In “Andre’s Mother” by Terrance McNally a family is departing their loved one, Andre who died of AIDS. Andre is homosexual with a boyfriend Cal who he kept secret from his mother. The setting of this play late 1980’s in New York City, a time period were homosexuality was not accepted throughout society and demonized as to being the root of the HIV/AIDS disease. Art forms responded to this problem much like this play did. Andre’s Mother never knew his secret and never made her own verbal stance on it. The symbols – language used, hamlet, and the white balloon -throughout this play show that McNally is persuading his audience to accept homosexuality and AIDS.
Language in this play or lack thereof changes the entire mood and theme of the play. The use of Andre’s Mother lacking language and only giving actions persuades the audience to accept Andres’ secret like his mother does. “Her lips tremble. She looks on the verge of breaking down. She is about to let go of the balloon when she pulls it down to her. She looks at it awhile before she gently kisses it.”(McNally 3) Her actions noted in the stage direction shows her acceptance of Andre in any form that he is. At this part of the play when she learns his secret she still respects him and shows him love by kissing the balloon. “Cal: I wish I knew what you were thinking. I think it would help me…When he was sick if I asked him once I asked him a thousand times, tell her. She’s your mother. She won’t mind.”(McNally2) Andre and Cal always talked about Andre’s fear to voice to his mother that he was homosexual due to her narrow-minded views. Without actually knowing what Andre’s Mother was thinking the love of her son was greater than any disapproval of his sexuality. Penny Cal’s sist...
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...ed via unprotected sexual intercourse homosexual/heterosexual. During this time period this information was well believe and not readily available. Cal, on the other hand was very open and intimate in his relationship with Andre. Cal loved Andre just as if they were already married. Even with this deadly syndrome and his personal belief’s he still ascends to heaven just like anyone else.
In conclusion “Andre’s Mother” was a play to persuade the audience to accept AIDS and homosexuality during the 20th century. Instead of thrusting the audience into his opinion he gently guides the audience to his outlook on the famous social issue. Using the symbols: language used, hamlet, and the white balloon completing admission of Andre.
Works Cited
McNally,Terrance. “Andre’s Mother.” Backpack Literature. Fourth Edition. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2012.Print precioud
Heilbrun, Carolyn G. (2002). Hamlet's Mother and Other Women. 2nd ed. West Sussex: Columbia University Press.
Throughout the play Bennett reviles Doris’ character by showing her affection to the past, she talks to old photographs of her dead husband, Wilfred, and talks aloud to him. This indicates Doris’ apparent loneliness and how she feels “left behind” by the rest of her generation. When talking about the people she new in the past like Wilfred, she takes on there voice, this shows how she...
Vogel’s writing exudes symbolism from the first word of the script to the last – from the rise of the curtain to its close. The glimpses into Li’l Bit’s past are sometimes explicitly and literally described, but Vogel also often uses extended metaphors to act as a detailed commentary on the action. Why, however, did the playwright choose symbolism to convey the effects of sexual abuse – as heavy as its subject matter may be – during the late twentieth century when seemingly nothing is censored in America? In order to answer this and better understand the way in which Vogel uses symbolism –in the smaller elements of the play and extended metaphors – the terms must first be defined.
Kushner describes a society, not unlike our own society today, that looks down upon gay men and other minorities. By setting the play in the mid 80's, a time when gay-bashing was at its zenith, he is able to capture the prejudice towards homosexuals and all that surrounds it. The early 80's was also the time when AIDS was a new disease being made aware to the mass public for the first time. By setting the story in New York City, a melting pot of different cultures and people, Kushner proves that not just one group of people come in contact with homosexuals. All of these geographical and atmosphirical forces aid in setting the mood of the play. These surroundings drive the characters to act the way they do and make the choices they make.
Just as Arthur Miller, the writer of “The Crucible”, said, “Sex,sin, and the devil were early linked” (Miller,1125). During the AIDS hysteria, homosexual intercourse was thought to be the cause of widespread immune deficiency, so the disease was soon labeled “Gay Men’s Health Crisis” (“History of HIV and AIDS”). As time progressed AIDS, it was discovered, could also be spread through heterosexual couples(“History of HIV and AIDS”). This
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, women are oversexualized, and are given no role other than to be the item of a man’s desire. The promiscuity of the only two women in the play, Gertrude and Ophelia, detracts from their power and integrity, and allows Hamlet a certain amount of control over them. Gertrude’s sexual lifestyle is often mentioned by her son, Hamlet, and Hamlet uses his knowledge of Gertrude’s sexuality as a means to criticize her. Ophelia’s sexuality initially appears to be controlled by Laertes and Polonius, and Hamlet takes advantage of the naive image that she is required to keep. However, in her later madness, Ophelia taints this image by revealing that her innocence is feigned. By exposing the sexual natures of both Gertrude and Ophelia, Hamlet strips these women of any influence they may have had, and damages their once-honourable names.
