In England, there is a place called the moors that is known to be bleak, barren, and savage. There is not much civilization, other than some vegetation, animals, and houses - all of which are miles apart. This deserted landscape allows for people to distance themselves from the rest of society, and creates for a dark and dreary setting. The play, The Moors, occurs in this place, and two of the main characters in the play -- Huldey and Mastiff (the family dog) -- seem to be the most distant from the rest of society, in both the play and the Providence College production of The Moors. The theme of isolation is very much present in this play by Jen Silverman through the language in the play, and through the use of lights, costumes, and placement …show more content…
of characters on stage in the production. Huldey is a main character in the play that completely embodies the theme of isolation, with both her actions and words. An item that she constantly carries around with her is her diary. She writes down all of her thoughts in this diary, and they are usually about how sad she is and how much she hates Agatha – all of which are extremely negative. Agatha is seen yelling at her because she is writing her diary before Emilie arrived, and not combing her hair, or brushing her teeth. When Agatha disregards that Huldey is working on her diary, she subsides and becomes sad (9). Huldey just wants someone to be interested in her and actually care what she is doing with her life. In the beginning of the play, she notes that her diary is private and sentimental to her. She tells people that her diary is very private only because she wants someone to actually ask her about it. She clearly wants someone to talk to about her feelings, which is also seen when she chooses to start reading her diary to Mastiff and to Marjory. They did not ask her to read the diary, she discreetly forced it upon them and offered to read it. She tells Emilie that “it will be lovely to have another person here, one that one might talk to, might sit by the fire on a lonely night and just – I might read you a page or two from my diary, if you very much wished it” (20). Emilie is not interested, which makes Huldey even more upset. At this point, her diary entries become very dark and twisted. Another aspect that effects Huldey’s isolation is when Marjory plants the idea of killing Agatha in Huldey’s mind. Huldey becomes seriously involved with all the actions surrounding the murder, and this is how her isolation manifests itself into Huldey becoming a murderer. She wants to write a ballad that she can perform to gain her fame and glory after the murder, and this is because she clearly “lacked loved as a child” (54). Her isolation started at a young age and has progressively increased, throughout the play. After she murders Agatha, she performs her ballad and then runs off, not to be heard of again in the play. Agatha’s murder was ultimately due to the manifestation of isolation that surrounded Huldey. Huldey’s isolation was also portrayed in the production of The Moors at Providence College. One of the most obvious displays of this isolation was in Scene 14 - Huldey’s ballad. She changes her outfit before the murder into a light pink, old-fashioned dress. She also wears white boots that are covered in bright red blood splatter. This costume change fully enhances the theme of her isolation because it adds a dramatic effect to the murder of Agatha. It helps to portray the aggression and pent up anger that Huldey has towards Agatha, who is somewhat the cause of her isolation. Agatha constantly treats Huldey as if she is worthless and never listens to what she has to say. The lighting in the production is another way this anger caused by Huldey’s isolation is portrayed. When Huldey sings her ballad, the lights shining on her are red and this color symbolizes anger and aggression. This adds a somewhat scary and eerie mood to the production and puts the full spotlight on Huldey. Her stage position while she performs the ballad is also essential to the theme of isolation. She sings the ballad in the front and center of the stage – making her the center of the production for once. She finally gets the attention she has wanted the whole production, but as soon as her ballad is over, she runs off the stage and is not seen again. She seems to finally break the theme of isolation while singing her ballad, but it overcomes her once again as soon as she finishes the song. The reality of her actions – killing her sister – come to life and this scares her off again. Another action of Huldey that relates to this idea of her removing herself from a place of isolation, is how she throws her gloves off, after she kills Agatha. This could symbolize her throwing away the isolation and anger that had been building up inside of her. The removal of the gloves symbolizes the removal of her isolation. When Huldey runs off stage, it shows that she is not yet ready to be an independent character that is free of isolation. As soon as she runs off, she realizes she’s still isolated, even though Agatha is gone. Overall, the theme of isolation is present in the production through the use of lights, costumes, and placement of Huldey. The theme of isolation is also portrayed in the family dog, Mastiff.
