Wednesday, January 29, 2020

The audience respond to these changes Essay Example for Free

The audience respond to these changes Essay Task: How does Shakespeare present the changes which occur in Capulet throughout the play and how do the audience respond to these changes? From analysing Romeo and Juliet as an audience I have seen Capulet in many different ways. I have seen him as the caring father, the ruler and the person in charge. In some scenes as an audience I have been quite sympathetic towards Capulet but then in other scenes I have felt that he has been rather harsh to members of his family and other characters in the play. From looking at Act 1 Scene 1 I saw that Capulet was a very irresponsible character. When he saw that there was a brawl between the Capulets and the Montagues, he wanted to get involved. His wife, Lady Capulet, told him that it was the wrong thing to do but he dismissed this. So from the first scene, it has already made us aware, that he has control over the family and that he does not like to be told what to do. This scene links with scene 5 because again Tybalt questions his authority and he becomes very angry with him and says some very rude, arrogant things, in his concealing conversation with him. The other side of Capulet, which we as audience see is his caring, considerate side. He shows us this in a variety of scenes. The first time that this side of his character is illustrated is in Act 1 scene 1. He is willing to lose a good, kind, considerate husband for her daughter because of her happiness. This portrays to us that he is willing to put his daughters feelings first, although it may mean losing an eligible husband for her daughter. This is also shown in a similar way in Act 1 scene 5 at his old accustomed feast. In this scene he acts very warm and hospitable towards his guests. In this scene he shows fairness towards Romeo, although Tybalt does not agree. He shows fairness towards Romeo because he does not want to cause a commotion at the feast that he has organised. The next time that we meet we are in act 3 scene 1 Capulet Shakespeare has deliberately not allowed Capulet to speak. As the audience this is very significant because normally Capulet takes charge in situations like this but, in this situation he has stepped back and let his wife say what she feels. At the beginning of act 3 scene 5 Capulet is very worried about his daughter he used beautiful imagery he says that hes daughters tears were like a river, her body was like a boat and her sighs were like the wind. This is then completely contrasted because he becomes very sarcastic, abusive and harsh, towards hi wife, daughter and lady Capulet. The reverse in his attitude came around when Juliet refused to get married to Paris. In Elizabethan times daughters were like possessions and daughters were supposed to do what there parents told them to. Capulet said some very harsh things including: Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch This shows to us that his attitude towards his family can change very easily depending on the situation. Then he begins to think about resorting to physical violence and exclaims My fingers itch this implies that he could of hit his daughter. When Juliet then agrees to the marriage (under false pretences) Capulet then admires his daughter and is put back into his element. He again is focused on in control, organising his daughters grand wedding. His mood is again totally reversed he says My heart is wondrous light, but the dramatic irony of this is that we know that Juliet is going to appear dead so that she doesnt have to go through with her arranged marriage. In the concluding scenes in the play Capulets behaviour and mood change from being joyous and delighted to being in despair and shock. When Capulet Is arranging the wedding he is full of delight and excitement. His girl has been reclaimed. Again he is control of the situation, her id making the decisions and is giving out the orders. Again he is showing his status towards his servants by using crude language and showing them there place. Capulets feelings then again changed to despair when he realised that his daughter was dead. Capulet used elaborate imagery he exclaims that Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field This illustrates that hes daughter was not supposed to die. Also he says Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak this portrays what he actually felt for his daughter. Finally Capulet shows generosity towards the Montagues he makes the first move to bring happiness out of all the evil that has took place. This illustrates to us as an audience that really capulet can be very considerate and emotionalyly when tradgic things happen. He tries to make amends with people that were enemies and at the end of the play we realise that he doesnt want to bear anymore grudges against other people. To conclude from analysing the scene I have come to the conclusion that Capulets mood and behaviour changed repeatedly through the play. He can be a kind, considerate, caring, emotionally character in some situations. But ion other situations when hes authority is questioned he can lose his temper and say things that are very harsh and un -thoughtful.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Cause and Effects of Divorce :: Marriage Divorce

What is a marriage? According to Webster’s dictionary,† marriage is an institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family. Marriage is also an intimate or close union.† Marriages don’t always last and result in divorces. Two of the leading causes of a divorce are lack of foundation and lack of communication. Almost half of American marriages now end in divorce. One cause of marriages ending in divorce is lack of foundation. Why should a couple get married if they have nothing in common? Marriages tend to end in divorce when a couple does not share core values, beliefs, or expectations. In a marriage sharing the same interest and passions is important. If a couple doesn’t share the same values, beliefs, or expectations and don’t have common interest or passions, just what is the foundation of their marital relationship? Another cause of marriages ending in a divorce is the lack of communication. Many couples lack the proper communication when it comes to decision making. When a couple is able to communicate they are able to solve their problems verbally. Disagreements due to lack of communication often lead to arguments. Lack of communication may also cause financial problems, when couples to communicate about their shared finances. Failure to communicate may lead to behavior problems children involved in the relationship. Children tend to like to manipulate their parents when there are communication problems. Communication is the key within any relationship, not just marital relationships. To avoid having a marriage end in a divorce, be sure the relationship is built upon a strong foundation.

