Mother Of Tom And Laura example essay topic

Children are the victims of all ages and eras. They are sensitive and fragile, as they always need the adults' advice, care and love. However, through this age of materialism people forget their beloved children because they are either dreaming of money or fame. Therefore, we always realize that the children are trying to cling to their lives alone. Several people have had the dream to correct the sins and errors of the human society.

Hamlet Prince of Denmark, a Shakespearean tragedy, tells the story of a young man, by the name of Hamlet, who gained the knowledge of a terrible incident that his kingdom had suffered. Hamlet is a victim of his own humanity. The decisions he must make, make him human, and his indecisiveness makes him a man. Hamlet was a victim and a hero within his kingdom. He had knowledge of the vicious deception brought upon by his uncle, and he was the only person capable of correcting or at least trying to justify the death of his father. He was the only child of his parents, however, his father's ghost asked Hamlet to avenge his death, and Hamlet's procrastination to do so adds to his humanity.

"The play dramatizes the perpetual struggle to which all civilization that is genuine is doomed" (Alexander 184). Hamlet reconciles his mother's hasty actions after the death of his father in lines one hundred thirty-seven through one hundred fifty-seven (Hamlet Prince 71). He begins with, "But not two months dead! -- Nay, not so much, not two", which clearly shows disgust in the hastiness of the marriage between his mother and his uncle. Hamlet is considered as Shakespearean victim, Hamlet is a complex story of revenge, the lack of love, and the "madness" of Hamlet. Hamlet is presented by Shakespeare as the ideal man.

Hamlet is what every man should be and as such an extreme, he is also presented with an extreme situation. "He is a superman among men" (G.W. Knight 38). As for The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), the idea conveyed in this play is that of image versus reality. The main theme of this play is about a frustrated family who are deserted by the father and each character escapes his / her reality in a different way.

Amanda Wingfield, she is the mother of Tom and Laura and often digresses back to memories of her former days on the southern plantation farm and her night with 17 gentleman callers. Laura, she is the crippled and very shy daughter of Amanda who keeps her hard pressed to finding a husband. Tom is also pressed by his mother to find his sister a gentleman caller, and to keep the job at the shoe factory to support the family. Jim O'Connor is a friend of Tom from the factory who Tom invites to dinner and Amanda treats as Laura's first gentleman caller.

"On those occasions they call me - Ell Diablo! Oh, I could tell you things to make you sleepless! My enemies plan to dynamite this place. They " re going to blow us all sky-high some night! I'll be glad, very happy, and so will you! You " ll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers!" Tom says this to Amanda in a fit of rage.

Laura has her own imaginary reality through her glass menagerie her private world, and the breaking of it. The unicorn is Laura's singularity, her return to reality, and her return to her retreat back into her world... Another philosophy is that of escape. Tom tries to escape, and eventually does in the footsteps of his father. Laura is not seeking as hard to escape as Tom, although it would do her some good to escape her world and Amanda's. She comes close with Jim, but is devastated and regresses back into her world, probably deeper than she was before.

In order to characterize Antigone as a heroine, it is important to study Antigone's early childhood, which displays the origins of the characteristics found in her that make her a feminist. In Oedipus of Colon us, Sophocles illustrates these qualities that Antigone possesses. During the first twenty years of her life, Antigone spends her time secluded from society with her blind, exiled father, Oedipus. Sophocles sums up her childhood in the following soliloquy by Oedipus:" Since her childhood ended and her body gained its power, has wandered ever with me, an old man's governess; often in the wild forest without shoes, and hungry, beaten by many rains tired by the sun; yet she rejected the sweet life of home so that her father should have sustenance" (Fitzgerald 104). Because she is secluded, Antigone never has to take her place in society as a woman.

Without a female role model to show her how a woman is supposed to act, there is no one to raise her as a woman. She spends her days taking care of her blind father and leading him. She is his eyes and thus sees through the eyes of a male. She does not see the barriers that faced most women of the time. A sort of role reversal takes place between her and her father. She takes the position of the father and head of the family while her blind, helpless father acts as the child dependent upon Antigone for survival.

She is in charge of making the decisions, caring for him, and being his shoulder as well as his eyes. In leading him and caring for him, she develops herself into a much stronger woman than the women of her society, becoming strong both mentally and physically. It is during this time in her life that Sophocles develops Antigone's most important trait, her strong will. Antigone uses the characteristics and qualities that have developed inside of her through the years towards fighting for that which she believes.

When the king denies her brother a proper burial and makes it illegal for anyone to bury him in Sophocles' Antigone, Antigone decides it is up to her to take justice into her own hands and give him a proper burial. Ibsen writes typical of the ways that the characters might talk in relation to their position and their relationship with each other. Nora, committed forgery, not to save her husband's life, but to redecorate her house. Soul-struggles.