He is constantly being ignored by the family members in the house and not getting any attention, unlike most dogs. He finds a friend in the Moor-Hen and is quick to open up to her. He tells her that “nobody ever talks to me, and I never talk to anybody” (36). His isolation is the reason he becomes quickly attached to the Moor-Hen. She is the first person that he has a meaningful conversation with and he quickly becomes obsessive. His isolation is the reason that he latches onto her so quickly. He has never felt a feeling like the one he did when he opened up to the Moor-Hen and confided in her. He becomes scared of losing this feeling and becoming isolated again, so he becomes possessive of the Moor-Hen. When she talks about leaving him at the end of the play, he says that “I can feel you drifting away. I can feel a distance between us” (75). This is the reason he ends up killing her; he is afraid of feeling isolated from everyone again. This situation is similar to Huldey because both characters feel a sense of loneliness, and end up killing someone because of it. The Mastiff is afraid of being isolated again and kills the Moor-Hen so that she can’t leave him. In Huldey’s case, she ends up killing the cause of her isolation – Agatha. In the production, when the Mastiff walks back on the stage after killing the Moor-Hen, he is covered in blood and feathers. This change in costume allows the audience to infer what happened with the Moor-Hen and displays just how tragic an isolated character can
become. The theme of isolation is constantly portrayed in the play The Moors by Jen Silverman. The play’s language and the production’s costumes, lighting, and placement of the main characters on stage all help to enhance this theme. Clearly, it can be very deadly when it involves an unstable character – Huldey and the Mastiff. They let their angers and fears surrounding isolation overcome them and hurt others because of it. The roles have reversed because they do not want to be isolated again, so they hurt others in hopes of ending their isolation. The way people treat one another nowadays should be taken into more consideration, so that scenarios like the ones in The Moors, do not become a reality.
Standing completely frozen in the 19th century, Belle Isle, an estate that shelters the Grierson family in the novel represents a more traditional, yet tremendously odd, depiction of the familial unit. The household holds Grandmother Grierson, brothers Richard and James, and two African-American servants Johns and Maisie. The presence of these two servants clearly differentiates the residence from the modern day, illustrating a more peculiar, backwards way of thinking. The family chooses to shield themselves from the surrounding undead by pleading pure ignorance. Characters such as the Grandmother and Richard reside in fantasies of the old world, while also ...
The personal isolation and withdrawal from society of the character Tom is shown through the symbolism of his physical isolation on the beach in act 4, scene 2. Within this act Toms vulnerability is revealed with a tragic comedy when he tells Meg of his illness and attempts to persuade her to have sex with him. This vulnerability was previously unseen as Tom finally comes to the realisation of the severity of his illness and that he will not experience certain aspects and activities of life. Gow explores the power of nature by using the storm as the most significant turning point of this play and as a motif throughout. Through this scene it is established that nature is an important factor that influences Tom’s self-discovery. Tom’s realisation in this act links to Ed Sheeran’s ‘Castle on the Hill’ which takes on a bildungsroman approach as Sheeran gradually discovers the importance of the events he experienced while growing up such as “I was running from my brother and his friends/ And tasted the sweet perfume of the mountain grass as I rolled down”. A contrast between the play and song can be seen, as although both individuals have discovered the significance of life, the character of Tom realises he will never experience all that life has to offer whereas Ed reflects on his experiences and wishes to return and explore further. In the play ‘Away’ and the song ‘Castle on
Isolation is a state of being separation between persons or group, or a feeling being alone. There are different factors that contribute to someone feeling alone and isolated. An example of this would be when celebrities go into deep depression because they feel isolated from the whole world. They have all the material things they could ever want, but the one thing they want the most, they do not have. , which is happiness, which comes from satisfaction within oneself and being satisfied with what one has done in one's life. Feeling isolated does not necessarily mean a person is bad. Evidence in Shakespeare play Macbeth , demonstrates this quite clearly that MacBeth's isolation comes from guilt , over-ambition and greed.
The noticeable characteristic of the speaker in "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe is his stand-offishness. He cuts himself off from the outside world, not because the world itself is terrible but because of his inward problems. This seclusion can bring ugly internal demons to the surface. The complications resulting from isolation can include sadness, fear, despair, anger, insanity, self-torture, and feelings of entrapment. Each of these can be seen in "The Raven," manifested in the speaker of the poem.
The first words of the book convey a parrot that spoke “a language which nobody understood”, and Edna’s husband “had the privilege of quitting [the parrot] when [it] ceased to be entertaining” (11). In the same light, Edna speaks of and wishes for a life that nobody apprehends. Her husband also possesses the moral, objectifying liberty to quiet Edna when she did not provide leisure, as one can turn off a song once it grows into a tedious nuisance. A further exemplification comes about when Old Monsieur Farival, a man, “insisted upon having [a] bird. . . consigned to regions of darkness” due to its shrieking outside (42). As a repercussion, the parrot “offered no more interruption to the entertainment” (42). The recurrence of the parrot evolves Edna’s state of stagnance as a consequence of being put to a halt by others despite her endeavor of breaking free. Ultimately, as Edna edges out towards the water to her death, a bird is depicted with “a broken wing” and is “beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water” (159). This recurrence parallels the beaten bird to a suffering Edna. She has “despondency [that] came upon her there in the wakeful night” that never alleviates (159). Dejection is put to action when Edna wanders out into the water, “the shore. . . far behind her” (159). Motif of birds articulates her suicide by its association with
The setting used throughout the novel Wuthering Heights, helps to set the mood to describe the characters. We find two households separated by the cold, muddy, and barren moors, one by the name of Wuthering Heights, and the other Thrushcross Grange. Each house stands alone, in the mist of the dreary land, and the atmosphere creates a mood of isolation. These two places, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange differ greatly in appearance and mood. These differences reflect the universal conflict between storm and calm that Emily Bronte develops as the theme.
