Let's Play

FINALLY! We're speaking about plays!

Plays are one of my absolute favorite forms of entertainment; I've seen mulitple, I've acted in multiple, and I've even been an assistant director of multiple. I could go on about them for hours (but I won't).

In order to understand how to write about plays, we need to undestand what elements affect them. In chapter 7, Gardner takes us through these elements. We learn about components, such as diction and setting. These things help make up the play. Diction is the way the author has chosen for the characters to speak. What is their knowledge level, their dialect, their speaking patterns? By looking at diction, we have an inside look at the characters. Diction helps us read between the lines. Setting does this as well. When we look at the setting, we are able to distinguish the mood of the play, background stories for the characters, and we can even use setting to help us understand the time period.

Gardner also teaches us how to read a play. When reading a playwright, it is up to us to imagine what the situation would look like on stage. I know, back in high school when we rehearsed for our plays before we started blocking (choreographing the movements during each scene), my drama teacher made us read EVERYTHING on the page. And I mean everything. So, we sat in the front of the class in our chairs and each actor read for their character. In between lines, another person read the stage directions, the facial expressions, anything written in italics. This reader had one of the most important jobs because he let the actors know what tone to have, what facial expression to have, and where to move (or not to move). This goes for reading playwrights at home. Read everything on the page because it is up to you to imagine what the stage would look like. This is how you understand the play better.

As for writing about plays, Gardner gives a list of questions we should ask in order to analyze our play more efficiently. These questions (on page 114) are extremely helpful to the process of writing about plays. She goes on to give us an example play, Trifles, with an example paper, which seems to analyze a hidden theme in the play. This is why it is important to read everything because it helps us come up with more interesting questions than "What is the play about?" and "What is the setting of this play?" Instead, we can come up with less generic topics, like the one on moral ambiguity and character development in the example paper.

Cinderelly, Cinderelly

We've all heard of Cinderella, the girl who went from maid to married. However, we've never herd it the way Anne Sexton tells it in her poem, Cinderella. Her version of the well-known story is one I did not recognize, one with the cutting of limbs and pecking of eyes and a white dove, instead of a fairy godmother. Not suitable for children, obviously.

I like the way she tells the story inside the poem, especially because she uses other scenarios to compare it to, like the woman who marries a wealthy man. I think it's interesting to look at Cinderella next to the stories of everyday people because it makes her less glamourous and definitely less memorable. Her story ends up not even feeling like a fairytale at all. Instead, she just turns into another rags-to-riches story that we hear about often.

Although it was one of those "childhood ruined" moments, I still like the dark and twisted story of her. I think that Sexton's point is that we shouldn't rely on fairytales because, when you examine them closely, they end up being like everyday stories, hiding behind a facade of magic and wonder.

Song

My favorite poem out of the three we read was "Song" by Christina Rossetti. Being someone who just recently had to cope with the death of a loved one, this poem felt like a message from the person I lost. I think that is what the poem is aimed to do. It is to the loved one, telling them to celebrate their life and not to mourn their death. It says that if the person dies, they should be an extension of them; they should be the happiness that this person would have felt if they were alive. The speaker says that if you feel sad, understand that they are not suffering. They do not feel pain and cannot see the pain others feel. That should bring peace to you.

This definitely brings peace to my mind. Whenever we think of someone who has passed away, we tend to think of only the way they suffered at the end and it breaks us. It's truly one of the saddest thoughts to think. I know, whenever I think of the last six months I spent with my stepdad before he passed away last year, I can only dwell on the fact that he wasn't himself. And I end up feeling cheated, like I didn't even get to spend those six months with him. But it never really occurs to me that HE doesn't feel pain anymore. And that should be the thing that matters the most. The person who was suffering is no longer suffering, and we should all celebrate their lives and continue being happy because, if they were here, that's what they would do. They would continue being happy.

Likes: Long Walks on the Beach

I had to read Matthew Arnold's poem twice in order to really get anything out of it. The poem took an unexpected turn into dreariness around line 24. So, the second time I read it, I was overwhelmed with a sense of nostalgia. It was as if he was remembering the good times while surrounded by the dark times. He refers to the Sea of Faith, which is a good metaphor in my opinion because faith, like the ocean, is based on blindness. The ocean is deep and full of things we cannot see. It is full of possible situations and so is faith. We have faith in things in hopes that they'll change. We never know what will actually happen, until something does happen.
I really like Arnold's use of decsriptions in this poem. Even with the dark turn that the poem took, I still felt whisked away by his detail. He made the darkness beautiful. I also like that he brought Sophocles into the poem as well, because I do love me a bit of Greek tragedy. I am a drama student, after all.