The Modern Hamlet attempts to fluster his parents throughout his film, “The Mousetrap”. The movie lacks a chorus and is made of vague clips cut together that are meant to evoke different eras, families, and the jumble and the circles of his mind. It resembles the play within the original text. In this method, Modern Hamlet achieves the goal of the ridicule. But the montage reflects a concerted effort of a director to achieve a goal. Victorian Hamlet accomplishes his objective to a much higher degree. Branagh’s use of Shakespeare’s original words brings out the terror within Hamlet. Both his and the audience’s skin crawl as the words flow. Every insult makes the situation more awkward, and every response enables Hamlet to continue speaking. Hamlet traverses every possible avenue to insult his mother and stepfather. For example, Hamlet remarks during the prologue (line 144) “Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?” To which Ophelia responds “‘Tis brief, my lord.” Seeing the opportunity to insult his mother, Hamlet turns around, faces her, and at the top of his lungs yells, “As woman 's love.” This insult refers to how Gertrude remarried just days after becoming a widow. No planning; just reactionary, at the
In "Man and Wife Is One Flesh": Hamlet and the Confrontation with the Maternal Body, Janet Adelman argues that the motivating force behind the plot action in Hamlet is the collapse of boundaries between relationships of individuals, sexes, and divisions of public (state) and private (love) life. The primary cause of the breakdown results from the bodily contamination spread through overt sexuality, specifically maternal sexuality. Janet Adelman asserts her feminism into the sexist view of psychoanalysis to define the contamination as that power of women that men fear.
Contrastingly, Mrs. Darling, his wife, is portrayed as a romantic, maternal character. She is a “lovely lady”, who had many suitors yet was “won” by Mr. Darling, who got to her first. However, she is a multifaceted character because her mind is described “like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East”, suggesting that she is, to some extent, an enigma to the other characters, especially Mr. Darling. As well as this, she exemplifies the characteristics of a “perfect mother”. She puts everything in order, including her children’s minds, which is a metaphor for the morals and ethics that she instils in them. Although ...
Hamlet, a play that centres on the crisis of the masculine subject and its "radical confrontation with the sexualized maternal body," foregrounds male anxiety about mothers, female sexuality, and hence, sexuality itself. Obsessed with the corruption of the flesh, Hamlet is pathologically fixated on questions of his own origin and destination -- questions which are activated by his irrepressible attraction to and disgust with the "contaminated" body of his mother. (1)
Throughout various mediums, queer and gender portrayals are not shown in the best light. Majority of media show clear negative connotations of homosexuals and queens while constantly being a target of discrimination and ridicule. Though as time went on many writers decided to speak up and gain awareness for queer and gender biases by incorporating messages of societal discrimination in their plays. Much of their ideals were that of how sexual/gender identity portrayal, lifestyle stigma, and preconceived notions of the homosexual community. These ideals were combined in what is called gender studies and queer literary theory. Some of these concepts and ideas of queer and gender theory can be seen throughout the play
In 1979, Caryl Churchill wrote a feminist play entitled Cloud Nine. It was the result of a workshop for the Joint Stock Theatre Group and was intended to be about sexual politics. Within the writing she included a myriad of different themes ranging from homosexuality and homophobia to female objectification and oppression. “Churchill clearly intended to raise questions of gender, sexual orientation, and race as ideological issues; she accomplished this largely by cross-dressing and role-doubling the actors, thereby alienating them from the characters they play.” (Worthen, 807) The play takes part in two acts; in the first we see Clive, his family, friends, and servants in a Victorian British Colony in Africa; the second act takes place in 1979 London, but only twenty-five years have passed for the family. The choice to contrast the Victorian and Modern era becomes vitally important when analyzing this text from a materialist feminist view; materialist feminism relies heavily on history. Cloud Nine is a materialist feminist play; within it one can find examples that support all the tenets of materialist feminism as outlined in the Feminism handout (Bryant-Bertail, 1).
Analysis: Gertrude is playing the common role of a caring mother. She wants her boy to win and do well so she comes out
...Gertrude, as does the incestuous Claudius; thus, Hamlet places his identity with his mother. Ultimately, Hamlet seeks not to avenge the death of his father, but to save his mother from her own destructive sexuality, and by extension his own self-destruction. Of course, Adelman prescribes an existential reason to Hamlet's need to rescue his mother; Hamlet needs to "recover the fantasized presence of the asexual mother of childhood" (277). Hamlet needs to separate his mother from all sexuality in order to reap the stability of her selfhood for his own. After refusing to sleep with Claudius, Gertrude restores herself in her son's eyes to the status of "an internal good mother" (279). Hamlet, now, by "trusting her, can begin to trust in himself and in his own capacity for action; he can rebuild the masculine identity spoiled by her contamination" (279).
With particular reference to Hamlet, feminist critics might explore the characters of Ophelia and Gertrude and how they challenge—or fail to challenge — the domination of male characters. Feminist critics would also be interested in exploring how the play expresses ideas about femininity that were common in Shakespeare's lifetime and how complicit Shakespeare is in Hamlet's personal misogyny. … Elaine Showalter's essay "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism" explores the difficulties, even embarrassments, that feminist critics have had in approaching Ophelia. The problem is that Ophelia has tended to be overshadowed by Hamlet, even by feminist critics, who then feel the need to liberate Ophelia from obscurity. However, even liberated Ophelia is problematic for she suggests some potentially troubling connections between femininity, female sexuality, and madness.