In order to effectively display a certain discontent with society, an author must have the ability to illustrate the specific flaws that exist within that mainstream society. In What the Butler Saw, Joe Orton does an excellent job in illustrating how abuse of authority can have a subversive effect on an individual’s personality. Throughout the play, Orton uses authority as a tool to illustrate how it has the ability to alter a patient’s personality and provoke madness through psychiatric practice. Regarding Sam Shepard’s True West, Shepard is able to illustrate the exchange of personality traits between two brothers. Comparatively, it is evident that both authors effectively display their discontent with mainstream society. However, Joe Orton is more effective in displaying his discontent because his play illustrates a greater degree of personality shifts that exists between the characters. In essence, both plays exhibit traits that do not belong in mainstream society. These traits include the exchange of personality between characters and identity confusion. However, each of these traits is driven by a social catalyst introduced by the authors to illustrate the evolution of the characters involved.
In What the Butler Saw, Joe Orton places a strong emphasis on authority and how it plays into the characters development. The perception of abused authority is central to his play since it gives him the opportunity to illustrate the influence it has on the characters and the level of madness it provokes. Being set in a psychiatric clinic, Orton is able to submit each character under different trials of authority and allow the readers to observe the effect it has on them. In Orton’s society, psychiatrists are viewed to possess absolu...
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...him hope of becoming more conventional. As a result, Lee quickly attempts to adopt his new identity as a screenwriter “I’m a screenwriter now! I’m legitimate” (37). However, Austin’s sense of identity is lost when Saul chooses Lee’s script instead. Austin is now forced to decide whether to establish a new identity or adopt his brother’s carefree outlook on life. Shepard shows his discontent with mainstream society by demonstrating that things are often not as they seem. In our society, reality can be complex and elusive.
In conclusion, both authors provide effective ways of displaying their discontent with mainstream society. However, Joe Orton does a more effective job at illustrating his discontent by introducing a greater degree of societal flaws that counter mainstream understanding. In essence, both authors provide themes that criticize societal conventions.
The characters address the audience; the fast movement from scene to scene juxtaposing past and present and prevents us from identifying with particular characters, forcing us to assess their points of view; there are few characters who fail to repel us, as they display truly human complexity and fallibility. That fallibility is usually associated with greed and a ruthless disregard for the needs of others. Emotional needs are rarely acknowledged by those most concerned with taking what they maintain is theirs, and this confusion of feeling and finance contributes to the play's ultimate bleak mood.
No society remains immobile, even if some human beings resist changes. The advances in technology and the emergence of new beliefs allow people to have a broader imagination. Thus, numerous new interpretations of ancient works, whether they are plays, folktales, or poems, permeate around the world. These renditions re-tell the original stories in contexts that adjust to modern world. What was regarded serious in the past becomes mockery nowadays. William Shakespeare, one of the greatest English play writers, has a profound influence upon different societies globally since the fifteenth century, for his plays inspire many contemporary artists to present new scopes reflecting their societies. Considered as one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, Macbeth has a completely disparate interpretation in the movie Scotland, PA, which translates the original play into a black comedy. A Scottish royal and general, Macbeth the protagonist undergoes a demonic transformation in personality, in which he unethically takes the crown by murdering numerous characters. The director of the movie alters the plot while maintaining the basic semblance of power, ambition, and masculinity from Shakespeare’s work. In the movie, the alteration of the process Macbeth usurps the power of Duncan, including his internal and external incentives, gives the audience a fresh perspective on one of the English classical plays.
In this essay I will be comparing two playwrights, A Raisin in the Sun and A Doll’s House, to one another. I will also compare the two to modern time and talk about whether or not over time our society has changed any. Each of these plays has a very interesting story line based in two very different time eras. Even though there is an 80 year time gap the two share similar problems and morals, things you could even find now in the year of 2016. In the following paragraphs I will go over the power of time and what we as a society have done to make a change.
In the article, “‘Young Goodman Brown’ and the Psychology of Projection”, Michael Tritt critically analyzes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” to construct the process of how Hawthorne regards Goodman Brown’s behavior. Tritt examines the phenomenon of projection in psychology and believes that “Brown’s compulsive condemnation of others, along with his consistent denial of his own culpability, illustrates a classically defined case of projection” (116). He defines projection as an unconscious process when a person projects their own traits or desires onto other people, thus representing a false perception on whom the projection is made.
Throughout a lifetime, one can run through many different personalities that transform constantly due to experience and growing maturity, whether he or she becomes the quiet, brooding type, or tries out being the wild, party maniac. Richard Yates examines acting and role-playing—recurring themes throughout the ages—in his fictional novel Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living miserably in suburbia, experience relationship difficulties as their desire to escape grows. Despite their search for something different, the couple’s lack of communication causes their planned move to Europe to fall through. Frank and April Wheeler play roles not only in their individual searches for identity, but also in their search for a healthy couple identity; however, the more the Wheelers hide behind their desired roles, the more they lose sense of their true selves as individuals and as a pair.
