Drama Part 1 Essay Example for Free

Drama Part 1 Essay The piece of Drama we have created is called The Fear of the Unknown. We looked at various ways of interpreting the title before agreeing on a suitable theme. Our story covers the death of a character and studies the reactions of characters in different situations. The actual cause of death is left to the imagination and is never actually mentioned. This links in with the title we were given. I am going to compare The fear of the unknown with the play The Woman in Black by Susan Hill and adapted by Steven Mallatratt. I will also use the Crucible text by Arthur Miller and Blue Remembered Hills text. In the Woman in Black as the actor approaches the house a gobo is shown to show Eel marsh house in the background. The house seems large and foreboding. This helps create an air of suspense with the audience who already have heard about the woman in black. This happens again when the actor approaches the door to the playroom whilst the music plays. Similarly, the actors in The Fear of the unknown create tension whilst approaching the house by talking quietly and discuss the house in their ghost story. The curse of the Woman in Black is similar to the curse placed on the house where a girl died many years ago. Many other people tell the story of the woman in black. The actor isnt superstitious so ignores them. He is lucky to escape with his life. In the fear of the unknown Stacey warns Sadie about the curse in the house where the girl died, Sadie believes the story but then still goes in the house, and doesnt return. This could also be compared to in the Crucible where the suspicion of witchcraft underlies everything. In the beginning of the play many people didnt even have suspicion of witches. Though the idea there were witches living within a community ate away at the people until people died. Many innocent people ended up hanging for witchcraft. The imagination of characters in the play we performed added to the tension created. This occurred frequently during the piece, for example when Charlie and Sadie appear at the door to Staceys party Stacey looks Sadie up and down. Sadie is instantly terrified of Stacey even though this is normal behaviour in her characters case. The same thing happens in Blue Remembered Hills when the siren goes to signal that a prisoner of war has escaped. Every noise sounds like the war prisoner approaching them and all the children believe the prisoner of war would kill them. You can also compare it to the Crucible where everyone suspects everyone else to be witches, and everyone turns on everybody else causing more havoc. To some extent this also happens in The Woman in Black as the actor is met by suspicious and hostile reactions when he attends the ladies funeral. Also everybody in the village believes in The Woman in Black and her terrible curse, this means all the characters would be on edge. In conclusion, I think our drama performance went well, our preparation could have been better but we all had different school activities on, which made it hard to rehearse. Near to the end of our rehearsals we threw one member of our cast out. This put us at a disadvantage but meant we worked better as a group in the end as we were all striving for a common goal. Our original ideas included; Bullying and the consequences of bullying, Relationships, and problems that could never be solved. We decided to work on the events leading up to an unnecessary death.

My Antonia Essay: Role of Women -- My Antonia Essays

Role of   Women in My Antonia   The role of the women in My Antonia as the showcased laborers and workers in the new community does not, certainly, alleviate the questions of patriarchal influence offered in the discussions of gender. Certainly, the fact that à ntonia is deprived of the education she longs for and yet cannot have, because it is she who is responsible for her family's success--"'School is all right for little boys. I help make this land one good farm'" (94)--cannot be seen as entirely good, if we agree that "the value of education is among the greatest of all human values" (Woolf 45); and in spite of her protests to the contrary, the bitter recognition of exclusion brings à ntonia to tears. However, recognizing the women's relationship to the development of national culture does suggest some alternative readings to the conclusions often reached, even as à ntonia's sacrifice of her own education does not exclude the contribution she makes to American culture, as we shall see.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Recognition of nation-construction effects our reading of the play of gender in the text. One such instance is in the case of narrative authority, which has frequently been cited as Jim's patriarchal subsuming of à ntonia, as we have seen. While Jim appends the "my" to his transcription of à ntonia's history, however, it is worth reiterating that à ntonia is never, in fact, Jim's; rather, his possessive "My" reflects a failed attempt at possession, as his amorous advances were firmly rebuffed and as the adult à ntonia never seeks his assistance or support. At the same time, that the tale is proffered via an anonymous female narrator further undermines Jim's narrative authority, for his masculine presumption to speak for à ntonia undergoes... ...hts the unconstructedness of the American frontier and the central role of women in forging a community, and by extension in negotiating a fledgling national consciousness. Through the subversion of Jim Burden's narrative authority and a disrespect for gender delineations, Cather emphasizes the constructedness of patriarchal norms, highlighting their irrelevance to successful cultural consciousness. Finally, through à ntonia's final assumption of a nurturing role, she assumes not a passive feminine identification or a sudden retreat into traditional female roles. Rather, à ntonia becomes emblematic of the women who forged the frontier community in their own image, infusing it with their own ethnicities and resisting the hegemonizing impulse of the tangle of norms we now know as the American nation. Works Cited: Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Boston: Houghton, 1977.

