Not Exactly the Typical Day or Night for an Ordinary Family

While continuing the exploration of Modernist Literature, the attribute of typical themes appears a great deal in the Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neil. The typical themes revolve around the character and behaviors of the mother, Mary Tyrone. Mary exemplifies “the loss of meaning and hope in the modern world and an exploration of how this loss may be faced.” (Some Attributes of Modernist Literature). She emerges as drifting away from reality a little more after each dose of her medicine she takes. Mary is no longer able to grip onto the purpose and meaning of her life. The morphine just strips her of her sanity and hopes in the living world surrounding her. The typical theme of maternal loss is exhibited by Mary throughout the story. She shuts out her loved ones including her husband and two sons. Mary also struggles with the absence of a real home. Her dedication to her husband has stranded Mary with no home foundation. The family has always been on the constant move. Mary has detached herself from the present and discovers comfort in the memories of her past, when she was a young, innocent schoolgirl.

When Mary consumes the medicine prescribed to her, her moods begin to change, and she fades away reminiscing about her younger years. As a school girl Mary boasts of being an exceptional pianist with a little promise in her future or so the nuns instilled her to think so. Her dreams to follow her passion for the piano or a career in the covenant are erased as soon as she falls in love with Mr. Tyrone on the set of one of his plays. Mary sacrifices everything to devote her life to her husband’s happiness. Her new lifestyle has been the complete opposite to what she has been accustomed to as a child. Mary has had to adapt to a new way of life without a sense of her own home. She describes it as one-night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains, leaving children, never having a home.” Edmund reveals his disgust for his fathers role play in the reason for why his mother is the way she is. He directly tells his dad that he has “dragged her around on the road, season after season, on one-night stands, with no one she could talk to, waiting night after night in dirty hotel rooms for you to come back with a bun on after the bars closed!” Edmund correlates the way his mother is as a result of his father’s selfish actions.

In the beginning Mary tried to be very discrete about her continuous addiction to the morphine. However as the story progresses, Mary became more open about her medication. She convinces herself and replays the thought of “I suffer from rheumatism in my hands and have to take medicine to kill the pain? Why should I be ashamed of that?” over and over in her head. Mary avoids the truth and satisfies the complexities of her suffering with the idea that she has an illness in her hands. Mary admits that the medicine “kills the pain. You go back until at last you are beyond reach. Only the past when you were happy is real.” Her escape from the pain of reality is through the medicine, she does not necessarily need.

As an individual Mary is just not all there. She weaves in and out of stages that the medicine drives her through. The ones closest to her are greatly impacted by their mother’s and wife’s dependency on a drug that ruins her self being. Edmund expresses that:

“The hardest thing to take is the blank wall she builds around her. Or it’s more like a bank of fog in which she hides and loses herself. Deliberately, that’s the hell of it! You know something in her does it deliberately – to get beyond our reach, to be rid of us, to forget we’re alive! It’s as if, in spite of loving us, she hates us!”

Her family recognizes the fact that she really isn’t the one to blame or the one responsible for her impairment. Once a person gets a hold of the poison, there is nothing to stop the cravings for more.

While handling their mother’s situation, the men in the house have been able to identify the effects of the drug on their mother. They are capable of reading her moods and her distance from reality. For example when Tyrone said, “When she gets to the stage where she gives the old crazy excuse about her hands, she’s gone far way from of us.” Mary had started to expose her deep inner feelings with out contemplating exactly what she was saying. She was fine with saying anything even if it is a horrible, crude remark.

Mary develops to be a more far off, depressed character than imaginable by the end of the story. Mary hints to thoughts of suicide. She mumbles to herself, “I hope some time, without meaning it, I will take an overdose. I never could do it deliberately the Blessed Virgin would never forgive me for.” Life doesn’t appear to be all that bad for Mary. She is spending time with her family in a summer house. Mary doesn’t seem to lead a very difficult life; except now that she has been introduced to morphine, she has to struggle with her reliance on a harmful drug.

