society. In a play riddled with greed, manipulation and dishonesty,
...e on her part. Throughout the story, the Mother is portrayed as the dominant figure, which resembled the amount of say that the father and children had on matters. Together, the Father, James, and David strived to maintain equality by helping with the chickens and taking care of Scott; however, despite the effort that they had put in, the Mother refused to be persuaded that Scott was of any value and therefore she felt that selling him would be most beneficial. The Mother’s persona is unsympathetic as she lacks respect and a heart towards her family members. Since the Mother never showed equality, her character had unraveled into the creation of a negative atmosphere in which her family is now cemented in. For the Father, David and James, it is only now the memories of Scott that will hold their bond together.
After five years of being raised and living with their grandmother whom they truly loved, the girls had a rude awakening. Their grandmother, Sylvia had passed away. “When after almost five years, my grandmother one winter morning eschewed awakening, Lily and Nona were fetched from Spokane and took up housekeeping in Fingerbone, just as my grandmother had wished” (Robinson 29). This was the final attempt that their grandmother had made in order for the girls to have a normal and traditional life. This is a solid example of how the sister’s lives are shaped by their family and their surroundings. Lucille’s ultimate concern in life is to conform to society and live a traditional life. She wishes to have a normal family and is sorrowful for all of the losses that she has experienced such as her mother’s and grandmother’s deaths. On the other hand, Ruthie, after spending more time with her future guardian, Aunt Sylvie, becomes quite the transient like her.
From the beginning, Beloved focuses on the import of memory and history. Sethe struggles daily with the haunting legacy of slavery, in the form of her threatening memories and also in the form of her daughter’s aggressive ghost. For Sethe, the present is mostly a struggle to beat back the past, because the memories of her daughter’s death and the experiences at Sweet Home are too painful for her to recall consciously. But Sethe’s repression is problematic, because the absence of history and memory inhibits the construction of a stable identity. Even Sethe’s hard-won freedom is threatened by her inability to confront her prior life. Paul D’s arrival gives Sethe the opportunity and the impetus to finally come to terms with her painful life history.
Beloved, Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize winning novel, is a masterfully written book in which the characters must deal with a past that perpetually haunts them. This haunting, in the form of a twenty year old ghost named Beloved, not only stalks them in the spirit, but also in the flesh. Beloved, both in story and in character hides the truth in simple ways and convinces those involved that the past never leaves, it only becomes part of who they are. This contortion of truth does not allow any character to escape. Each one hides and runs from the brutality of slavery, yet cannot escape it's heritage. Set in the post-Civil War era of the rural Ohio back roads, each protagonist faces the fact that through Beloved's return they must deal with the ties of the past and the prosperity of the future. And after dealing with those memories that don't let them go, they can move on with their lives. Beloved, the ghostly character, drives this story of Sethe, Denver, and Paul D. to an exploding end of triumph and unity.
Regretfully, though readers can see how Mama has had a difficult time in being a single mother and raising two daughters, Dee, the oldest daughter, refuses to acknowledge this. For she instead hold the misconception that heritage is simply material or rather artificial and does not lie in ones heart. However, from Mama’s narrations, readers are aware that this cultural tradition does lie within ones heart, especially those of Mama’s and Maggie’s, and that it is the pure foundation over any external definition.
In conclusion, the tenuous relationship Sethe shared with her mother led to Sethe’s inability to provide for her children. Consequentially, the murder of Beloved built an emotional barrier that added to the preexisting issue of concerning her stolen milk left Denver with too little milk and the primitive drive to live that at first seemed foiled by her mother’s overbearing past. Yet, against all odds Denver was able to break her family’s legacy of being engulfed in the past and began taking steps for a better future.
Furthermore, Mary’s father was abusive in the family home to both Mary and her mother. A lifelong criminal, who was known to commit violent armed robberies, was not a good influence for Mary. Billy was often out of work, depending on earnings form Betty to sustain the house. It must be noted that there is some question if Billy is actually Mary’s father, given Betty’s profession; chances are great that Billy was just another victimizer in Mary’s lif...
These two plays show dramatically the struggle for authoritative power over the characters lives, families, and societies pressures. The overall tragedy that befalls them as they are swept up in these conflicts distinctly portrays the thematic plot of their common misconception for power and control over their lives.
Each character in O’Connor’s short story brings to surface the bitter way society functions today. Take for instance the grandmother, shows how manipulative society can be when things do not go their way through out the story the grandmother manipulates her way to bring the trip to a halt and in to trouble and even when she knows she is lost she reaches out and surprises everyone by trying to side with the convict “Why your one of my babies. Your one of my own children!” (O'Connor 238-248).This quote is. A direct representation of how manipulative the grandmother can be in the story, and in many ways how society is today. Society will manipulate anything from the news to information to better fit a cause and the excuse given is that it is done to better civilization.
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...