Author: sam beaver

Sam B.- How is it different pt. 1

Time-  The perception the characters have of time in the play is skewed.  Often they mistake a passage of time to be much longer than it actually was, or much shorter.  The audience, however, can only guess at these things however, because questions of time are never answered.

 

Repetition of spoken words-  Very often the characters repeat lines or words over and over again.  This is different from reality.  It seems as though they are doing it to derive some reason out of what they are saying.

 

Motivation of those Waiting-  As the watcher of the play observes, there is really no reason for the two men to keep coming back to the tree each day.  The amount of time is insignificant, we are meant to understand that they will keep coming back forever.

 

Importance of Situations-  The gravity of many situations is skewed.  Why don't the two men help Pozzo up immediately?  Their casual conversation as he is begging for help is definitely different from reality.

 

Food-  All that remains for the men to eat are carrots, turnips, radishes, and bones.  I fond it interesting that the first three are almost like what one would feed a horse, such as the one Lucky is trying to be.

 

Treatment of Servant-  One of the most noticeable differences from reality is in the treatment of Lucky.  What is the purpose of treating him like a beast of burden?

 

Circular Path of Reasoning-  There are never conclusions in the play, only discussions.  These discussions become arguments until Vladimir and Estragon get distracted or just drop the subject.

 

Longing for Death-  Certainly in reality men do not seriously discuss how unhappy they are or how they would love to hang themselves if they only had the means. 

 

Quickness of Changes that Normally take a Long Time

            Tree- In one day has grown full leaves

            Blindness-  In one day Pozzo has gone blind

Exposition and Forward, Act 2, Scene 1

Sam Beaver, Act 2 Sc. 1, Exposition

  •  Angelo tells Escalus that the law must be rigid, immobile. (Some know)
  • Escalus tells Angelo that they shouldn’t kill Claudio because no one is faultless, and his crime was not that severe.
  • Escalus acknowledges the dangerous balance between sympathy and legality, and feels bad for Claudio.

Forward

  •  Escalus warns Angelo not to be too tough with the law, because he might end up committing a crime himself one day, but Angelo says he wants the law to treat him strictly if he ever does fail. (Foreshadowing his indiscretions)

Though this scene is mainly for the comedy of Elbow, Froth and Pompey, there are still a few major points made about the caracters of Angelo and Escalus.  As we have seen earlier, Escalus is known as the most knowledgeable man in Vienna according to the Duke.  So if he is disagreeing with Angelo’s decisions, what does this say about Angelo?  Perhaps he is not as fit of a leader as they once thought..                                                                                                                                                                                                        Act 2 Sc. 2, Exposition

  • Provost tells Angelo that Juliet is about to give birth. 
  • Isabella goes to Angelo and says though she agrees with the justice system she still wants to save Claudio.
  • Angelo still refuses to save Claudio; Isabella begins to seduce him. (advice from Lucio)
  • Isabella makes him change his mind with her seduction; leads to him telling her to return tomorrow.
  • Angelo desires Isabella because of her virginity and purity, so he plans on bribing her with Claudio’s life. (only Angelo knows this)

Forward

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Exposition and Forward, Act 1, Scenes 3 & 4

Sam Beaver, Act 1, Sc. 3, Exposition 

  •  Duke is hiding out in a friar’s cell.(only Duke knows)
  • He has spread word that he left for Poland, but really remains in Vienna.  (Duke knows)
  • Says that he cannot handle the office, and wished to observe Angelo/ leave Vienna in the hands of someone more strict than he is.  (Duke knows)
  • He wants to see if Angelo will let the power go to his head.  (Duke knows)

Forward

  •  The Duke is spying on Angelo. What will become of the situation?  Will Angelo succeed?  Audience wants to know

This scene’s purpose is to introduce the forward of “Hence we shall see, If power changes purpose, what our seemers be.”  The Duke wishes to discover Angelo’s true character through giving him the powers of the duke.  This forward wants the audience to recognize that power may very well change purpose, and they need to wait and see what the change will be.Act 1 Sc. 4, Exposition

  •  Isabella is introduced; she is hopefully going to become a nun. (she knows)
  • Isabella is a virgin. (she knows)
  • She finds out that her brother has been imprisoned. (Everyone knows by now)
  • Angelo wishes to make an example of Claudio, prompts Isabella’s decision to go rescue her brother.(Only Isabella knows)

Forward

  •  Now that Isabella knows about her brother, will she succeed in saving him?
  • Again, we are wondering if Angelo will actually proceed in killing Claudio just to make an example.