The major attribute portrayed within the story is the existence of typical themes. The typical theme of maternal loss is evident as Mary abandons her motherly role towards her children. Mary gets so wrapped up in her memories of the past that she looses the sense of reality and responsibility of being a mother. Another typical theme was the sense of home that never existed. Mary and her family lacked the one essential aspect a family must have in order to stay together and that is a home of their own. Mary never had the opportunity to enjoy and cherish a house for her family. When Mary began to get worse and worse on the medication, her purpose for living vanished. Mary had become more concerned about her past than what the future had to bring her and her family. Mary Tyrone segregated herself from life in itself and was even willing to physically seperate herself from the world by overdosing on her medication.

“Desire Under the Elms”

The attribute most evident in “Desire Under the Elms” by Eugene O’Neil is the use of “typical themes.” The typical theme that is expressed in the play orbits around the idea of twisting the “traditional values of culture.” Many of the ill-fated actions that occur are beyond being normal. The series of unfortunate events puts a spin, a sense of interest and curiosity, and excitement into the readers mind. Some of the things that happen in “Desire Under the Elms” are inhumane and depressing. The typical themes that are so perverse tend to keep the reader captivated and more indulged into the story.

            Ephraim Cabot is a controlling, demanding, ugly man. He is seventy-five years old with a farm of his own. While Cabot is in command of the house, he works his sons on the farm like slaves. Cabot is a cruel, selfish, nasty man. As king of the house, Cabot decides to abandon the farm in search for another wife. He returns with Abbie who is younger than half his age. This can be viewed as going against traditional values of today’s culture. Most people don’t agree with a young lady marrying someone that could be old enough to be her father. The only reason such a pretty young women would choose to marry a disgusting man is if he has something to offer her once he is dead. Cabot’s most valuable possession is his farm, and Abbie sees the farm as striking it big. She wants the farm to be hers someday. In order for her to obtain her goal, she must satisfy his wishes for a son:

“Cabot: Ye been prayin’, Abbie?- fur a son? –t’ us?

Abbie: Ay—eh. (with a grim resolution) I want a son now.

Cabot: (excitedly clutching both of her hands in his” It’d be the blessin’ o’ God, Abbie—the blessin’ o’ God A’mighty on me—in my old age—in my lonesomeness! They hain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do fur ye then, Abbie. Ye’d hev on’y t’ ask it—anythin’ ye’d a mind t’!

Abbie: Would ye will the farm t’ me then—t’ me an’ it?

Cabot: I’d do anythin’ ye axed, I tell ye! I swar it! May I be everlastin’ damned t’ hell if I wuldn’t.”

           As time goes on and Abbie begins to get comfortable in the house, she starts to reach out to Eben, her stepson. At the same time Eben begins to admire his step mom as more than just a mother figure. Abbie is falling for Eben, and Eben is sharing the same feelings towards Abbie. Abbie and Eben are actually closer in age, so it makes the physical attraction a little more understandable. Although Abbie is supposed to act as a mother to Eben, she wants to be his lover as well:  

“Abbie: (both her arms around him—with wild passion) I’ll sing fur ye! I’ll die fur ye! (In spite of her overwhelming desire for him, there is a sincere maternal love in her manner and voice—a horribly frank mixture of lust and mother love.) Don’t cry, Eben! I’ll kiss ye pure, Eben—same ‘s if I was a Maw t’ ye—an’ ye kin kiss me back ‘s if yew was my son—my boy—sayin’ good-night t’me! Kiss me, Eben. (They kiss in restrained fashion. Then suddenly wild passion overcomes her. She kisses him lustfully again and again and he flings his arms about her and returns her kisses.) Don’t ye leave me, Eben! Can’t ye see it hain’t enuf—lovin’ ye like a Maw—can’t ye see it’s got t’ be that an’ more—much more—a hundred times more—fur me t’ be happy—fur yew t’ be happy?”

Eben expresses his love to Abbie when he says:

“Eben: (throws himself on his knees beside the sofa and grabs her in his arms—releasing all his pent-up passion) An’ love yew, Abbie!—now I kin say it! I been dyin’ fur want o’ ye—every hour since ye come! I love ye!”

            Abbie and Eben’s love keeps getting stronger and stronger. The relationship they are growing wouldn’t make sense to a traditionalist. If a step-mom is to enter her step-sons life, her relationship would strictly being maternal and not intimate like Eben and Abbie’s. Some time passes by and Eben gets Abbie pregnant, however Cabot believes the child is his. Abbie has the baby and withholds the secret from Cabot that the baby really is Eben’s baby.

