A View from the Bridge

A View From The Bridge - Arthur Miller

 

Brief Synopsis:

Alfieri, a lawyer and the narrator, introduces the setting: Red Hook, a slum in Brooklyn. He introduces the Carbone family- Eddie, his wife Beatrice and their orphaned niece Catherine who are poor yet content. Beatrice's cousins, Marco and Rodolpho, two illegal immigrants arrive to stay with the Carbone's and a power struggle occurs between the men. Alfieri shows a 'view from the bridge',the bridge between law and justice, two big themes within the play.

 

Main Characters:

Eddie Carbone-

A longshoreman. A inarticulate uneducated character, who possesses a secret desire for his niece, Catherine which results in his eventual demise.

Beatrice Carbone-

Eddie's wife. A warm and caring women, much more reasonable than her husband.

Catherine Carbone-

The niece of Eddie and Beatrice. A beautiful, smart young Italian woman, who is favoured by the men around her and eventually falls in love with Rodolpho, much to Eddie's anger.

Marco-

Beatrice's cousin and illegal immigrant. He comes to America to earn money to support his wife and children in Italy. He has an unspoken power.

Rodolpho-

Beatrice's young, blonde cousin and illegal immigrant. He is fairly effeminate as he prefers singing jazz than working on the ships, sews, dances and cooks. Rodolpho desires to be American and live a privileged life of fame and fortune.

Alfieri-

The narrator. An Italian American lawyer. He speaks directly to the audience, and highlights the greater social and moral implications of the story.

 

Themes:

•  The animalistic nature of humans. Eddie becomes animalistic, driven by his incestuous lust for Catherine.  He resorts to desperate measures to protect his identity and his reputation within the community. Alfieri recognises Eddie's irrational behaviour, as Eddie relies fully on his instincts. Yet Alfieri still almost admires the irrational behaviour.
• Community vs. American law. There is a prominent conflict between the community law, which protects illegal immigrants, and American law. Eddie eventually sides with American law. He goes against his principles and compromises his place in the community by doing this, ultimately resulting in his death.

 

Concepts and symbols:

• Homosexuality. Eddie identifies Rodolpho as a homosexual as he sings, dances, cooks and sews. Eddie questions Rodolpho's dislike for manual labour and his bleach blonde hair which gives him an air of femininity. Eddie first teaches Rodolpho how to box and then kisses him. This can be perceived as Eddies suppressed homosexual feelings, which would explain his extreme adversity to stereotypical homosexual characteristics. The societal view of homosexuality is clear with Louis and Mike clearly thinking there is something wrong with Rodolpho.
• Women. When Beatrice describes how Catherine must become a woman, she states 'you still walk around in front on [Eddie] in your slip', 'you sit on the edge of the bathtub talkin' to [Eddie] when he's shavin' in his underwear'. To Beatrice, being a woman means reserving modesty in front of men, and independently making decisions. Catherine's progression into womanhood means marrying Rodolpho, and abiding by his rules rather than Eddie's. Additionally, high heels are, for Catherine, representative of womanhood as it emphasises flirtation and sexiness. Eddie strongly disapproves of them, but they give Catherine a sexual power of men.
• Brooklyn bridge. This symbolises a pathway of opportunity to Manhattan. From the bridge, one can see the entire community. Alfieri attempts to unite the American laws with Italian cultural practices. 

 

 



A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire- Tennessee Williams

 

 

Context:
-During the end of WW2, when this play was being written, many writers were writing about man's capacity for evil.
-Stanley represents the American Dream that all men are born equal and can succeed equally, whilst Blanche represents the old world, where class and race are still important issues.
-Women in the Old South were expected to be passive and chaste.

Brief synopsis:

Set in the 1940s, Blanche DuBois, a Southern Belle, depends on the kindness of strangers and is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance at happiness.

Form and Structure:

-Unconventional episodic structure which allows desire to be fulfilled and then destroyed shortly after. Each scene becomes progressively more dangerous for Blanche, although she is arguably the instigator of most of these liaisons.