The purpose of any text is to convey the criticisms of society, with V for Vendetta and Animal Farm being chief examples of this statement. Through their use of allusion, symbolism and representation, they portray many of society's flaws and imperfections. Such an imperfection includes the illustration of how totalitarian governments abuse the power they have acquired for their own gain, harming the people they are sworn to serve and protect. Through this abusive self-gaining government, we all are liable to become victims of consumer culture caused by the blind obedience to advertising and propaganda, being unable to form or voice an opinion of our own. But this lack of opinion can be at fault because of our own apathy, the ignorance and slothfulness that is contributed to the role we play in our society and the importance of that role's ability to motivate and inspire change.
Societies standards are what everyone wants to fit into it is the norms that are used as a guide to living life. The grandmother and the misfit in O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” follow the way of social values, thoughts, and way society sees one another closely in 1953. Both the grandmother and the misfit are different in many ways, but have one common value of society’s views are important to them. The way society views and judges people causes both the misfit and the grandmother to act differently but subtly makes them more alike than either of them could tell. The shared value of society’s point of view on a human being can explain both characters views, behaviors, and actions because of how heavily it weighed on the grandma and
Through the actions of the male hegemony and the mother figure, both plays show the different perspectives both sexes have towards homosexuality. The patriarchal figures, show an intolerant and abusive perspective whereas the mother figures show a more understanding way of coping with the identities of their sons. By seeing the reactions of both males and females, it is to say that the maternal figures of the play show a more comprehensive attitude towards the struggles that the male protagonist undergo. Both plays are related to today´s society, because there are still families in which homosexuality is not accepted. People are still
...l human character. Writers of American literature have many different opinions on the society. In order for readers to understand an author’s view on the society, they must look at many different aspects including the writer’s life and the time period in which the work was written. Though writers have different theories about the society, they express their philosophies into their work. The town who seem horribly uncivilized, where a son stones his mother, yet they can easily be compared to today's society.
changing attitudes toward life and the other characters in the play, particularly the women; and his reflection on the
Though its primary function is usually plot driven--as a source of humor and a means to effect changes in characters through disguise and deception—cross dressing is also a sociological motif involving gendered play. My earlier essay on the use of the motif in Shakespeare's plays pointed out that cross dressing has been discussed as a symptom of "a radical discontinuity in the meaning of the family" (Belsey 178), as cul-tural anxiety over the destabilization of the social hierarchy (Baker, Howard, Garber), as the means for a woman to be assertive without arousing hostility (Claiborne Park), and as homoerotic arousal (Jardine). This variety of interpretations suggests the multivoiced character of the motif, but before approaching the subject of this essay, three clarifica- tions are necessary at the outset.
The continuum of society’s inequality towards its citizens has been long perceived. The notion of equality that spurs from within peoples’ hearts will surely lead to disappointment, for humanity’s negativities alter an individuals composition. Society, a mental concept, has not only discriminated against its occupants but instilled alienation as well, which leads to a sense of incompletion. In his novel, Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro displays the ongoing struggles of inequality that are present in society. This message is strengthened through the representation of an array of humane elements such as acceptance, hope, love, aspirations, freedom of choice, and societal pressures. Kazuo Ishiguro incorporates narrative conventions to convey the negativities of humanity and its respected society through the portrayal of the truth: Humanity’s barriers blocking one’s fully realized composition leads to lack of fulfillment, from a range of literary theory.
You might think you know the objectives of a person until you see the deceitful tactics they use to get what they want. In the play written in 1623, the main character is an ambitious and powerful character who murders, and betrays anyone to get what he desires. Through the beliefs of prophecies and the manipulation of his fellow wife, he goes down a dark road of murder, betrayal and impurity in order to achieve and maintain kingship. In the other literature, the main character lives an average life in a dystopian society where his own thoughts are not even private. He goes through various secretive scenarios to achieve his goal which is to end the corrupt reign of the current political party. Both characters are well developed characters who
Living in the world of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth would not be easy. It is a world filled with deception, scrutiny, and pure evil. The characters in Shakespeare’s play use many tools to deceive, gain power, or even kill. A main “tool” used by these characters is gender. Gender is out of order throughout the play as characters take on qualities that are “out of the norm” for a man or woman. Shakespeare clearly gave his characters this complexity to show the tragedy that ensues when one gender takes on the characteristics of the other.
We’ve gone over many sociological concepts in class, but the three that I believe apply the most to this film are socialization, deviance, and resocialization. “What sort of world is it at