Then one day when Eben and Cabot get into a little confrontation, Cabot spits out news to Eben concerning Abbie’s real feelings towards Eben that were true before they fell in love:  

“Cabot: Ha? Ye think ye kin git ‘round that someways, do ye? Waal, it’ll be her’n, too—Abbie’s—ye won’t git round her—she knows yer tricks—she’ll be too much fur ye—she wants the farm her’n—she was afeerd o’ ye—she told me ye was sneakin’ ‘round tryin’ t’ make t’ her t’ git her on yer side…ye…ye mad fool, ye!

After hearing what Cabot had to say, Eben’s feelings toward Abbie disappear. He has nothing but hate and disgust towards her. The first time Abbie and Eben unite after the fight, Eben utters his hate towards her and wishes she was dead. Abbie is confused and heartbroken. She is willing to do anything to prove her love to him. She kills the baby:

Abbie: I left the piller over his little face. Then he killed himself. He stopped breathin’.

Eben: He looked like me. He was mine, damn ye!

Abbie: I didn’t want t’ do it. I hated myself fur doin’ it. I loved him. He was so purty—dead spit’n’  image o’ yew. But I love yew more—an’ yew was goin’ away—far off whar I’d never see ye agen, never kiss ye, never feel ye pressed agin me agen—an’ ye said ye hated me fur havin’ him—ye said ye hated him an’ wished he was dead—ye said if it hadn’t been fur him comin’ it’d be the same’s afore between us.”

 The killing of a baby is horrible news in itself, but to know the murder was committed by the baby’s own mother makes it even worse. For someone to lack enough common sense to know that murdering a baby is wrong is wicked. O’Neil introduces such an immoral idea that would never be imagined by most people in a traditional culture. 

O’Neil suggests a world that is unpredictable in evil ways. This is the main idea of the “typical theme” present in “Desire Under the Elms.” Nothing is every perfect or close to being normal. Everything must be shocking and corrupt in some way.

 

 

 

The Influence of Light in the “Glass Menagerie”

The presence and absence of light appears to play a symbolic role in the “Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. The first scene starts off in the “dark, grim rear wall of the Wingfield tenement.” The tenement “is flanked on both sides by dark, narrow alleys which run into murky canyons of tangled clotheslines and garbage cans.” Tom is strolling in the alley at night all alone. The absence of light symbolizes his troubled, unhappy, unsuccessful lifestyle. He has abandoned his mother and sister and doesn’t have enough pride to return home. He has nothing in the lonely world surrounding him. Tom narrates one of his flashbacks of the older days living at home with his sister, Laura, and his mother.

As Tom introduces his memories of the past living at home, there is barely any light shining on the characters. The setting emerges as being softly lit up. The home has an uncomfortable, claustrophobic feel to it. This is a reflection of Tom’s feeling of being trapped without an escape to the real world. Also the tight, suffocating living quarters represents Laura’s desire to avoid the real world and her denial of a happy life outdoors. Laura leads a boring, tentative, simple life. She does not have any connection to the world outside the four walls closing her in.

When things don’t seem to be running as smoothly as Amanda had imagined, things begin to turn for the worst. At the dinner table, Laura refuses to attend dinner on account she is not feeling well. She finds comfort on the couch lying down by herself in the darkness while Jim, her guest, and her family begin to eat. Then the light completely fades away as Amanda and Jim start to enjoy themselves at the dinner table. Tom did not pay the month’s light bill, and the lights are turned off. The family is suddenly stripped of any access to light symbolically meaning the family can never experience a happy moment for a long period of time. Nothing ever goes right.

To accommodate for the loss of light, Amanda sets up a candle stick. She encourages Jim to take the candle over to Laura and talk to her while she enters the kitchen with Tom. Tom attempts to lift Laura’s spirits. The light brings the two closer together because Jim didn’t want to be the only one in the spot light. As he sets the candle down on the floor and finds a seat on the ground, he finds that he can’t see Laura to good. He tells her to come closer and join him on the floor:

 

Jim: I can’t hardly see you sitting way over there

Laura: I can-see you.

Jim: I know, but that’s not fair, I’m in the limelight.

        [Laura moves her pillow closer.]

        Good! Now I can see you! Comfortable?

Laura: Yes.