-Short scenes rather than longer acts create a pulsing rhythm. This follows the conventions of cinematic technique. The short scenes reflect the rapid shift in focus from one moment to the next, from one character to the next. The other descriptions in the text such as stage directions at the beginning of the play are reminiscent of the panoramic scope of a camera, gradually introducing each aspect of the set and characters.

-There is a rhythm of conflict and reconciliation throughout the play: Stanley and Stella row, then make up, Steve and Eunice follow the same pattern.

Main Characters:

Blanche Dubois-

Blanche is a loquacious and fragile woman around the age of thirty. 'She is daintily dressed in a white suit and fluffy bodice' 'Her delicate beauty must avoid strong light. There is some uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.'

Stella Kowalski-

Blanche's sister and the wife of Stanley. 'A gentle young woman, about twenty five, of a background obviously quite different from her husband's'

Stanley Kowalski-

Stanley represents the American Dream and is the epitome of vital force. He wishes to destroy Blanche's social pretensions, and goes about this by being heartlessly cruel and eventually raping her. 'about twenty eight or thirty years old, roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes.'

Harold 'Mitch' Mitchell-

Stanley's friend who Blanche takes a shining to. He is clumsy, sweaty, and has unrefined interests in muscle building, he is much more sensitive then Stanley, perhaps because he lives with his mother who is slowly dying.

Eunice-

Stella’s friend, upstairs neighbour, and landlady. Eunice and her husband, Steve, represent the low-class, carnal life that Stella has chosen for herself. Like Stella, Eunice accepts her husband’s affections despite his physical abuse of her.

Allan Grey-

A young man with poetic aspirations who Blanche fell in love with and married as a teenager. One afternoon, Blanche discovered him in bed with another male friend. That evening at a ball, Blanche announced her disgust at his homosexuality, and he ran outside and shot himself in the head.

Themes:

• Fantasy's inability to overcome reality. The play is a work of social realism. Blanche meticulously avoids harsh light in order to avoid the reality of her faded appearance. Stanley crushes this illusion and does all he can to unravel Blanche's secrets. Although reality triumphs over illusion in this instance, William suggests that illusion is important. Even in Blanche's insanity, another sense of desire exists.
• The relationship between sex and death. Blanche's fear of death manifests itself in her fear of aging and losing beauty. She continues to assert her sexuality, and to very young men, to avoid death and return to the teenage bliss she lived in before the death of her husband. Blanche's journey from riding a Streetcar named Desire, then transferring to a Streetcar named Cemeteries, which brought her to a street named Elysian Fields. This journey foreshadows the trajectory of Blanche’s life. Blanche’s lifelong pursuit of her sexual desires has led to her loss of Belle Reve, her ostracism from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her expulsion from society at large.
• Dependence on men. Both Stella and Blanche see the attainment of male companions to be the only chance of happiness. Ultimately Stanley maintains his life ('I am the king around here')whereas Blanche is shunned from society.
• The American dream vs. The Old South.

Motifs and symbols:

• Light and colour. Blanche emphasises her own fear of the light over and over again. 'Her delicate beauty must avoid strong light'. She enters at dusk, and is not seen outside, in the play, again. She 'cant stand a naked light bulb' so buys a paper shade. Her cry when Mitch switches the light on towards the end of the play, after he has learnt the truth about her, all show her fear of being seen clearly. Clear light is the antithesis of the fantasy world Blanche works so hard to maintain. She tells Stella 'daylight never exposed so total a ruin'. In contrast, Stella and Stanley have the 'coloured lights', symbolic of their sex life, the part of their marriage which gives them vibrancy and keeps them together. This juxtaposition with the dimness of light Blanche lives in perhaps explains why Stella chooses not to believe her sister's story at the end of the play. Blanche's white suit she wears upon her arrival marks her as an outsider, but also represents her attempts to keep her reputation clean, covering that she has been 'not so awf'ly good lately'. In scene 5, Blanche's spilling of cola on her skirt and later her crumpled, soiled clothes are suggestive of her humiliation and defeat.
• Sound. The music heard in the background of the play mirrors the action of the play. There are two type of background music: the 'blues piano' which is heard by both the characters and the audience, and Blanche's internal Varsouviana Polka. The blues piano is the sound of New Orleans, a cultural and social melting pot, whereas the Varsouviana Polka is the measured sound of the old fashioned world of Belle Reve. The piano is once described as 'going into a hectic breakdown', foreshadowing Blanche at the end of the play. The polka was the music playing during the scene when Allen Gray shot himself. It represents Blanche's grief and guilt over his death. Stanley has a much more straightforward, powerful sound associated with him. The nearby trains which hide his approach so that he can overhear Stella and Blanche's conversation about him, recur when he is threatening rape, and the blues piano crescendos into 'the roar of an approaching locomotive' His sound is masculine, mechanical and very different from Blanche's.
• Games, pastimes and actions. Blanche's feeble aristocracy is in sharp contrast with Stanley's vitality. This vitality is symbolised by the very male pastimes which he enjoys, such as bowling, and all-male poker games, with the men wearing 'course and direct' primary colours, all of them at the 'peak of their physical manhood'. Mitch states 'Poker should not be played in a house with women'. Yet Blanche constantly bathes herself as she says it calms her nerves. These baths are an attempt to cleanse her of her history. The fact that it is impossible for Blanche to be cleansed, shown by her repeated bathing. However, when Stanley has a shower after hitting Stella, he is thrown into remorse.
• 'Its Only A Paper Moon'. Blanche sings this to herself in the bath. The lyrics describe how love becomes a 'phony' fantasy. As Blanche is singing “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” Stanley tells Stella the details of Blanche’s sexually corrupt past. Williams ironically juxtaposes Blanche’s fantastical understanding of herself with Stanley’s description of Blanche’s real nature.

Links to Struggle for Identity:

• Class Struggle
• Sexual Struggle
• Social Struggle
• Gender Struggle

The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie-Tennessee Williams

 

Context:

For Williams, this is semi-autobiographical.

• He had an older sister called Rose who was the inspiration for Laura. She suffered from a mental illness in later life.
• Williams' father forced him to work in a shoe factory for 3 years. This accumulated to a minor nervous breakdown.
• Williams was a homosexual.

 

Brief Synopsis:

Set in St Louis in 1937, the Glass Menagerie is a memory play, from the perspective of Tom Wingfield, an aspiring poet who works a mundane job in a shoe factory in order to support his mother, Amanda, and his sister, Laura. Mr Wingfield, Tom and Laura's father, left the family years ago when he 'fell in love with long distances'. The play follows the three, Tom's lust for escape, Laura's shy and crippled  obsession with her glass menagerie and memories, and Amanda's lust for the past as she tries to live vicariously through her children.

Characters:

Amanda Wingfield-

Tom and Laura's mother. A proud women who clings to memories of gentlemen callers, and tries to regain her youth by telling stories of her path and trying to live vicariously through Laura.

Laura Wingfield-

Amanda's daughter and Tom's older sister. She has a bad leg, on which she must wear a brace, and she has a limp. She is twenty three and painfully shy, yet she is desperate not to disappoint her mother despite being a very different person.

Tom Wingfield-

Amanda's son and Laura's younger brother. An aspiring poet, he loathes his monotonous life and tries to escape through movies, literature and alcohol.

Jim O'Connor-

An old acquaintance of Tom and Laura. Was a popular athlete in school but now works with Tom in the shoe factory. Amanda expects him to be a gentleman caller for Laura.

Mr. Wingfield-

Tom and Laura's father and Amanda's husband. He never appears in the play, yet his picture is in the centre of all the action. He was a handsome man who worked for a telephone factory.

 

Themes:

• The difficulty of accepting reality. Every member of the family struggles to face reality, causing them to retreat into a world of illusion, finding comfort that they were unable to find in reality. Laura's illusion consists of many glass animals, which emulate Laura in fragility and dangerous delicacy. Tom seeks escape through films, literature and alcohol. Amanda cannot accept that she is anything other than the pampered belle who she was brought up as. In some ways, Amanda's retreat into illusion seems more pathetic than her children's, as she distorts reality at the expense of her children. Yet it is not just the Wingfields who are susceptible to illusion. Illusion is present in the outside world also, with the young people at the Paradise Dance Hall waltz under the illusion of the glass ball. Even Jim, who is used as a device to shatter the family's illusion,  is banking his future on public speaking and the television and radio industries, all of which are means for the creation of illusions and the persuasion of others that these illusions are true.
• The inability to escape. In scene four, Tom tells Laura of a magician who managed to escape from a nailed up coffin. This foreshadows Tom's wishes, as the coffin represents his home and work life, being cramped, suffocating and morbid. The fire escape is also used as a device to demonstrate the inability of escape. Tom is trapped by his responsibility and love for his family, he is able bodied and able to on the surface escape, yet he will have to live with the guilt of not looking after his family, who he must support.
• The unrelenting power of memory. The Glass menagerie is a memory play. Tom himself confesses 'it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental and it is not realistic'. The narrator is allowed to cloak their true story in melodrama. In this case, the story is told as it has a big grip on the narrator's memory.

Motifs and symbols:

• Abandonment. The picture of Mr Wingfield is at the centre of all the action suggesting his abandonment of his family is at the root of all of their problems. Tom's abandonment of his family at the end mirrors this, yet this act was a necessity for his happiness. Abandonment, despite being very damaging, can be a necessity. Tom and his father represent the modern word, whereas Laura and Amanda are stuck in the past and are doomed to be abandoned.
• Music. Sometimes the music comes from outside the play, the audience can hear it the characters cannot. For example, “The Glass Menagerie,” plays when Laura’s character or her glass collection comes to the forefront of the action. This piece makes its first appearance when Laura notes that Amanda is afraid that her daughter will end up an old maid. Other times, the music is a part of the action, and the characters can hear it. The music that comes from the Paradise Dance Hall and the music Laura plays on her record player both provide commentary on what is going on in the play. For example, the Paradise Dance Hall plays a piece entitled “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” while Tom is talking about the approach of World War II.
• The glass unicorn. Laura's favourite figure in her collection, the glass unicorn emulates her. Unicorns are different to other horses, and are therefore separated from them. Similarly, Laura is branded as different and separated from the rest of people her age. When Laura dances with Jim and they kiss, the unicorn's horn breaks off, making it just like another horse. This represents Laura starting to do 'normal' things for somebody her age. Yet the breaking of the unicorn could imply that Laura is hindered by normalcy as she loses her individuality. In the end, Laura gives Jim the unicorn, perhaps to represent that the horse is more fitting to him now it has not got differences from the norm.  
• The fire escape. Attached to the Wingfield home is a fire escape. This fire escape represents an escape from the fires of frustration and dysfunction in the household. Laura slips on the fire escape, highlighting her inability to escape the situation. Whereas Tom constantly steps out onto the fire escape, foreshadowing his eventual escape.

Benjamin Zephaniah: Too Black, Too Strong

 

This Be The Worst

They fuck you up, those lords and priests.
They really mean to, and they do.
They fill themselves with highbrow feasts
And only leave the crumbs for you.

But they were fucked up long ago
By tyrants who wore silly gowns,
Who made up what they didn't know
And gave the masses hand-me-downs.

The rich give misery to the poor.
It deepens as they hoard their wealth.
They'll be fucked up forever more,
So just start thinking for yourself.

This poem mimics that of Philip Larkin's 'This Be The Verse'. It makes a comment on the tradition of religion and the corruption within it. The superlative used in the title, 'worst', is demonstrative of the extremity of miscarriages of justice within religion and the religious hierarchy.

In contrast to Larkin's poem, Zephaniah states 'they really mean to and they do'. This addition of negative intent changes the poem from a comment on the dysfunctional natural reproduction cycle, to a malicious corrupt man-made system. Moreover, the warning Larkin presents at the end 'And don't have any kids yourself' would result in the extinction of the human species whereas Zephaniah's warning would  result in a much more just civilisation in the avoidance of the sheep-like following of deceitful immoral traditions.




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Carol Ann Duffy: The World's Wife

Carol Ann Duffy: The World's Wife

Little Red Cap

 

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,
till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf.

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink,

my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes

but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?1
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws
and went in search of a living bird – white dove –

which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

But then I was young – and it took ten years
in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.