...h, but was now strangely cold, even though it remained equally desolate. Such a shift in the atmosphere alludes to the fact that Beauty had become the house’s warmth; she had become the Beast’s warmth and his life. With her departure from the manor, she had captured the warmth, and thereby it was analogous to slowly taking his life, and as the house got colder and colder, the beast became evidently nearer and nearer to death. Coincidentally, it is the lack of warmth, the coldness, which classifies one as a corpse, which additionally suggests that the Beast is about to reach the limits of his mortality.
In Shakespeare's famous play Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth's character to undergo a series of downward spirals into isolation. There are many factors that contribute to someone feeling alone or isolated. Isolation is often a state of being separated from others, or the feeling of being alone. Isolation is created by a person's actions or wrong doings, which is progressive in Macbeth's character. Macbeth demonstrates an increase of isolation throughout the play when he isolates his own thoughts, as he beings to make his own decisions, and when an entire nation, Scotland, turns against him.
As defined, isolation is when something or someone is alone or separated. One’s relationship with family and friends can determine how alone or “placed apart” one is. Relationships and isolation tie in together, as isolation is dependent on the relationship one has. In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Jane is a young girl who has been isolated in many ways. Jane is isolated from friends and family. A lot like jane, Holden from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden is also isolated. The main similarity between both Holden and Jane is them both being isolated. One of the many differences between the two is that Holden is isolated from both friends and family for the entire duration of the book; while, Jane is isolated from her family
"…Races condemned to 100 years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth." These powerful last words of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude ring true. The book demonstrates through many examples that human beings cannot exist in isolation. People must be interdependent in order for the race to survive.
The Vietnam War (1954-1975) was known to be the longest conflict in United States history, where over three million men and women were sent to Vietnam to fight for America's cause. The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories about the soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War and what each one of the soldiers carried throughout the war. Tim O'Brien explains how each one of the soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War handled the experience in a number of ways. In the novel, The Things They Carried, O'Brien uses the feeling of Isolation to explain the different responses of the soldiers during the war and how each soldier suffered to heal from the traumatic experiences of war.
People are defined and shaped by the choices they make; and those choices are heavily influenced by their surroundings, whether they be isolated or not. The characters in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, exhibits this kind of development. The novels follows the journey of the Buendía and the Aureliano family as they live out their lives in the isolated and timeless town of Macondo. Through heavy amounts of fantasy realism, the characters, as individuals, are faced with the choice to leave Macondo and return changed from the experience. In the secluded town, the families face the conflict of outside influences and adapting or eradicating the source of change. One Hundred Years of Solitude shows how surroundings affect a character through different forms of isolation.
There is no one to provide support for Billy –the only person who does is Mr Farthing. Billy loves Kes and she becomes part of his family. It is doubly cruel that Kes is killed by Jud, who should know how much the bird meant to Billy. Family life then is not always happy, but it’s possible to survive, yet it affects people’s behaviour and attitudes.
Maupassant built his characters through isolating them from others so that the focus is on the one character rather than several. In doing so he can show a more in depth analysis of their actions and the consequences that come with these actions. In “The Mad Woman,” the woman goes insane after the loss of her entire family and in the end she ends up dying for the loneliness and grief that has consumed her life for 15 years. In “Suicides,” the writer kills himself because he is alone and cannot deal with the idea that he has never truly accomplished anything throughout his life. In “The Horla,” the narrator is left alone is his house with only servants to keep him company and eventually he is consumed with this invisible being that is harassing
When Robinson Crusoe gets shipwrecked and stranded on a desolate island “I am cast upon a horrible desolate island void of all hope of recovery” p.91, in the Caribbean he first considers it a place of captivity holding him back from his dreams and wishes like a prison, but when he is finally able to leave it some twenty-eight years later to return home to England he yearns to return back to the island. Why? You may ask yourself, read on and I will answer that question. Crusoe grows to enjoy being the ruler of his own world, he also becomes antisocial, and starts to enjoy being alone. When he returns home to England he finds no one waiting for him, and he feels lost.