Monday, January 13, 2020

Ignominy in the Puritan Community Essay

The title of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter refers to the literal symbol of ignominy that Hester Prynne’s community forces her to wear as a reminder of her sin. Though the word â€Å"ignominy† is used in sympathetic passages that describe Hester Prynne’s disgrace as an adulteress and out-of-wedlock mother, its use at the same time reveals an extremely critical description of Hester’s community; Hawthorne finds that what is truly disgraceful is the way the community relishes and exploits the opportunity to punish one of its members. Through powerful diction and imagery describing Hester’s sin and through saintly representations of Hester’s beauty and wholeness, Hawthorne reveals his sympathy toward Hester. The narrator commiserates with Hester when the reader first encounters her walking to her daily public shaming upon the marketplace’s scaffold. He writes, â€Å"her beauty shone out and made a halo of misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped† (50). The word â€Å"halo† suggests an angelic, even saintly quality, compared to the sin for which she is being publicly disgraced as punishment, making her circumstance more complex than simply one of punished sin. That she is â€Å"enveloped† by disgrace implies that her shame derives more from her surroundings than from her sin; Hawthorne’s use of â€Å"misfortune† also demonstrates the narrator’s sympathy toward Hester, again suggesting that her disgrace comes as much from the community’s display of her sin as from the sin itself. Hawthorne portrays Hester sympathetically yet again in her encounter with Chillingworth in the prison. The disguised physician declares Hester to be â€Å"a statue of ignominy, before the people† (68). Ironically, Chillingworth, in the role of a healer, here admonishes rather than helps Hes ter. His words, intended to threaten and punish Hester, in fact, spark sympathy for her in the reader. Similarly, later in the novel, while Hester and Dimmesdale talk in the forest, briefly away from the opprobrium of the Puritan community, Hawthorne describes how â€Å"Hester Prynne must take up again the burden of her ignominy† (170), on her return â€Å"to the settlement.† The use of the words â€Å"must† and â€Å"again† reveal Hester’s continual forced obligation to wear and be a symbol of shame in her community, and show again the narrator’s sympathy toward her. The fact that she is â€Å"burden[ed]† by disgrace illustrates the extreme weight of her painful, shunned experience, thus establishing the cause for the narrator’s sympathy for Hester. As Hawthorne shows empathy regarding Hester as she leaves the prison, he also condemns the harsh experience inflicted on her by the community, â€Å"The very law that condemned her†¦had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy† (71). The words â€Å"terrible ordeal† not only reinforce the narrator’s sympathy toward the protagonist, but also suggest that the narrator is judging the community, not Hester. By revealing the community’s enjoyment and cruelty in punishing Hester, Hawthorne criticizes the Puritan’s ideas of justice and mercy through both assertive diction and direct communication with the reader. When â€Å"A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys† stare â€Å"at the ignominious letter on her breast† (52), the reader sees the â€Å"eager† pleasure and excitement witnesses experience from Hester’s circumstance. Here Hester’s disgrace has become both an entertainment and an educational device. The narrator continues with, â€Å"she perchance underwent an agony†¦as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon† (52). With this description, Hester’s humanity is maintained, even when the comm unity, â€Å"all† of it, objectifies her as a teaching tool. The image of her heart â€Å"flung†, â€Å"spurn[ed] and trample[d] upon† demonstrates both the narrator’s sympathy toward Hester and animosity toward Puritan society, regardless of the age of the member. Shortly after his description of the schoolboy’s callous treatment of Hester, the narrator continues with a harsh account of the scaffold and pillory once employed upon it, â€Å"that instrument of discipline† that represented â€Å"the very ideal of ignominy† (52). The pillory reflects the nature of the community’s sense of justice, and the narrator finds it extremely harsh. The word â€Å"ideal,† often associated with perfection, suggests that the pillory signifies the ultimate desired effect of â€Å"ignominy:† public shame from which the sinner cannot turn away. Next, it would seem that Hawthorne speaks out directly and emotionally to the reader, declaring, â€Å"There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature, whatever be the delinquencies of the individual, – no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame† (52). Hawthorn’s use of word â€Å"methinks† suggests his forceful personal address on this issue of cruelty; he weighs in powerfully against the malice of the Pilgrim community that punishes Hester, even if it has not subjected her to the pillory. The word â€Å"no† implies Hawthorne’s view that this punishment is an absolute violation of human decency on the part of any community that turns a criminal into a victim by inflicting the use of a pillory. The letter â€Å"A† Hester must wear shows that the Puritans have depersonalized Hester as part of her punishment for committing adultery. The Puritan community is again portrayed as disgraceful when â€Å"John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston† (60), steps forward above the scaffold where Hester continues to stand. He â€Å"had carefully prepared himself for the occasion† (63). Clearly, the words â€Å"carefully prepared† show Wilson relishing the public opportunity to punish Hester. He delivers to the community â€Å"a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious letter† (63). His repeated reference to the scarlet letter underscores his depersonalization of Hester in her disgrace, without any consideration of her human suffering. The word â€Å"ignominious† reflects as much about the opportunistic clergyman and the punishing Pilgrim audience as it does about Hester’s sin. The narrator continues, â€Å"So forcefully did [Wilson] dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the people’s heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination† (63). The length of this sermon, and the nature of Wilson’s â€Å"rolling† delivery show the clergyman’s intention to hammer his message into the crowd and fire up its punishing judgment. Hawthorne continues to criticize the community as he places Hester historically at the site where she was first disgraced. The narrator notes, â€Å"If the minister’s voice had not kept her there, there would nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy† (211). Implied is the idea that the power of public shaming by the community causes her to remain. Specifically, by noting that the scaffold is where â€Å"the first hour of her life of ignominy† began the author criticizes the community by revealing that Hester did not experience â€Å"ignominy† until being publicly disgraced on the scaffold, even though her sin had been committed many months prior. With his use of the word â€Å"ignominy,† Hawthorne repeats throughout The Scarlet Letter the cruelty, judgmental attitude, and narrow-mindedness of Puritan society. He portrays Hester’s community as condemning sinners mercilessly, refusing to accept ideas that are foreign to their ways of living or thinking. In this way, the townspeople depersonalize Hester, suggesting that she and her disgrace are one. Hester is seen as her sin, not as a complex human being with complicated, still unknown, circumstances.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Attic Romanticism Reason And Imagination - 1705 Words

