“Mourning Becomes Electra”

           
                “Mourning Becomes Electra” 

     

Mourning Becomes Electra is a modern play, shows moderns of Mannon family. Mannon family is very rich and fashionable also. Mannon ladies have no privacy in their life , they can go away where they want.

“Mourning Becomes Electra”  Mourning means :The expression of sorrow for someone’s death,Grief , lament , lamentationBlack clothes worn as an expression of sorrow when someone dies.“Electra” means :Sparkling , the fairy sun“Becomes “ in the sense of “befits” Electra to mourn- it is her fate Mourning (Black) (sorrow) is becoming to her, it is the only color that becomes her destiny.

    

 Mourning Becomes Electra  based on the use of the GreekMyths as a narrative base, their New England scene, the intense psychological focus of the subject matter and also with their historical perspectives.It is considered O’Neill’s most famous work. 

    As a ambitious play it is based on Greek tragic Myth Oresteia to 19th cen. New England. As a play cycle it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932. The story of this play is a kind of retelling of the Oresteia by Aeschylus is a trilogy. Here in Mourning Becomes Electra all characters ,most of parallel characters from the ancient Greek play.

Mourning Becomes Electra comes as a Modern Tragedy, the play features murder, adultery, incestuous love and revenge , weak relationship of family members. We can see different minds of people , their secrets, hubris, fate and honor. 

The characters of this play reflected as a unsuccessful strugglers of an individual to escape a tragic fate and the dark nature of human existence. It is considered with Freud’s circle of Human mind/nature-psychological theory as well. Specially there are complexes of the characters of Oedipus and Electra.Mourning Becomes Electra is divided into three plays with different themes.

A Tempest by Aime Cesaire

                  
                 A Tempest by Aime Cesaire

     

Mourning Becomes Electra comes as a Modern Tragedy, the play features murder, adultery, incestuous love and revenge , weak relationship of family members. We can see different minds of people , their secrets, hubris, fate and honor. 

Doctor Faustus, indeed, is a tragic hero. His Black deeds lead him to disaster. Despite repentance, he is punished. His all escaping ways fail to save him from declination. We can say that Marlowe, by this play, wants to say that if we go against God, we will have to pay a great cost or we will be punished.

Aime Cesaire Cesaire transforms the characters and transposes the scenes to reveal Shakespeare’s Prospero as the exploitative European power and Caliban and Ariel as the exploited natives. Cesaire’s A Tempest is an effective response to Shakespeare’s The Tempest because he interprets it from the perspective of the colonized and raises a conflict with Shakespeare as an icon of the literary canon.

Besides that in In The Tempest by William Shakespeare one might argue that colonialism is a reoccurring theme throughout the play because of the slave-master relationship between Ariel and Caliban and Prospero.

A Tempest is a postcolonial revision of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and draws heavily on the original play—the cast of characters is, for the most part, the same, and the foundation of the plot follows the same basic premise. Prospero has been exiled and lives on a secluded island, and he drums up a violent storm to drive his daughter’s ship ashore. The island, however, is somewhere in the Caribbean, Ariel is a mulatto slave rather than a sprite, and Caliban is a black slave. 

                A Tempest focuses on the plight of Ariel and Caliban the never-ending quest to gain freedom from Prospero and his rule over the island. Ariel, dutiful to Prospero, follows all orders given to him and sincerely believes that Prospero will honor his promise of emancipation. Caliban, on the other hand, slights Prospero at every opportunity: upon entering the first act, Caliban greets Prospero by saying “Uhuru!”, the Swahili word for “freedom.” Prospero complains that Caliban often speaks in his native language which Prospero has forbidden. This prompts Caliban to attempt to claim birthrights to the island, angering Prospero who threatens to whip Caliban.

Doctor Faustus by Marlowe

Doctor Faustus by Marlowe   

        Doctor Faustus, indeed, is a tragic hero. His Black deeds lead him to disaster. Despite repentance, he is punished. His all escaping ways fail to save him from declination. We can say that Marlowe, by this play, wants to say that if we go against God, we will have to pay a great cost or we will be punished.

In case of Doctor Faustus, we can say that how a scholar was tempted. His excessive desires for knowledge invites calamity for him. Doctor Faustus is after all a human being and like a human being, he repents on his sin which destroys his whole life. His knowledge has made him blind. He signs the pact, at that time, it was way to achieve his goal or only the pact, but later on he realizes that what he did. His all powers become curse for him.

  Whenever he tries to repent, he was prevented from repenting by Lucifer and Mephastophilis. After signing the pact, he is dilemma that he has to fulfil his desires or to repent and seek mercy of god for his guilt.

   In scene – 13, he has awaked with the reality that what will happen with him in coming future? We feel pity and fear for Doctor Faustus. We sympathize on seeing his worst condition. Doctor Faustus cries out and repents on his crime. He feels that he is passing his last night on the earth alone. He is full of frightened and regretful. He blames on his parents. He remorse that why was I born ever with soul? He said that his tragic end is pre-destined because his ego doesn’t want to leave him.

    Marlowe has showed Doctor Faustus as the man of the Renaissance time against the Medieval time. Marlowe has also showed that in the Renaissance time, “Human being” is at the center but in the Medieval time “God” is at the center and this trend is altered in the Renaissance time. Doctor Faustus is presented as an example that shows the Renaissance concept. But here, we knew the desires of Doctor Faustus which are so grand. He can do anything for satisfying his desires. But Doctor Faustus chose evil path for getting his goal and it propelled him towards his doom.