The light radiates the room as Laura and Jim begin to talk, reconnect, and reminisce of their high school years:

 

“Jim: Didn’t we have a class in something together?

Laura: Yes, we did.

Jim: What class was that?

Laura: It was-singing-chorus!

Jim: Aw!

Laura: I sat across the aisle from you in the Aud.

Jim: Aw.

Laura: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Jim: Now I remember-you always came in late.

Laura: Yes, it was so hard for me, getting upstairs. I had that brace on my leg-it clumped so loud!

Jim: I never heard any clumping.”

           Laura’s shyness melts away. Jim understands her in and out. He has a way of reading through her emotions. It is evident that the two share some sort of chemistry. Laura shares her glass menagerie with Jim. This is her precious collection of glass animals. When she shows Tom her favorite one, she tells him “Hold him over the light, he loves the light! You see how the light shines through him?” The light is capable of bringing out the best in one’s self and has the possibility to enhance one’s self as well. This goes to show light as a symbol of strength and confidence.

            Like candles the light can never last forever. At some point the flame must die down and this happens when Jim reveals his love and devotion for another woman. Jim had led Laura on the entire time he visited bringing Laura’s hopes up high. However he crushes her heart in the end and the light no longer shimmers when he leaves the house. Laura is left all alone in the darkness with her security walls partially diminished. She had the light around her when Jim was around. Laura was building her confidence and her smile was irresistible. Then she is pierced with Jim’s terrible news of his true love. Her walls crumble and the light escapes from her once again.

            Tom finishes his story by siting “for nowadays the world is lit by lightning!”. He is refering to the limitations of light in his sister and his mother’s world. The only light that they will witness will come from the outdoors on days when the weather is already bad. Lightning doesn’t portray happiness and the only light the ladies will be given is from the lightning. It is going to be a tough life for Laura and her mother.  

 

Typical Themes in Modern Literature

       The attribute I chose proposes thoughts that question the experiences people face in reality. People live a life with no direction an no god to believe in. They search for a lifetime to find a significance and purpose to their life. Another theme could be the loss of meaning and hope in the modern world. An individual or individuals no longer feels like there is any worthiness to his or her life and struggles to face with the obstacle. Traditional values of culture are twisted and do not have their traditional ways in modern literature.

A Streetcar Named Desire

            I don’t know if I am the only one that feels this way, but I have to say my favorite character is Blanche without hesitation. In my opinion Blanche suffers from post traumatic disorder. She exhibits many symptoms of someone suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder, and she has experience a horrific event to have caused the disorder. Blanche hears things that are not there. Blanche thinks she can hear the music that was playing right before the traumatic incident occurred. She has become an alcoholic, and she can not keep a strong relationship with anybody. This is why she mentions at the end how she has ”always relied on the kindness of strangers.”  As a young teenage girl in love, Blanche experiences a series of unfortunate events. When Blanche was only sixteen years old, she had married a boy name Alan. She adored Alan a great deal, and when she discovered her supposed soul-mate was gay, her life came crashing down. The man in her life was living a double life. She witnessed her husband in bed with a man, his best friend. Blanche was shocked, heartbroken, speechless, and crushed all at once. There were no words to describe her pain until the night she had drank heavily at the casino. Blanche looked Alan straight in the face and said he disgusted her. Those harsh words pierced Alan’s heart and as a result, he escaped from the dance floor and committed suicide. For the first time in her life Blanche had failed miserably. She felt responsible for Alan’s death.  And for the rest of her left she would never allow herself to fail again. This is why I believe she coped with Alan’s death the way she did. The intimacies in the hotels she had in the town of Laurel were her medicine to relieve herself from the suffering of her husband’s death. They took her mind off of Alan. Another method she used to deal with her suffering was to lie. Blanche at the end had been revealed as a liar. She tried to instill hope in her mind by believing Shep Hartley would one day come and save her. She needed her imagination to take her somewhere to help her from going completely off the edge. I do not agree with her actions nor do I think they are acceptable, but her background makes her story a little more understandable.      

              Stella frustrates me. She is a woman in an unsafe, unhealthy relationship. However she convinces herself by the persuasion and brainwashing of Stanley to be OK with her life style. If she is beaten by her drunken husband, life goes on like nothing happened just a few promises are made that are guaranteed to be broken.  Stella is way too passive. She does not recognize her harmful situation. She is unwilling to get out of a situation she does not want to get out of. As an observer she clearly needs to escape the tight grasp Stanley has around her. 