Exposition and Forward, Act 1, Scenes 1 & 2

Sam Beaver Act 1, Sc. 1Exposition

  •  Escalus is a trustworthy advisor and is very intelligent. (some know)
  • Angelo, who is currently a deputy, will be placed in charge of the government when the Duke is absent. (Duke knows, Escalus knows)
  • We are in Vienna (everyone knows)
  • The duke has decided to leave Vienna for reasons unknown to us. (Some know)
  • Duke is going to leave secretly; Angelo will take over immediately. (Angelo, Duke, and Escalus know)

Forward

  •  The Duke is leaving. The audience wonders why, wants to find out what will happen.
  • Angelo is put in charge, and is given FULL POWER over the people (“lent him our terror”).  How will he rule?  We want to see what he will do with the power that the Duke has given him.
  • It is stressed that Angelo is virtuous, makes the audience hungry to see if he will live up to the expectations of him.  The stress put upon Angelo’s virtue is an important set up to the realization that he is morally corrupt later in the play.
  • The Duke leaves with haste.  Why does he do this?

Essentially, this scene is presenting where we are and examining the first action of the play, which is the Duke’s decision to depart.  We want to know why he is leaving, and we also are anticipating the rule of Angelo, who up to this point has been described in a very positive manner.  Act 1, Sc. 2Exposition

  •  Lucio’s opening line tells us that there is governmental instability, even war. (everyone knows)
  • The men are not wealthy, upper class individuals, seen from their discussion of STDs and their disdain for religion.(everyone knows)
  • Overdone enters and we learn that she is a prostitute through the men’s joking.  (most people know)
  • She tells that Claudio has been arrested and is going to be executed in three days. (she knows, now they know)
  • Claudio got arrested for knocking up Juliet.(Overdone knows, now Lucio knows)
  • Angelo has decreed that all the brothels in the suburbs are getting shut down, Overdone goes to have sex with Pompey.(some know)
  • Claudio and Juliet are in love and basically married, but never had the ceremony because of their poverty.(Only Claudio and Juliet know)
  • Angelo is bringing back old laws that hadn’t been adhered to in the past several years; this is why Claudio was arrested.(Everyone knows?)
  • Claudio proposes using Isabella to stop his execution; Lucio goes to find her. (Only Claudio and Lucio know)

Forward

  •  Overdone says someone is in prison; we want to know who it is. (miniature forward)
  • Gives three days till his head is chopped off; the audience is eager to find out what will happen in those three days.
  • Lucio exits to find Claudio, we wonder what he will do for him.
  • It is revealed that Claudio and Juliet are in love; now he’s been condemned wrongfully.  We want to see resolution, so we continue to watch.
  • Lucio leaves to find Isabella.  Will she help?  Will he even find her?
  • Angelo’s rule is thrown into question with his arresting of Cluadio.  What will be done about him?

These opening scenes are a lot about setting up the play for things to come, which is why some of the larger plot points are opened in these first two scenes.  There is a lot that is left unresolved, so there is a lot for the audience to be hanging on to right now.  To use ball’s term, the audience is “hungry for the next.”

Tantalus & Willy: The Metaphor of the Man

By Sam Beaver Alright, here’s my final piece.. 

