A book or a theatrical play can become the means through which writers can express their thoughts and convey their messages to society. In ancient times, Greek tragedies were a clever way for writers to judge the political world of the time, and make society reflect back on its own behavior and way of acting. Throughout the years, the form of a theatrical play underwent many changes that allowed the writers to express themselves more freely, without being limited to the strict rules of form and structure of a Greek tragedy. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit is a story that is set in the modern era of post-war Europe. A woman, whose life, through an ugly series of events, is ruined, returns to her hometown to get revenge for the misery …show more content…
According to Askew “The central figure by which this…emotional ritualization occurs is…Madame Zachanassian and especially by her association with the Sphinx; for it is through this sphinx-like figure that all the major themes of the play are introduced…” (90) Claire is a powerful, rich woman that has the whole town under her control. She carefully watches the town from her balcony, and enjoys the chaos that she was able to cause as part of her revenge. “The Sphinx…was directly responsible for the miserable economic and social conditions in Thebes when Oedipus first arrived, just as Madam Zachanassian is directly responsible for the economic and social plight of the Gülleners…” (Askew 90) Dürrenmatt himself attributes to her elements and characteristics of a Greek goddess through the words of the teacher “Seeing stepping out of the train in her black robes made my hair stand on end. Like one of the Fates, like an avenging goddess. Her name should be Clotho, not Claire. I could well imagine her spinning the web of destiny.” (Dürrenmatt 21) Alfred Ill is a modern representation of a tragic hero. “Aristotle never loses sight of the fact that man is a morally responsible being…a being who has the ability to distinguish virtue from vice and to achieve the one or surrender to the other.” (Reeves 187) The constant …show more content…
Alfred was responsible for his own demise. He abandoned Claire for another woman who had money, in order to live a more comfortable life. He bought justice because he did not want to accept Claire’s baby as his own. So, Claire returned as the spitting image of his actions. She came back as a powerful millionaire, who buys everyone and everything, even justice. “What is, in traditional tragedy, hidden behind the visible world and can be guessed at only through the logical and inevitable development of the action, here enters the stage in the grotesque shape of the ‘alte Dame’ and demonstrates, by using the enormous economic resources at her disposal, how the mechanism of the power of Fate works when one looks behind the scenes.” (Speidel 19) As in most of the Greek tragedies, the hero is unable to escape his fate and eventually pays for the wrongs that he has done in life, in the same way, Alfred realized that trying to leave town was meaningless. He would soon be faced with the consequences of his actions, no matter how far away he would be. Claire’s arrival in Güllen emphasizes the divine role that she has been attributed in the play. In order to get off the express train, which never stops in Güllen, she pulls the emergency break. This is a clear indication of how strong her influence is upon
When Mary Zimmerman adapts a play from an ancient text her directing process and the way she engages with text are woven together, both dependent on the other. She writes these adaptations from nondramatic text, writing each evening while working through the pre-production rehearsals and improvisations during the day with the cast. The rehearsal process influences the text, and the text enriches the rehearsal process, so that one cannot exist without the other. Every rehearsal is structured the same but each production is unique because as Zimmerman states in “The Archaeology of Performance”, she is always “open to the possibilities”. The piece is open to everything happening in the world and to the people involved, so the possibilities are honest and endless.
admission. The work I have chosen to compare this novel to is the classic play
The tradition of the tragedy, the renowned form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis, has principally become a discontinued art. Plays that evoke the sense of tragedy-the creations of Sophocles, Euripides, and William Shakespeare-have not been recreated often, nor recently due to its complex nature. The complexity of the tragedy is due to the plot being the soul of the play, while the character is only secondary. While the soul of the play is the plot, according to Aristotle, the tragic hero is still immensely important because of the need to have a medium of suffering, who tries to reverse his situation once he discovers an important fact, and the sudden downturn in the hero’s fortunes. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is the modern tragedy of a common man named Willy Loman, who, like Oedipus from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, exhibits some qualities of a tragic hero. However, the character Willy Loman should not be considered a full-on tragic hero because, he although bears a comparable tragic flaw in his willingness to sacrifice everything to maintain his own personal dignity, he is unlike a true tragic hero, like Oedipus, because he was in full control of his fate where Oedipus was not.
To realize the vision of the play, the script, set-up, costumes, stagecraft, sound design, and acting have to communicate a unified message with which the audience will relate. The script will be tailored to ensure that the audience can understand the play as it proceeds. This is in terms of the language and terms used. Though the language will not be modern, it will be English that can be understood by the audience. This will be English of antique England as it will give the play a feeling of ancient times. The scriptwriter will carry out research on the level of understanding the local people will have of ancient English so as to ascertain that the script matches this level. Although many plays of that era were sung and accompanied by dance, this play will be acted out with spoken word rather than songs. This is because speaking will ensure the audience hears the conversations as they go on and that they understand. This is ...
Throughout time, humans experience many positive and negative life experiences. These experiences can be categorized under various themes, ranging from; love even onto betrayal, and through these themes human emotions and experiences can be studied. “Hamlet,” by William Shakespeare, and “Death of a Salesman,” by Arthur Miller, are two well written plays, displaying a both very tragic and thematic approach. Although, they take place in two very different time periods, under two very different circumstances they share a common effect. Hamlet’s tragic story takes place in the royal castle Elsinore, Denmark, while the Loman’s story takes place in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Boston in the late 1940s.