 

 

Carol Ann Duffy was married to Adrian Henri, a poet, for ten years and 'Little Red Cap' is semi-autobiographical. This poem is based on the fairy tale 'Little Red Riding Hood'. The poem focuses on the transition between innocence and experience.

 

'At childhood's end' names the transition between childhood and adolescence as almost a physical place, marking the loss of innocence an purity carried by youth. The narrator 'clapped eyes on the wolf', this harsh sighting brings the end of innocence in an onomatopoeic aggressive abrupt way.'

'At the edge of the woods' implies the inevitability of the spoiling of  innocence, the temptation to enter was overwhelming.

 

The use of rhyme in such simple words such as 'paw' and 'jaw' emphasises this sense of innocence and echoes the rhymes used in nursery rhymes, holding connotations of people as young as babies.

'I made quite sure he spotted me' demonstrates the narrator's lust for excitement and danger, her need to step out of innocence and experience the darker sides of life.

'He stood in clearing' demonstrates his individuality. He was the first person to symbolise danger in a very individual manner.

The 'red wine staining his bearded jaw' gives imagery of blood and dander. Additionally, red wine symbolises the sophistication and maturity of taste that the narrator was fascinated by and looked up to.

 

The 'my first' which begins the third stanza symbolises not only her first drink but her first everything; love, dangerous experience, man. This heightened her innocence and exposure to an extreme threat.

Carol Anne Duffy was attracted to 'his poetry' this is what pushed her from the edge, into the woods.

This third stanza contrasts with the second as whilst the second demonstrates her innocence and naivety, the third shows her knowledge of his danger 'The wolf, I knew would lead me deep into the woods' and she embraces it.

The 'lost shoes' symbolise the loss of her ability to run away once she had committed so fully.

 

His 'heavy matted paws' demonstrate the firm hold he had on her and his suppression of her and her poetry.

'what little girl doesn't dearly love a wolf?' could be interpreted as a comment on society with the fact that all women are attracted to men who bring danger and do not necessarily treat them very well. This also vilifies both sexes but also distances them.

The 'search' for a white dove is symbolising her wanting to retrieve her innocence and hope. Yet it 'flew, straight, from my hands into his open mouth'. Every attempt to gain her purity is crushed by him. He consumes her whole personality and demines her achievements.
'One bite dead'- the monosyllabic nature gives a finality of it. A loss that she can never get back. It was quick and easy for him to consume a part of her.

The '10 years' furthers the autobiographical nature of the poem as Duffy's marriage to Henry lasted 10 years. The narrator's empowerment in the sixth stanza is brought with her realisation that she can brutally destroy him.
The end being 'I took an axe' also is monosyllabic, giving a fast pace and finality.

Thee are no rhymes in the last stanza, showing her final loss of innocence, yet this is brought upon by herself and not forced upon by him.
'One chop' mirrors the 'one bite dead', giving an equality between the sexes and the gain of the narrators power.
Duffy concludes with the line 'Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone'. This empowering statement, marks her regain of her voice in poetry within 'singing', the 'flowers' demonstrating the innocence and purity and 'alone', typically thought to be a negative state, is positive a freeing for the narrator, regaining herself.

Main themes: Obedience, Rebellion, Power of words, Relationships, Power, Adolescence, Independence, Growing up, Being a woman.

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 Anne Hathaway

 

'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ...'(from Shakespeare's will)

 

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
  on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

 

 

Carol Ann Duffy uses the form of a Shakespearian sonnet for this poem, with three quatrains and ending with one rhyming couplet. This form is typically associated with love. The fact that Shakespeare only left his wife his second best bed gives Duffy the perfect opportunity to victimise the women in the situation. However, she subverts expectation and romanticises the passionate acts that occurred in the bed.

 

Duffy presents an alternative interpretation of being immortalised in literature than in Little Red Cap. Anne Hathaway is thrilled by her sexual encounters with Shakespeare and Duffy romanticises their relationship on a personal and intimate level. She creates a fantasy landscape in which love making and Shakespeare's writing are intertwined.

 

The 'clifftops, seas' demonstrate the all-encompassing nature of the feeling he gave her in this intimate sexual moment. Duffy refers to all of the senses making it an overwhelming, vivid experience that she thrived in.

