Review of Frank McGuinesss adaptation Essay Example for Free

Review of Frank McGuinesss adaptation Essay On the 7th October, my Drama group and I went to see the Greek tragedy â€Å"Electra† at The Old Vic Theatre in London, adapted by Frank McGuiness. It was directed by Ian Rickson and starred Kirstin Scott Thomas who plays the lead role of Electra. This play follows Electra throughout all the different stages of grief she goes through following the murder of her father Agamemnon. Unwilling to forgive and consumed by a desire for revenge, her anger builds; on the return of her brother Orestes, Electra’s wrath then explodes without mercy, leading to a bloody and terrifying conclusion. Within this play there are strong elements of grief, addiction and an intense need for restitution. Electra is filled with loss from the pathological, addictive grieving over her father who was murdered many year before hand, by her mother and step-father, which traumatic aftershock has left Electra withered and motionless as well as in need of revenge as a sort of compensation for the loss of her father, to the fresh grief over her brother. The set of the play is extremely minimalistic, with small feature which make up the arena; a tap, a fire pit, a tree and two pillar with a door in between them are featured on the stage, and I believe these component are symbolic of the four element, fire, earth, water and air. The tree however is barren and the branches are cut off before their time. This is representative of Electra’s father, Agamemnon as he was murdered but also because his family line is no more, he can no longer have any more children to pass on his name. The door is old and decaying which represents Electra’s family as its slowly falling apart, however it also establishes a huge divide between the inside and outside, essentially creating two separate worlds. These two worlds represent places of oppression. The characters behave appropriately within the inside world as well as by the unspoken rule of the place. The outside is an area where the characters reveal their true colours, nevertheless at the end of the play the two worlds collide. The stage itself is in the round, meaning audience members are able to see each other’s reactions, this is effective as it adds a degree of intimacy to the play, but also because the audience is able to see the play but more importantly the characters from every angle creating a sense of vulnerability, as everything is exposed to the viewer’s eyes. Electra abandons the regal clothes bestowed to her by her mother and completely neglects herself. She is first presented in a ragged, grey dress, held together by a leather belts which eventually she takes off, representing the release of the pent up anger, which she has held on to for so long. She is constantly fiddling with her dress and putting it in between her legs, revealing a more immature nature but also that she’s ashamed of what makes her female. During the time that this play was set, women were constantly oppressed and were seen as unable figures, for example Electra wishes both her step father and mother dead. Electra lacks the capacity to do so, as she is restricted by her gender, which is shown at the end, as despite all of Electra’s defiant speeches, ultimately her brother Orestes is the one who kills both their mother and step father. She also appears shoeless which suggest that she has freed herself from the class system, as an individual without shoes is normally associated with the lower class, however she comes from nobility, which previously was one of the elements that oppressed her, also she is presented with wild hair illuminating a feral nature. Opposingly Electra’s mother Clytemnestra is presented in regal clothing, and is always composed, she tends to move in line rather than curves which Electra moves in. When Electra confronts hers mother, although she holds herself in a strong position, she can never look her mother, which suggest a strong hatred towards her mother. She cannot even follow the general etiquette that one gives another when conversing, controversially it could also mean that she is still bound by her daughter status, as although she’s disowned her mother, she cannot face her as an equal. The actress Kirstin Scott Thomas really emphasizes how the situation has trapped Electra in a terrible stilted adolescence. Her defined features shining with hungry, immature naivety, she moves about in her grey shift like the ghost of someone whose life was been allowed to waste away, permanently on hold. She tortures the audience in a manner of a teenager, through her defiant authoritarianism, serving the audience as a reminder of what is lost in middle-aged compromises, for example the naivety of youth. And yet, there is not an ounce of nostalgia in her performance. When she is finally reunited with her brother Orestes she gives way to an unbound joy, as if all her issues are now resolved. Far from their being any hints of incestuous affection in this encounter between these long-lost siblings, Scott Thomass Electra presses her nose to parts of his body and snuffles up his smell like a wild animal trying to get its bearings. This and her rapid U-turn into optimism brings a deliberate comical note to the gathering doom. In conclusion, the overall production was impressive, from Scott Thomas’s indulgently neurotic performance, which give us a first impression of an independent women who sets herself free from the previous ties and status which has oppressed her for so long from speaking up about her father’s death, however Scott Thomas slowly reveals to the audience that Electra has been maddened by grief for so long, it has trapped in an disillusioned adolescence, to the in the round stage which enables the audience to emphasis with Electra, as it adds a degree of vulnerability, as everyone is visible from every angle you look at them, from the play to the surrounding audience.

Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird - Faults with Characters, Plot, and

The Flaws of To Kill a Mockingbird    Is it possible to judge literary classics to have failings or are they beyond contemporary measurements? As perfection is not attainable in any media, "classics" such as To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee, can be found to have many instances of fault and flaw. A great novel should ease the reader into learning the story's characters and histories. It should include a plot that keeps the reader up all night wanting to read more. And it should also include a theme that remains clear and focused; to reach out to a reader without being encumbered. However this is not the case with To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird has faults with its characters, plot, and overall theme. The introduction of both the characters and their histories are flawed. The novel hastily presents a great number of characters within a short amount of written space; causing the reader trouble when trying to differentiate between them. With a few dozen individuals taking part in the goings on in the story arc, one finds oneself constantly backtracking through the story to find previous references and descriptions of the characters to remember who they are. What is worse is the fact that many of the names of said persons mentioned early in the story make no appearance at all later on in the work. "...but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb county a name synonymous with jackass...John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father" (Lee 5). "Jem gave Dill the general attitudes of the more prominent figures: Mr. Tensaw Jones voted the straight Prohibition ticket; Miss Emily Davis dipped snuff in private; Mr. Byron Waller could play the violin..." (Lee 159). This leads t... ...un in his hand" (Lee 112). This lesson or theme is one of several that the children learn in the story, this particular one being from the incident with Mrs. Dubose. The majority of the novel makes use these sub arcs and lessons to add meat the novel. But instead dilutes the true them of the book, and the reason for which is was made. In conclusion, one finds that because of problems found within the characters, plot, and theme of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, that this piece of classical literature is not perfect. Clearly by realizing its faults one can see that even a well-known and loved book is often no better than any of the mediocre novels of today. Classical works can indeed be judged, and many are far from perfect. Work Cited: Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird. (New York, N.Y.; Warner Books, Inc., 1982) 3-5, 99, 112, 159, 164, 247.

Honor Thy Father and Mother: an Essay Concerning the Condition of Elderly Care in the United States Essay

In the world we live in, we grow up and get older. It’s a sad and simple fact that we can’t be young forever. When we are growing up, we are cared for by our parents, relatives, and many more people. They care for us because at that point in our lives, we didn’t know how to take care of ourselves. As we grew older we learned how to care for ourselves and no longer necessarily needed the help of those other people. There comes a point in our aging process that we begin to forget how to care for ourselves or lose the means to do it alone. Usually what will happen is the family that you have left will either hire someone to care for you in your own home or move you to a nursing facility. Jean Marcusson is an 88 year old woman. She has three kids (one of which is my mother). In May of 2013 she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Shortly after it became apparent that she wasn’t able to care for herself in her own home. She was having trouble rememberin g who people were, where she was, and sometime she would forget what she was doing. There were instances where she turned on the stove to boil water for tea, but forgot to put water in the kettle. Abother, when she attended my graduation she didn’t know whose graduation it was. It’s tough for her family to help her when they all have their own lives to lead. Her daughters and son have spent a lot of their time this summer taking care of her, but it is growing old. After a month of taking care of her for a month in her home, the doctors decided that she needed to be put in a rehab center. Immediately after that she was moved into the John Knox Rehab Facility. She was confused, nothing seemed right to her. Her first thought was that she was in a hotel. At that point we began to realize that she was suffering from dementia. She couldn’t tell the difference between her children or grandchildren. She couldn’t remember whether or not her husband was alive or where she lived before arriving at the rehab facility. A few weeks into her stay at John Knox, Jean came down with very serious pneumonia. The doctors decided to move her back to Lee’s Summit Medical Center. Speculation led doctors to believe that she caught it at the rehab center. Once she got better, they moved her back into the facility. She seemed to be doing well, until there was a day when she was completely dehydrated and wouldn’t leave her bed. At first they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. My mom was sitting with her that night and found some pills on the floor. It became apparent that when the nurse brought her pills to her in the morning that she would throw them on the floor once the nurse left the room. The whole episode left her family very upset with the quality of care she was receiving. Another incident was when she decided to go to the restroom without alerting a nurse and fell on her way there. Being old and fragile, she bruised very easily and this fall left the right side of her face blackened . The condition she was in at the rehab center left us to wonder how she could ever live by herself at her home again. Insurance only covered her staying in the rehab center until the end of August. For her to live in her home again, we would have to hire full time nurses that would be there 24/7 to look after her. That’s something that just won’t fly for her, plus it’s expensive. For a nurse to be at her house caring for her eight hours a day, it would cost $5,000 a month. So you can imagine how much 24 hours a day would cost. In my opinion, the rehab center didn’t help Jean at all. I would say it made her worse. Her anxiety developed when they made her leave her home and her dementia got much worse from there. In the year 2000, two thousand nursing homes were studied. The findings reported that 44% said they had been abused. 95% said they had been neglected or had seen another resident be neglected. The National Center of Elder Abuse (NCEA) shows the majority of elderly abuse is physically, resident to resident, or psychological. Nearly 1 in 3 nursing homes have been cited for violating national standards for treatment of the elderly. Over 50% of nursing home staff has admitted to mistreating older patients through violence, mental abuse, and neglect, two thirds of those incidents involved neglect. A survey of Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA) found that 17% of CNAs had pushed or grabbed a nursing home resident, 51% had reported yelling at a resident, and 23% had sworn at residents. A U.S. GAO report to Congress states â€Å"Our work shows that nursing home residents need both stronger and more immediate protections. More should be done to protect nursing home residents.† Another issue I would like to discuss is abuse of the elderly by family or friends. There are some families in this world who have older people in their families who can no longer take care of themselves; to the family these people are vulnerable. The family will begin to care for the elderly person and expect compensation of some sort. Many drug abusers look to take money from the parents or grandparents and are the most likely to abuse a relative. 66% of elderly abuse cases are caused by adult children or spouses. 42% of murder victims over the age of 60 were murdered by their own o ffspring. While we can all agree that abuse of the elderly is a despicable act. It is possible to slightly justify the actions of the abusers. Elderly people aren’t the most enjoyable people to take care of. I can provide a small testimony to that as I work in fast food and I am often given a lot of crap from elderly customers. Honestly, there is no good way to justify elderly abuse, while the actions of the abusers may seem justifiable to them, they aren’t. You can’t justify abusing anyone, but I understand that the abuser had a reason to do what they did that may have seemed right to them. Jean Marcusson’s case is different though, the things she dealt with at John Knox might not have been on purpose. Even if they were, there is nothing we can do to prove it and it would be a waste of time to try. Ensuring that the people that made those mistakes are punished won’t make Jean any better. It severely disturbs me that a person can be okay with hurting a person, especially an elderly one. It amazes me that our parents or other relatives raise us and teach us how to live. Yet when they become old and need our help some refuse because they think that you shouldn’t rely on other people to take care of you. What would have happened had our parents just left us to fend for ourselves and learn the ropes of surviving in this world. We would probably be dead or much different than we are now, that is something I don’t want to imagine. Take care of the elderly as if you were in their position and wanted someone to take care of you. You’ll probably be in that position someday and expect someone to be there to help you.