10-07-14

In her essay, Margot Norris analyzes The Dead from a feminist point of view. Norris makes the point that Joyce criticizes patriarchy, as well as his own country in general. This can be seen when Aunt Kate shows her disagreement with the Pope that women should be taken out of the choir. She even blatantly states that she would say something right to his face. I believe Joyce's support of feminism also comes through in between the lines of the book. His critique on the treatment of women, of blacks, and of the Irish tradition in general are all indicators that he has a strong support for feminism.


She also describes back answers- the retorts the women make during almost every conversation held by the male lead. He gives the female characters a strong voice in the book, allowing them to express their opinions. However, Norris does say that, during Gabriel's argument with Mrs. Ivors, the narration is on Gabriel's side. I would disagree with that because I think it shows that women aren't afraid to tell it like it is and shows Gabriel's fear of judgment because he is, for all intents and purposes, a West Briton.


Norris says that he silences certain characters, such as Julia and Lily, because he does not have respect for feminism. I disagree with that. I believe those characters are less developed and do not need to have loud voices the way Aunt Kate and Mrs. Ivors do. I believe that they were "filler" characters- ones that take up space in a story.

And how does that make you feel?

     Have you ever been in a class discussion where one student says something that blows your mind? I'm talking about that one guy/girl who has an idea that is so nuts, you can't even fathom how they came to that conclusion. I know I've definitely had a few of those moments.


     On page 125 of The Dead, Schwarz opens by talking about "off the wall ideas." That was what initially got me thinking about the standards of "normal thinking" and what is considered to be "out of the box." Schwarz goes on to talk about what sentences mean and how we interpret them, using both the literal translation and the imagination, and how "it is the reader's struggle to make sense of a challenging work that reader-response critics seek to describe." So, what should we consider "out of the box?" What are the standards of normalcy that we give to readings? I believe that writing can be open for interpretation, unless the writer plainly states something, like "the boy ran." There's no hidden meaning to that. As we know, our minds work differently. No two minds are alike. So, its obvious that our standards of normalcy would be different, right? However, people are still able to criticize each other's own interpretation of a reading. That's pretty insane, if you ask me. Who's to tell me that my ideas of someone's writing are wrong? But then again, does that make everyone right? That's the confusing part about writing and reading. Everything is open for interpretation, and yet nothing is open for interpretation. Only the writer really knows what he was trying to say.


     I think that we are told what the standards of normalcy are. Early on, we set a trend and try to follow that until a new trend, or standard, is set. But what we don't realize is that our minds are constantly changing and we're constantly shifting our views. Schwarz even states something similar on page 133: "reading and readings evolve, and that by understanding that fact we take an important step toward constructing a new, imaginative, rule-governed...reading of our own."


Does that mean we'll accept the fact that we all have our own standards of normalcy? Or will we just accept a new standard that is slightly more open-minded than before?

"Unbeing dead isn't being alive." - E.E. Cummings

     In the small section I've read so far of The Dead by James Joyce, I've come to realize that people can be physically dead, but also mentally dead as well. One of the main characters I've come to know so far is Gabriel, who is really dead mentally. The way Joyce describes his actions and his reactions shows how much life he actually lacks. He barely has any emotion and is very stoic. He seems like someone who would speak in monotone and it almost seems like he truly does not enjoy life.
      As the bubbly, emotional, talkative mess that I am, it's really hard to understand Gabriel. However, I am capable of feeling sympathy for him. I feel bad for him that he does not feel the urge to travel and see the world when Mrs. Ivors asks him and his wife to the Aran Isles with her and some friends. But I feel worse for his wife, Gretta. I can't imagine what it is like to have someone that you love seem like they aren't there anymore. It reminds me of the song "My Immortal" by Evanescence. In the song, there is a line that says "I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone. But though you're still with me, I've been alone all along." I feel like that is how his wife feels on the inside. It makes me very sad for her. I almost feel like it is easier when someone dies physically than mentally because when someone dies mentally, the shell of who they were is still always around to make you remember how things were. And lastly, I wanted to comment on how this book seems to take place in such a cheery setting, a party with lots of beloved friends and family, but still takes on a rather dreary tone. It takes some seriously talented writing to do that.
      Anyway, I'm sorry for such a depressing post! Hopefully there will be some positive vibes coming from Joyce's novel soon. I will end this by saying, however, that Gabriel does feel some joy, especially when seeing his wife's happiness. So that may be a factor that really brings him to life, as a person in his own world, and as a character that I can really understand.