His title "Six Characters in Search of an Author" stressed the fact that the fourth wall between the audience and the actors was being broken down in the construct of the drama itself, not merely alluded to, as in a Shakespearean soliloquy or a 'play within a play device' and within a family at war traditional roles, like father/son, father/stepdaughter are broken down. Yet as revolutionary as he may seem, Pirandello's difficult family dynamics always recalls ancient Greece and Shakespeare as much as modernism and postmodernism, as in its invocation of the Orestes cycle where there is deep hate and alienation woven within the traditional family structure, the complex family dynamic of Oedipus, and the child-parent tensions of Hamlet. In the "Orestes" trilogy, to prove his own strength and honor his obligation to the men of Greece who wooed Helen, Agamemnon 'sends away' (to death) his own daughter, sacrificing her to the gods for a fair wind to Troy and earns the hatred of his wife Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra takes a lover and kills her first husband upon his return, and wins the hatred of her other daughter, Electra, and her son Orestes. Divorce and hatred are woven into the cycle, but in Pirandello, the infidelity is constructed, not by the gods, but by other humans using one another as puppeteers, in this case that of the woman's husband who urges his wife to transgress. Even the use of the 'play within a play' recalls "Hamlet," as do the angry and oedipal tensions between mother and son. There are also strong elements of the Italian commedia dell'arte in Pirandello's narrative, given its close...
Always, the complex and vague divides between family members has been present in unspoken tension -- does Oedipus give birth to daughters or sisters, is Hamlet the stepson of Claudius or his nephew -- and Pirandello takes these familial tensions, to some degree present in every reconstructed or dysfunctional family, and through the heightened nature of the stage, brings them into sharp relief. "Pirandello's presence on the stage serves the crucial purpose of insuring that his audience knows the stage for what it is: a stage. Putting himself there created a metaphor whose purpose was to draw the spectator's attention to the platform under his feet. Destruction of the spectator's 'belief' in the verisimilitude of stage event was the great innovation" of the play and through this deconstruction of belief in the family and the theater, simultaneously the viewer's own beliefs about fiction and about how a 'happy' family is created and recreated are challenged (Herman 98).. No one can leave the play entirely certain of whom or she is as a father, mother, sister, or brother.
Character Comparison Comparison: Revenge and its Motivators in Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights are two of the most significant literary works in history, both maintaining the ability to remain successful and relevant far beyond the years immediately following their respective publications. While each novel is exceedingly different from one another, with one focusing on the perils brought about by a man-made monster who seeks to
Its success might be called an 'anti-marketing' campaign given that it was done without careful marketing segmentation -- it was marketed to all consumers, with a unified image. Although it does not fit the conventional definitions of either service or product design, and in many ways seems to exist in undefined virtual space, it still possesses a loyal core of users. The goal of every branding campaign, Taylor suggests, is
It more appears that Hyde takes his own life simply to stay in control of it, and not for any particular moral reasons. 3. This quotation truly underscores the duality that is the principle concept behind the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. What is of particular interest regarding this quotation is the fact that this duality exists on myriad levels. The most eminent of these, of course,
Characters in American Fiction Two terms used that are to describe characters are static and dynamic, which mean rarely or never changing, and constantly changing, respectively. This paper provides an analysis of the characters of Sammy in the short story "A&P" by John Updike and Louise Mallard in the short story "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin to determine whether these characters are static or dynamic. Drawing on
searching for an example that follows Aristotle's principles for creating the perfect tragedy, we need look no further than William Shakespeare's play, Othello. According to Aristotle, a tragedy must possess certain characteristics. These include a plot that is easily remembered and structured to arouse pity and fear within the audience. Additionally, Aristotle writes, "Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the
character in Gilgamesh undertakes a journey which is more than a trip from one place to another. This kind of journey is a quest, a quest for self. Gilgamesh is trying to learn who he is and to understand his place in the world, and this is the quest he begins, a quest that takes him far and that takes a lot of time to complete. The physical journey
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