Examples Of Alienation In Voltaires Candide - 1928 Words

The term alienation refers to the isolation of one’s self from a belonging society. When a person is alienated they no longer feel as if they belong or have the same views as the group or society they live in. How does one become alienated from something that they once belonged to? This is a question many have discussed throughout history. In Voltaire’s book Candide, Marx’s book The Communist Manifesto, Hoffer’s The True Believer, and Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized, all these authors address man’s alienation in modern society and come up with solutions for man’s alienation within each book. In Voltaire’s Candide, the main character within the book was raised within a wealthy family. Belonging to this class, Candide did not†¦show more content†¦However, what happens when the roles of the classes turn? This is Karl Marx predicts within his book The Communist Manifesto. The proletariats are the class consi dered to be the working class, right below the bourgeoise in terms of economic gain. Karl Marx discusses the number ratio between the two classes and discloses the fact that the proletariat outnumber the bourgeoise. Within the class is a sense of belonging, the bourgeoise live their lavish lives and have most of the say so when it comes to power. Most laws and regulations work in the favor of the bourgeoise class, while the working proletariat class is the class of struggle. This is where it ties into man’s self-alienation. Marx’s idea that the working man has alienated himself from humanity by becoming a machine of society, no longer being able to think for himself but rather only thinking of survival and mass production. By focusing on production for the bourgeoise, man is unable to relate to himself or others around him. He is alienated in the fact that he no longer belongs to a community but more so to a factory. This is beneficial to the bourgeoise becaus e they would not have to fear the alliance of the workers against them if each worker felt isolated from one another. Karl Marx describes within his book the overview idea of the working man as a tool for production, a machine himself, isolatedShow MoreRelatedAn Analysis of Candide Story by Voltaire1347 Words   |  6 PagesVoltaire â€Å"Candide or Optimism† was written in the enlightenment era. Voltaire story is published in The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Voltaire’s character, Pangolss, is a philosopher who teaches about God morals. Pangolss is also a mentor to Candide, who is the main character of the novel. Candide has a good heart but is also feel s very hopeless in life. Pangloss takes Candide under his wing and teaches him that â€Å"best of all possible worlds.† The enlightenment movement is seenRead MoreCharacter Analysis: Voltaires Candide1827 Words   |  8 PagesEnlightenment poem â€Å"Candide† translated into Romanti cism Voltaire’s â€Å"Candide or Optimism† was written in the enlightenment era. Voltaire’s story is published in The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Voltaire’s character Pangloss is a philosophy who taught about the all-powerful God, who created the world. Pangloss indicated the world must belong to God, for he was the only divine creator. Pangolss was also a mentor to Candide, who was the main character in the novel. Candide had a good