great works ii – 2850 jta 12:25-2:05: love letters from the world

In Aristotle’s concept of tragic hero, a person should be person more virtuous than average, and encountering the misfortune he doesn’t deserve. Gregor is a salesman making a good income enough for feeding his whole family. He is kind, caring but flabby person. Turning into a beetle is a major disaster in his life. And the story shows how the accelerated contradiction in his life bring him misfortune. As the picture shown, his journey in Metamorphosis increasingly relate to the audience and create a tragedy that is able to involved the audience in a deeper and deeper level. Initially, he relates to the audience as a well paid employee who also straggles under a boss. As the story goes, people he loves gradually turn to be against him. Especially his sister who tries to kick him out of the house in the last part of the story.

zheng

In the film “Breath”, there is some examples of the absurdity to life. We can sense that one person inhales very loudly and that person holds his breath for about five seconds and then he exhales very loudly. I think it suggests that humanity is a pile of disorganized garbage. And this garbage (humanity) lying on a stage (life) is useless and sluggish. In Mallarme’s “The Virginal, Vibrant, and Beautiful Dawn”, the swan is thought to represent the poet crushed by the world and hating it. The swan can also be used to represent the artist in society. His swan had broken out of it’s cage and found itself unable to exist in society. Samuel Beckett was one of the people behind the movement called the Theatre of the Absurd. The absurdists believed that life was absurd, beyond human rationality and meaningless. This is a sentiment to whichEndgame subscribes with it’s idea of complexity and non-meaning. (Alexandria)

A theme in Endgame would be the feeling of emptiness and loneliness. Adding on to what Alexandria said about sensing a person inhaling and exhaling very loudly in the video “Breath”, there is a feeling of solitude. It sounds like the person is kind of forcing his breathing. The setting of this video is very dark and creepy; it was filmed at a dark and dimmed place. The video gives off a lonely and creepy vibe because there is no face to the heavy breathing. In “The Virginal, Vibrant, and Beautiful Dawn”, the line “the horror of the earth will remain where it lies” reminds me of Hamm’s mentality in Endgame. The swan left its home and found itself unable to live on its own, just like Hamm needing Clov 24/7 because he is blind and handicapped. Hamm’s mentality of life is depressing and dark, just like the theme of the video and poem. (Ivy)

As what Ivy and Alex have pointed out, both “Breath” and “The Virginal, Vibrant, and Beautiful Dawn” shows a theme of absurdity by using symbolism and metaphor, expressing a sense of despair and hopeless under a depressed society. In the film, the dark, unstable light, and the garbage full of the scene and the creepy sounds of water drops are reflection of a deadly depressed environment. We hear someone takes a deep breath and exhales very hard. It sounds like a man suffering serious disease, drag out an ignoble existence. The absent of the character leaves us space of imagination and makes the whole movie even more despairing. The poem has many similarities with the movie. Dark scene, frozen lake and despaired swan that had broken out of its cage and found itself unable to survive in the society, the frozen lake. While both of the poem and the movie are short, they fully illustrate some features “Endgame”, an absurd theatre has, which is about the meaninglessness of life. (Zheng Huang)

Strindberg’s evaluation of the character of Miss Julie is inaccurate when it comes to Julie’s being a half-woman. Strindberg’s believe the half-woman is “a type who thrusts herself forward and sells herself nowadays for power, decorations honours…their hopes of attaining equality with men are crushed.”(Strindberg’s introduction) Strindberg believe the major conflicts half-women are dealing with is with men. However, in the drama, many evidences show that it’s not true. “And yet I can find no rest or peace until I shall come down in the earth; and if I came down to earth I could wish myself down in the ground”(Miss Julie 9). Julie does feel the barriers, not between man and woman, but between nobility and servant. She was born with wealth and status, but she always dreams about “coming down”. She dance with servants, drink with servants and fall in love with servants. What bothers Julie is the pressure and feudal prejudice from the majority of people who judge her behavior disgrace herself as a aristocratic woman.

Another evidence at the end of the story is when Julie is in a dilemma, she says to Jean: “Do me this last service save my honor. Save his name.”(Julie 33) The potential damage to her “honor” and her “name” matter so much to her that she begs for helps to suicide, which, again, proves that all her worries as a half-woman are caused by the social inequality between higher class and normal people, not men and women.

I believe “half-woman”, in Srindberg’s term, is a type who believe they’re capable of doing things and deserve things men could do and have.