  • I’ve been thinking about the final metaphor of the play, and went through a pretty strange process.  i at first began thinking about what keeps Willy from achieving his goals, because it seems as though this is the central conflict of the story.  His goal, we decided in our discussion, is to make it big in the bsiness world AND support and care for his family.  As we narrowed down his goals  to these two general statements, we realized that even these fit into a larger, more fully encompassing description if what Willy wants.  That is to say, he wants the American Dream.  The jungle, for willy, is the how of that dream.  He perceives the jungle story as a  coming of age story, where Ben stepped in a poor boy and stepped out a rich man.  Alejandro stated that Willy never really grasped the full idea of the jungle, only taking the object of wealth as the important factor in the jungle.  What Willy fails to see about this American Dream is the PROCESS.  He is too caught up in the “make it big easy” idea, for this is why he went into being a salesman in the first place.  Why work with your hands when you can make it big as a salesman!  But he realizes that he actually can’t make it big as a salesman because of his idea of the American Dream as something “magical,” an illusion that will sweep him up as long as he smiles and gets to know people.  As we see, these illusions manifest themselves as characters of Willy’s past, reaffirming his own strange beliefs.  When he begins to discover his inability to be a big shot salesman, he begins to create his own illusion for his children and family.
  • His relationship with The Woman, therefore, is the presentation of his inability to do honest work and make a living from it.  It is also the presentation of his strong desire to make money in the business world.  Because he needs to set up this illusion for his family, he fails them.  So when Biff finds Willy and the woman together, it reveals how Willy’s need for money has isolated him from his family.  Of his two goals, as he tries to reach one of them, the other slips out of his grasp.
  • And the same works in the reverse.  He had opportunities to get rich before, such as going out of the country with Ben.  If you remember, he does not do this because he had to stay home with his wife and children instead of walking “into the Jungle.”  From this point on, every venture that he goes on is subconsciously trying to make up for the fact that he missed his chance to go get rich with Ben.  So in the same way that his need for money isolates his family, his need for his family isolates him from money.
  • This is what I like to describe through the Tantalus metaphor.  Each attempt Tantalus makes to reach the food and water that are right next to him, they scurry out of his reach.  His thirst for these things is what stops him from getting them.  It is the same with Willy’s American Dream.  He strives for money, and loses his family.  He strives to love his family, and misses opportunities to make money. 
  • Lastly, I think I’d just like to add in that bit that i threw out in the discussion about the beatles song.  I really can’t think of a better metaphor for the play than “Money can’t buy me love” and combined with the other posts from ALejandro and Eric i think we have the true ideas and metaphors of the play.

The Nominal Phrase

  • Sam Beaver, but really all three of us cuz this was during our meeting.  
  • Nominal Phrase:  Capital is not an ends in itself, but a means. 
  • Willy Loman has some serious issues with money.  He fails to realize that getting money will not bring happiness.  To him, capital is the ends, the final goal of life.  As we see, he eventually gives his life for this end.   Miller is making the point that throughout “DOS” that in order to be truly successful one must love and respect his family.  Willy Loman does not understand that money is not the solution to his problems, and as a result dies in the pursuit.  Though money does aid one’s situation in life, the accumulation of wealth is not the thing that makes a man happy, as we can see from Biff’s final decision to move out west.  Willy’s self isolation from his family in the form of his death is his ultimate failure in DOS.  

The List of Plot, including Complications

Inciting incident-  I agree that the inciting incident is definitely when Jason leaves Medea.  Not that Creon's offer didn't cause him to leave, but as Glen said, he had a choice.  This specific choice set the play we read into action.  Had the offer been the inciting incident, we would have a play about Jason's choices.  The stasis disrupted would have been Jason's view of his home, not the home that he leaves.  Beginning Exposition-  People generally have this covered.  Medea and Jason met when Jason sailed to find the Golden Fleece.  She helped him get it, and they fell in love.  However, they were exiled and came to live in Corinth, where they were accepted as equals of the people in the city and gained their place.  Creon is the ruler of Corinth and has a daughter, Glauce, whose hand in marriage was just offered to Jason by Creon.  Jason accepts this offer, beginning the story.  Also:  Medea is sneaky, possibly magical, and has two sons by Jason.  She is a descendent of the Sun God (Apollo/Hyperion), and this could possibly be Euripides' way of telling the audience not to mess with the Gods. Complications-  The goal of the central character (Medea) is to have her revenge on Jason for breaking his marriage oath to her.  The first and most obvious problem is tha Medea doesn't have much time to extract her revenge.  Though she is given one day, she has a very short period of time to do what she intends to do.  This is a climactic play, implied by the amount of time elapsing.  Another point of stress comes from Medea's safety as she is carrying out her plan and afterwards as well.  This complication is Aolved by Aegeus' promise of asylum in Athens in exchange for her "powers."  I'm not sure about other complications, maybe her children are a complication to her plan but it seems like they are simply another accessory to her plot.  Plus, if they are a complication she gets rid of said complication pretty easily. Crisis-  Not a lot to say, the person who did crisis covered what's going on.  The physical action that one would call the crisis is the poisoning of Glauce, which causes her and her father's deaths.  This leads to her full destruction of Jason's life. Climax/Reversal-  Again, already been said by others, but the climax is the realization of Medea's revenge.  She murders her children, his children, and thereby ends his legacy.  She emasculates Jason, here, by destroying his lineage, his blood line.  It seems that for most of the time before the play began Jason was always taking from Medea, but now the roles have reversed and she is the one taking from Jason.  The position of power has reversed.  Resolution-  So we have a newfound stasis in the play.  Jason loses his childen, fiancé and soon to be father in law, while Medea ascends into the heavens with the bodies of her children.  DO NOT mess with the Gods.