 

The best bed and the love making in it is condemned and is seen to be worthless in compared the couples love. It was also fairly typical of the time for couples to save their best bed for guests so everybody else's love did not compare to theirs.

 

The repetition of 'l' creates a very soft, gentle and fluid nature which could represent the continuing memory she carries of him which gives her the identity and comfort she longs for.

 

Struggle for identity:

-Anne Hathaway has no identity without him as she is defined by Shakespeare's words as he controls the situation.

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Mrs Rip Van Winkle

 

I sank like a stone

 into the still, deep waters of the late middle age,

 aching from head to foot.

 

I took up food

and gave up exercise.

It did me good.

 

And while he slept

I found some hobbies for myself.

Painting. Seeing the sights I’d always dreamed about:

 

The Leaning Tower.

The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.

I made a little watercolour of them all.

 

But what was best,

what hands-down beat the rest,

 was saying a none-too-fond farewell to sex.

 

Until the day

 I came home with this pastel of Niagara

 and he was sitting up in bed rattling Viagra. 

Background:
Rip Van Winkle is a classic European faerie tale written by Washington Irvin in 1907.
The story of Rip Van Winkle is a 'be careful what you wish for' fable/moral tale about a man who has a great life (children love him as he tells them stories and gives them toys), but he is lazy. He despises his nagging wife and one day he goes up into the mountains with his dog wolf, to escape her. He comes across a man struggling with a keg and Rip Van Winkle helps him to transport it. They come across a 'group of ornately dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins'. Rip Van Winkle drinks some of their moonshine and soon falls asleep. He wakes up twenty years later, his children are all grown up and his wife is dead and he struggles fitting into his new life. Rip learns that the man he met in the mountains are rumoured to be the ghosts of Hendrick (Henry) Hudson's crew.

Carol Ann Duffy's poem follows Mrs.Winkle in her life with her husband gone and in Duffy's interpretation, she is still alive when he awakens.

Analysis:
-'late middle ages' gives ambiguity, referring to the era or her age.
-'it did me good' the pressures of trying to impress her husband have been lifted and she is free to act any way she chooses.
-The beginning of the poem has sibilance: 'sunk' 'stone' 'waters' 'exercise', which gives a slow soft pace, which echoes Rip's sleeping.
-There is repetition of the first person pronoun 'I', which shows that she can be self indulgent for the first time and she thrives in it.
-'took up' 'gave up', the repetition of the word 'up' contrasts with her husbands sleeping. Additionally, it suggests her progression in life and foreshadows the humorous ending.
-This is furthered with the mention of tall sights: 'Leaning Tower', 'Taj Mahal', 'Pyramids'. These exotic, exciting locations contrast with 'home' in the last stanza, emphasising the thump back to reality.
-'niagra' and 'viagra' rhyme. Niagra falls highlights the fall back to reality and contrasts with the Viagra a light hearted pun. However, this image is very creepy, meeting her husband with the immediate thought of the act she was so happy to give up.
-She has found meaning in her life during Rip Van Winkle's sleep.
-Each stanza starts with a short sentence which gradually get longer, mimicking her growth as a person.
-'Water colour pastels' are delicate, soft pure colours, taking him out of the equation makes her life brighter and more exciting. This contrasts with the beginning 'deep waters' and 'stone' which show darkness and a sense of loss. This also demonstrates her progression upward.

Struggle for identity:
-Struggle for identity within a marriage:
      -the only time she felt wanted was for sex.
-Life beginning late- in her 'middle ages'
-'Watercolour'- The way she perceives things and her accomplishments. 

 





Equus

Equus- Peter Shaffer

 

 Brief synopsis:

Teenager Alan Strang, fought over by a religious mother and an atheist father, finds release in horses. Then something drives him to blind the horses with a spike. Why? While treating the boy, Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist, discovers his own life is paradoxically in the witness box. A savage, passionate play which pinpoints the modern human spiritual quest.