          Stanley is a selfish, controlling pig. All he worries about is having his needs being met and making sure he is satisfied. Stanley can not seem to tolerate Blanche, Stella’s only sister. He never gives her a chance from the first day she stepped into their New Orleans apartment. He accused her of being broke because she wasted her money on expensive items in Europe. He didn’t believe Blanche when she spoke of losing the house because there were no papers to back up the story. Stanley had no respect for her belongings when he rampaged through her suitcase trying to prove his uneducated theory correct. Stanley touched precious, valuable papers that Blanche had begged him not to touch. He is rude and despicable the way he treats women. He abuses his pregnant wife and thinks he can promise and buy his forgiveness from her. I do not care if a man is annihilated from alcohol, he does not gain the right to hit a women. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior. Stanley recognized Blanche’s weaknesses and took advantage of her. A man like him does not deserve such a sweet, innocent woman like Stella. Stanley has the typical man of the house attitude. His woman should go out of her way to please him and answer to all of his requests. Men like Stanley disgust me and for anyone to favor him is disappointing.

           I become troublesome when I hear others say Blanche does not have any say in what her little sister does in her life. She absolutely does. As a bigger sister Blanche’s role is to watch out, care, love, and help her younger siblings no matter how old they are. Just because they get older and live separate lives, her responsibilities do not change. Blanche witnesses her younger, pregnant sister getting hit by the man she is in love with and living with. If  you think Blanche has no say to stick up for Stella, then who else does. If Stella doesn’t have her head screwed on right, then who is going to wake her up and get her head straight. My answer is her big sister. Her last blood related relative who has known Stella since she was a little girl. Stella has every right to object to the treatment her sister faces when living at home with Stanley. Stanley is a manipulative, aggressive, threatening man and I am happy Blanche has the courage to stick up to him. Blanche offers her sister a plan to escape the abuse to join her to start a shop. There is nothing selfish about what Blanche is trying to do. She is providing Stella with a good opportunity to start her life over without Stanley as a burden on her shoulders. It is a positive new beginning for both of the women.

“The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

 As I try to grasp the concept of “The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I find that the major theme of the poem is about a man who is trying to reach out to other people but his conscience is always stopping him. The character is constantly questioning the realities of society and the actions of humans.  The man experiences living on the outside of the party all alone. The man isolates himself from other people and watches the others from a distance. He is a very smart man, almost to smart. He thinks he knows how other people are going to react to him before he even speaks out loud. He imagines them saying:

“With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                              
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]

He is scared of what they might say about him or what they might think of him. He is too shy and not willing to expand his comfort zone. The character is trapped with his thoughts. He perceives life in his own way. He mentions “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” The character struggles to believe that being sociable and commenting with other humans can lead to a normal, healthy, happy life that would be meaningful. 

“And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while”

           

The character still creates hesitation in his mind. He has little self confidence and does not build up enough courage to interact with others.

            ”To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”  

              The typical theme displays a man who has isolated himself from society and who finds himself stuck in a world alone. He imagines being in contact with mermaids but only for a short time until human voices ruins his experience:

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown              
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

          The man also creates his own fantasy world granting himself elite power in the world. He appoints himself an guide for the good Prince Hamlet. He portrays himself as being important and authoritative.

“Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse”

 This is an example of dramatic irony because it obvious that he is incapable of conversing with a fellow peer, yet he describes himself as advising the Prince on what to do.

Yodle leyhewho

Hello. Hi. How are you? I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m really fine. I’m Katie, and I am a pretty goofy girl. You can always find me laughing, and I love to make people laugh with me. I play three sports; basketball, softball, and soccer. Basketball is my favorite sport, and I am the captain of the girl’s varsity basketball team. Even with sports and school, I find time to hang out with my friends. Yup. Yup. That is me. Just a little me.

As I begin to research into Modern American Poetry, an attribute of Modernist Literature that appeals to me is:

“The appearance of various typical themes, including: question of the reality of experience itself; the search for a ground of meaning in a world without God; the critique of the traditional values of the culture; the loss of meaning and hope in the modern world and an exploration of how this loss may be faced.”

I find the questions asked in this element interesting. So there.