“The Black Cat”

             “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe 

The Black Cat follows the narrator’s descent into madness after he proclaims his sanity in the opening paragraph. The narrator confesses han alcoholism that interferes with his grasp on reality and produces mood changes.

The alcohol in the tale is like the cat, an external agent that intrudes in the dynamics of the plot. The introduction of alcohol is very significant as Poe was reputedly uncontrollable drunk during his lifetime.

The concept of  the ‘fantastic’ is introduced in his literature of horror. The fantastic explores the real and the supernatural and it contains both rational and irrational elements. A fantastic element is the apparition of a second black cat. The resolution of the story can be both rational and irrational.

In Poe’s stories, homicide requires animalistic elements. Animals signal the absence of human reason and morality. The murder of Pluto signals the narrator’s loss of reason and plunge into perverseness. Irrational Humans vs. Rational Animals, indicates Poe sees murder as animalistic and inhuman.

The Eagle by Tennyson

       

         The Eagle  by Tennyson

Tennyson was born on 6^th  August 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire. The fourth of twelve children. He was the son of clergyman. Rev. George Clayton Tennyson. He is the second most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare.

•      "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all”

•       "There is not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die”

•      "My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure”

•      "Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers”

•      "The old order changes, yielding place to new".

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

      

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Symbols

Close to the sun in lonely lands,  

       Close to the sun - This could illustrate the status of a person.

       In lonely lands – This could point out how lonely someone can be in this position.

This poem has references to the ancient Greek myth of Icarus. Study that story, and explain how you think knowing it helps a reader interpret what Tennyson is saying here.

Tughlag by Girish Karnad

Tughlag by Girish Karnad

Introduction

Tughlag is Girish Karnad’s first successful experiment

First written in Kannada in 1964 & later translated into English Depicts the struggle and spectacular failure of a personality who dreams of becoming an ideal ruler and establishing a utopia A strong parallelism between the reign of Tughlaq and Nehru era in post-independent India

Ethics

Not a worthy ruler

Not able to provide enough food for the people in the kingdom

Introduced copper coins which had same value as silver coins

Shifted capital from Delhi to Daulatabad

Unethical behavior

Tricking Sheikh Imam-ud-Din during the public meeting

Murder of Sheikh Imam-ud-Din Tughlaq killed his brother and father to win the throne Aziz and Azam didnt help a woman whose child was ill.

Equality in Justice

Giving land back to the Brahmin

Stoning of his Step Mother

Releasing Ain-ul-Mulk

Releasing Aziz

Theory of Egoism

       Definition: An action is morally right if the decision-maker freely decides in order to pursue either their (short-term) desires or their (long-term) interests

       Supporting example: He forgave Aziz and let him free thinking he was the only person who understood him. Aziz should have been given some punishment due to his poor deeds.

Daffodils by William Wordsworth'

Daffodils by  William Wordsworth'

    William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud " also known as “ The daffodils” is a lyric poem focusing on the poet's response to the beauty of nature.

       A lyric poem presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet     rather than telling a story or presenting a witty observation.

      The final version of the poem was first published in Collected Poems in 1815. An earlier version was published in Poems in Two Volumes in 1807 as a three-stanza poem. The final version has four stanzas. Wordsworth wrote the earlier version in 1804, two years after seeing the lakeside daffodils that inspired the poem .

Setting and Background Information

      The poem recaptures a moment on April 15, 1802. whenWordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, were walking near Lake Ullswater in Grasmere, Cambria County, England, and came across a "long belt" of golden daffodils.

Wordsworth sister Dorothy, played an important part in his life and she also influenced him with her love of nature.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud (Daffodils): Rhyme, Form & Meter "I wandered lonely as a Cloud" has a fairly simple form that fits its simple and folksy theme and language. It consists of four stanzas with six lines each, for a total of 24 lines.

The rhyme scheme is also simple: ABABCC. (Rhymed Stanzas in Iambic Tetrameter ) . The last two lines of each stanza rhyme like the end of a Shakespearean sonnet, so each stanza feels independent and self-sufficient. This is called a "rhyming couplet." 

I wandered lonely as a Cloud (Daffodils) Summary

In this poem the poet describes his experience of the sight of "a host of daffodils" during a lonely walk, the daffodils delight him with her beauty and "their sprightly dance". He says "they seem as numerous as the stars that shine in the sky"; He also remarks on the beauty of the lake nearby, but adds that even its sparkling waves are not so exuberant as the yellow daffodils "dancing in the breeze". Moreover, when he is sad, he thinks of daffodils "and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils", that is to say, when his feelings are depressed, thinking of daffodils cheers him up.

Main Theme of the poem

Nature' s beauty uplifts the human spirit .

Theme of  { Happiness } :” Fluttering and dancing in the breeze  “ the poem just makes you feel good about life by using the power of imagination .

 Man and the Natural World :” They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay  “ Wordsworth’s nature is full of life and vitality. He appreciates its wildness and unpredictability, but he humanizes the landscape and fits it to his own mind.

the theme of loneliness : 'I wandered lonely as a cloud.' that could by affected by daily routines .

theme of rejecting city life and going back to the Mother Nature .