In Sophocles' most famous Theban play consisting of two parts, "Oedipus the King" and "Antigone", both parts are necessary in understanding some of the things that happened around them, and what type of man had raised Antigone. She is the main character in the play of “Antigone”.
The myth of Eurydice is a sad story in which two lovers are separated by death. After his love dies, Orpheus journeys into the underworld to retrieve her, but instead loses her for good. Playwright Sarah Ruhl takes the myth of Eurydice and attempts to transform this sad tale into a more light-hearted story. However, despite humorous lines and actions throughout the play, the melancholy situation of the actual tale overwhelms any comicality present. Although meant to be funny, Sarah Ruhl's “Eurydice” can be seen as a modernized tragedy about two lovers who are separated forever by a twist of fate.
Durrenmatt uses many allusions in The Visit in which its connections sheds so much more light on the play and helps to emphasize even the smallest aspects of it. Durrenmatt’s implementation of allusions to describe characters at a deeper lever, compare events in Guellen to its contrasting Westernized culture and show the irony of what Claire does to what others say, helps us understand The Visit at a much deeper level and far more interesting way.
Oedipus Rex”, by Socrates, is a play that shows the fault of men and the ultimate power of the gods. Throughout the play, the main character, Oedipus, continually failed to recognize the fault in human condition, and these failures let to his ultimate demise. Oedipus failed to realize that he, himself was the true answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. Oedipus ignored the truth told to him by the oracles and the drunk at the party, also. These attempts to get around his fate which was determined by the gods was his biggest mistake. Oedipus was filled with hubris and this angered the gods. He believed he was more that a man. These beliefs cause him to ignore the limits he had in being a man. Oedipus needed to look at Teiresias as his window to his future.
The play The Visit, takes place in the late 1950’s, post-World War 2, in Güllen, Germany, the town being in complete ruin and in the need of money. When a special offered is made by the main character to help them prosper, they can't seem to resist the temptation. In his tragicomedy, the author Friedrich Dürrenmatt focuses on his moneyed main character Claire Zachanassian as a way to highlight the manipulation of a society through power.
In The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt you feel unattached and are constantly reminded that you are in fact watching a play, nothing else. Dürrenmatt constructs this play using Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre, a twentieth-century theatrical movement that was a reaction against popular forms of theatre, Dürrenmatt uses epic theatre in his work, The Visit, because he wants his audience to analysis what is being said and done instead of what they see and hear. An intellectual audience member will make connections when watching an epic play.
In The Visit the author Friedrich Durrenmatt revolves around the theme of the corruption of money because it plays an important part in the progression of the story. Friedrich Durrenmatt is using Claire, a powerful billionairess to show how money can affect behavior, moral principles and politics. Claire gives the people of Güllen a big decision to make in exchange for money and the choices they are given leads them to commit murder. Claire is able to manipulate an entire town and play with the law because of her wealth. Durrenmatt shows the toll money takes on society.
Miranda’s character in the play represents the ideal woman of Elizabethan era. She is portrayed as a goddess among the men. “Most sure, the goddess/Oh whom these airs attend!”(1.2.425-426). Fer...
Another motif in this play is death. At the beginning of the play, many people in the town were dying because of the play. Then town finds out that king Laius also died but no one knows that Oedipus killed him because he was too stubborn to get out of his way. Without knowing that he killed king Laius he threatens the murderer of king Laius that he would be killed terribly. Then in the middle of the play, Oedipus finds out that his dad died due to an illness and that he was now crowned as the king of Corinth. Then at the end of the play, Jocasta suicides herself because she finds out that she married and has kids with her son. This whole play had many deaths, which is why it is considered to be a tragic
Theater is a natural outlet for our desire to hear and tell stories, and in some ways it is even more primal and powerful than the written word. At its worst, theater will merely bore; while at its best it will not only entertain but move and shape its audience. Two such genres of theater, or drama, have consistently achieved this effect. Tragedy, represented by the weeping actors’ mask, usually features the title character’s fall from greatness to ruin, guided by the gods or fate. Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles, is the epitome of classic Tragedy, as defined by Aristotle (96-101). Here, Oedipus falls from kingship to blindness and exile. Drama’s other great genre, Comedy, is represented by the laughing actors’ mask. In Comedy the action is usually propelled by a problem or crisis of some sorts, but unlike tragedy it usually ends well. Lysistrata, written by Aristophanes, is a perfect example of classic Comedy. The farcical story line follows the title character, who rallies the women of Greece to withhold sex from their mates all in the good cause of ending war. At first glance these two genres would seem to have nothing in common with each other. Comedy entails laughter and good feelings while the audience will leave a Tragedy in tears. But the best of Comedy and the best of Tragedy will produce the same affect: catharsis. Catharsis is the purgation and purifying of the emotions, specifically fear or pity. (“Catharsis”) The plays that manage to produce catharsis in their audience are the ones that we return to time and time again. Although catharsis is one of the main objectives of Greek Tragedy (Jacobus 34), Comedy done well will shape and move its audience in the same way. These two classic genres use characters that are co...