â€Å"Here, the lofty and highly much praised artistic achievement of Attic tragedy and the dramatic dithyramb presents itself before our eyes, as the common goal of both artistic drives, whose secret marriage partnership, after a long antecedent struggle, celebrated itself with such a child, simultaneously Antigone and Cassandra.† (Friedrich Nietzsche on the relationship between the Apollnian and Dionysian) How do both reason and imagination shape poetry? Reason and Imagination are two concepts that seem opposed to one another. Reason is the ability of humans to make sense of things, and is grounded in reality while Imagination is a more abstract concept that is variously described as recreating experiences without them physically occurring,†¦show more content†¦Shelley argues against this, putting forth that â€Å"whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful† defending Imagination as a basis for poetry since he is able to exemplify the positive effect Imagination has on art forms. Friedrich Nietzsche held similar views on how Reason and Imagination shape a literary work to Shelley (though Nietzsche’s views on Reason without Imagination are perhaps more extreme than Shelley’s), dividing them into his own unique categories: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Reason is represented by the Apollonian as the â€Å"the art of the sculptor† in that it produces something ordered and tangible, much as reason does, while Imagination is represented by the Dionysian as something â€Å"with which we will become best acquainted through the analogy of intoxication†, in that it is chaotic and abstract. Like Shelley, Nietzsche believes the downfall of Greek Tragedy came when Reason began to surpass Imagination. For both writers, Reason must be the basis of the ideas, and Imagination must â€Å"colour them with its own light†. Without Imagination, or the Dionysian, Poetry and other literary works are a realistic mimicking of â€Å"thoughts and emotions devoid of any trace of the ether of art†. It is clear from this that while Nietzsche believes the ApollonianShow MoreRelatedJohn Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn1778 Words   |  7 PagesJohn Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the most emblematic poems of the English Romanticism written by John Keats. The urn acts as a time machine which guides the poetic persona into the antique Greek culture, which faded into oblivion and obscurity throughout the centuries. However this urn still captures the essence of this ancient yet golden age. John Keats is one of the most celebrated English romantic poets. He is often called as the Poet of Beauty, becauseRead More Women’s Self-Discovery During Late American Romanticism / Early Realism3300 Words   |  14 Pagesbeen successfully done over and over by men. Even though these men write convincingly about a woman’s thoughts and feelings there’s no way they will really ever know. Based on a critical essay, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman writer and the Nineteenth century Literary Imagination the authors state that â€Å"Unlike her male counterpart, then, the female artist must first struggle against the effects of a socialization which makes conflict with the will of her (male) precursors seem inexpressiblyRead MoreJane Austen’s Novels and the Contemporary Social and Literary Conventions.12979 Words   |  52 Pagesvarious aspects. It means that women are deprived of free will and individuality, bearing in mind the simple aim: attractin g a suitable man who would be the one to â€Å"govern her† (Dobosiewicz 45). 1.4. Characteristics of ideal female features The reason of inventing the universal ideal of womanhood is for Dobosiewicz, clearly visible. Using Fordyce’s own words that the purpose of his work is to establish â€Å" what a woman should beâ€Å", she confirms the fact that a great deal of males pursue to achieveRead MoreCleanth Brookss Essay Irony as a Principle of Structure9125 Words   |  37 Pagesconcerning the duration and tempo of the revolution. The reader should not, therefore, look to these essays for a complete scientific system. Despite this the book does have a definite unity. This will be found in the sequence of the essays, which for this reason are best read in the order proposed. However, it would perhaps be advisable for readers unversed in philosophy to put off the chapter on reification to the very end. A few words of explanation — superfluous for many readers perhaps — are due for