Oppressed and bewildered by belief in authority, she loses her faith in her own moral right and ability to bring up her children. Bitterness. A mother in the society of to-day, like certain insects, (ought to) go away and die when she has done her duty towards the continuance of the species. Love of life, of home, of husband and children and kin. Now and then a womanlike shaking off of cares. Then a sudden return of apprehension and dread.

She must bear it all alone. The catastrophe approaches, inexorably, inevitably. Despair, struggle, and disaster. The children: Nora plays with her children and treats them like dolls. "NORA: Never see him again. Never.

Never. Never. Never see the children again. Them too. Never. Never.

Oh - the icy black water! Oh - that bottomless - that -! Oh, if only it were all over! Now he's got it - he's reading it.

Oh, no, no! Not yet! Goodbye, Torvald! Goodbye, my darlings".

Nora says this to herself when Torvald had left to his study to read the mail. The children are always the ones who pay the price of the adults' mistakes. M. Butterfly draws attention to the issue of western stereotyping of Asia, Hwang attacks western stereotypes by re figuring the well-known Madam a Butterfly theme. Using Brechtian devices that place the viewer in a position to critically evaluate the representations in his play, Hwang hopes to break the century-old butterfly myth of Asian submissiveness to western dominance. M. Butterfly is originally written to be performed and not read, Hwang uses the narrator to describe the stage for the reader. Therefore, most of the narrator's comments are related to how the characters move on stage, and how the stage itself looks like; "They start to walk about the stage. It is a summer night on the Beijing streets.

Sounds of the city play on the house speakers" (Hwang 21). Hwang's technique in M. Butterfly, the narrator is trying to be as objective and concise as possible; "Lights fade up to reveal Rene Gallimard, 65, in a prison cell. He wears a comfortable bathrobe, and looks old and tired. The sparsely furnished cell contains a wooden crate upon which sits a hot plate with a kettle, and a portable recorder" (Hwang 1). The only two describing words in this presentation of Gallimard and his cell are "comfortable" and "sparsely". different. The narrator in M. Butterfly does not have the role a database revealing new facts about the characters but to describe the stage and the characters' movements.

Once again, it is important not to interpret that as a weakness in Hwang's writing, but as another perspective on how to tell the reader about the secrets. Instead of doing it through the narrator, Hwang does it in a clever way through the conversation between characters: "Song: 'No... let me... keep my clothes... ' Gallimard: 'But... ' Song: 'Please... it all frightens me. I'm a modest Chinese girl' " (Hwang 40). This quote, when read again after we know how the plot ends, is an obvious hint about what is yet to come.

However, when read for the first time, the reader accepts Song's excuse that she is "a modest Chinese girl". However, Hwang leaves more to the reader to interpret by him- or herself; "Song, playing Butterfly, sings the lines from the opera in her own voice-which, though not classical, should be decent" (Hwang 15). "Decent" is in this case the narrator's opinion, and the word probably has many different meanings depending on who reads it. OEDIPUS:" Oh my piteous children, known, well known to me are the desires wherewith ye have come: well wot I that ye suffer all; yet, sufferers as ye are, there is not one of you whose suffering is as mine.

"To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born to him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his mother. So when in time a son was born the infant's feet were riveted together and he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd found the babe and tended him, and delivered him to another shepherd who took him to his master, the King or Corinth. Polypus being childless adopted the boy, who grew up believing that he was indeed the King's son. Afterwards doubting his parentage he inquired of the Delphic god and heard himself the weird declared before to Laius. Wherefore he fled from what he deemed his father's house and in his flight he encountered and unwillingly slew his father Laius.

Arriving at Thebes he answered the riddle of the Sphinx and the grateful Thebans made their deliverer king. So he reigned in the room of Laius, and espoused the widowed queen. Children were born to them and Thebes prospered under his rule, but again a grievous plague fell upon the city. Again the oracle was consulted and it bade them purge themselves of blood-guiltiness. Oedipus denounces the crime of which he is unaware, and undertakes to track out the criminal. Step by step it is brought home to him that he is the man.

The closing scene reveals Jocasta slain by her own hand and Oedipus blinded by his own act and praying for death or exile. Here the children conflict is Oedipus himself and his own children. Finally, we have to believe that the childhood of any person is the paintings of his character in the future. As a matter of fact, some children fall in the ocean of sins, others fall in the sea of distress and most of them feel frustrated. However, the lucky ones who find a real psychological care are very few.

In other words, the fulfilling of our children's needs must be our main target in life. If we are fortunate we might learn something about human nature from those dramatic plays we read in class.