Good Country People Essay

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story â€Å"Good Country People,† Hulga’s arrogance, bitterness, and rebelliousness contribute to her inability to get along with others. Her superior attitude and atheist bent combine to make Hulga a person with few redeeming qualities but an easy target for deception disguised behind a simple mind. It is Hulga’s arrogance towards other less educated than she, in the end, which prevents her from seeing through the fraud of a dishonest man. Hulga’s arrogance is displayed from the beginning of â€Å"Good Country People†. Her mother’s tenant family, the Freemans, have a pair of daughters. Although Glynese and Carramae are â€Å"two of the nicest girls she knew† (page 165) according to Mrs. Hopewell, Hulga refers them to by the derogatory nicknames of Glycerin and Caramel since she clearly thinks herself intellectually superior. Hulga has a doctorate degree from a university and often reminds her mother that were it not been for her heart problems â€Å"she would be far from these red hills and good country people† (page 168) which she considers far beneath her. In fact, Hulga wants nothing to do with her humble surroundings, declaring that she doesn’t like animals or things in nature or even young men, who blatantly display their general stupidity. O’Connor sets up this description of Hulga to foreshadow the character’s reaction when she meets Manley Pointer and â€Å"thinks of it as a great joke† (page 173) upon agreeing to meet him for a picnic. Mrs. Hopewell’s physical description of her daughter as â€Å"constant outrage†¦obliterated every expression from her face† (page 166) clearly demonstrates the effect of Hulga’s bitter attitude and she constantly reminds the girl her face would be much more attractive with a smile. While her mother feels obligated to care for the girl after the unfortunate accident which took her leg, Hulga has rescinded her belief in God and does not allow Mrs. Hopewell to keep a bible in the parlor. She is unrepentant and unrelenting in her bitterness. Hulga has lost so much of her life to this quality and the threat of her medical condition that she feels compelled to lie to Manley Pointer about her age, telling him she is 17 instead of the 32 years she’s actually lived. Hulga is rebellious against the society of which she disapproves as well as her own mother. She looks down on Mrs. Hopewell and her desire to find â€Å"good country people† (page 166) with which to associate. Impressed to walk the fields with her mother, Hulga manages to make it as uncomfortable as possible with â€Å"remarks†¦so ugly and her face so glum†. Hulga smugly responds that that she is merely being herself and this is what her mother gets for asking her to come along. Hulga feels triumphant in legally changing her name into one so ugly that â€Å"her mother had not been able to turn her dust into Joy† (page 167). She continues to rebel against convention, eagerly accompanying Manley Pointer for a rare opportunity to speak with him regarding what she feels are philosophical subjects. Of course it is this rebelliousness that allows him to take advantage of her. Hulga and her mean spirit, arrogance, bitterness and rebelliousness are the perfect combination to be brought down by a simple con man who need do nothing more than show a bit of interest in the reclusive girl. Through O’Connor’s characterization the author retells the moral of the fabled tortoise and hare and reminds the reader of the pitfalls of arrogance.

The Cause Of The Black Death In The Middle Ages - 924 Words

Picture a village near the trade route in Europe during the middle ages – a working class family is sharing a meal when a knock on the door interrupts and is greeted by a man covered in sores doing what was later called the dance of death. The visitor was taken in by the family and died in the night. When the children awoke the next morning, they felt feverish and would eventually wind up in the same predicament as their visitor. This sequence repeats itself as villages are eliminated to this curious sickness. What was the cause of this widespread death? The answer was simple: the Black Death. Transmitted mainly on trade routes by infected fleas, this sickness ravaged Europe for nearly a decade. In 1347, Europe was beginning to flourish†¦show more content†¦Villages would prepare mass graves once the plague reached their area, knowing that the loss would be devastating. As the death toll rose, the graves would grow higher, without enough time to cover the bodies b efore placing more on top. It is believed that there were not enough survivors in many villages to secure the graves of the dead (â€Å"The Black Death,† n.d.). During this time, Religion had a large cultural influence on Europe. Priests were summoned before medical care because God was thought to be the knower of all. Some Christians retaliated against other religions that they believe would have caused the outbreak, while others focused on prayer and holy rituals in hopes for a cure. When someone died of the plague, they were thought to have been rich in the new world (â€Å"Khan Academy,† n.d.). When those remedies began to show signs of fault, people began using their own remedies in hopes of healing. Home remedies ranged from drinking vinegar and water to essentially bleeding the patient out to rid them of the bacteria since it was in the blood. Once the plague started to spread, though, sanitation methods were introduced and those exhibiting symptoms were confined to isolation (â€Å"Cures for the Black Death,† 2015). The once booming economy of Europe took a steep downfall as the plague swept through the country. Newly established trade alliances were paused due to the plague victimizing the workers and suppliersShow MoreRelatedEssay on Disease and Treatment in the Middle Ages1231 Words   |  5 Pagesand Treatment in the Middle Ages The Middle Ages were tough times when it came to disease and medicine. There were numerous types of sickness and disease that flooded Europe during the Middle Ages. Not helping the situation, the medicinal knowledge of the people of Europe of the time was not up to par. Some of the diseases and illness that were running rampant during these times were pneumonia, leprosy, and the plague. 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