 

Form and structure:
Equus is in the structure of a conventional detective thriller with the question seemingly being 'why did the boy blind the horses?' Yet Dysart's direct address of the audience breaks the conventions of a naturalistic drama and draws attention to him, suggesting that his problems are bigger than those of Alan. The 'crime' is known from the beginning of the play, so the tension is created through the search for a motive. One of the play's biggest ironies is that Dysart finishes commenting on himself and his own actions rather than those of Alan.
The play's structure consists of a series of interviews between Alan and Dysart, interspersed with monologues of conversations Dysart has. This allows Dysart to dominate the play to a large extent, emphasising the problems he experiences.

Main Characters:
Alan Strang-

'A lean boy of seventeen' who works as a stable hand and develops a religious obsession with horses, based on his complicated feelings which originate from his religious background and his increasing sexual side as a teenager.

Martin Dysart-

A psychiatrist in his mid-fourties. Is discontented with his life, yet Alan brings interest, expects him to be 'the usual unusual' but Strang emphasises the void of desire for Dysart, which ends up as destructive as too much desire.

Frank Strang-

Alan's father. An atheist working-class man who clashes with Alan's mothers when she tries to impose her strong Christian beliefs on Alan. Alan catches him watching an adult film to satisfy his needs which are not fulfilled within his marriage.

Dora Strang-

Alan's mother. Strongly religious middle-class woman who reads to Alan from the bible daily. She told Alan sexual acts were dirty but that he could find true love and contentment by way of religious devotion and marriage.

Hesther Salomon-

A magistrate, who persuaded Dysart to take on Alan. She refers to Alan's case as 'shocking'. Took her '2 hours of solid arguing' to get Alan sent to the hospital instead of facing life imprisonment.

Jill Mason-

'a girl in her early twenties, pretty an middle class'. Gets Alan a job at Dalton's stables. Sex is not a taboo subject for Jill, unlike for Alan. They watch 'skinflicks' yet when Jill wants to have sex in the stables, Alan feels very uncomfortable in front of the horses, and ends up blinding six of them.

Themes:

• Desire. Alan’s desire, despite being misplaced, is presented as being enviable in ‘Equus’.  Dysart’s life has a distinct absence of all desire and lust and this is presented as destructive. Dysart dwells on the failure of his marriage as it has a distinct lack of the animalistic, raw passion presented in Alan and Jill’s relationship. Shaffer presents desire as a necessity in life, yet it needs to be balanced out as too much of it being misplaced also be very destructive. Shaffer demonstrates society’s view and conforming to society’s norms as being negative as Alan’s misplacement of his desire leads society to shun him. Hesther repeatedly refers to Alan’s case as ‘shocking’ yet Shaffer is trying to make the statement that it is not shocking how Alan has ended up due to the pressures and the expectations of society, and Dysart’s weakness in living without desire makes Alan seem comparatively stronger. Shaffer is suggesting that living under complete desire is more satisfying than living without desire.
• Religion. Whilst Dora (his mother) is strongly religious, reading the bible every night, Frank (his father), is against religion and goes so far to quote Karl Marx by saying ‘religion is the opium of the people’. Alan’s need to escape his conflicting home life is so extreme that he is led to worship and possess an unconventional object of desire.
• A modern citizen. Dysart comments on the spiritual and moral vacuum in which twentieth century humanity exists. Human being's alienation from any sense of overall purpose in life is profoundly experienced.

Struggle for Identity and quotations:

Individual Struggle
'He blinded six horses with a metal spike'
'I redouble my efforts to look professional'
'I shrank my own life'
'I envy it'
 
Religious Struggle
'Religion is the opium of the people'- Karl Marx quote
'I want to BE you forever and ever!'
'Equus, I love you!'
 
Sexual Struggle
Alan and the horse looked 'like a necking couple'
'I looked up into it's mouth. It was huge. There was a chain in it'
'They sort of pulled me. I couldn't take my eyes off them'
'The way their necks twist and sweat shines in the folds'
When talking about grooming 'the harder you do it the more the horse loves it'
'Cream dropping from'
'I want to be in you!'
'When I touched her, I felt him'
'I wanted the foam off his neck'
 
Social Struggle
Dysart expects the 'usual unusual'
Mother speaks about him 'we loved Alan'- not conditional love.
'There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain, and it never comes out' -Dysart