In the play, “night, Mother” by Marsha Norman talks about Thelma Cates who tries to stop her daughter, Jessie, from committing suicide. Thelma Cates uses tactics and arguments in order to persuade her daughter to stay alive; however she fails at the end. In this essay, insights will be given at the argument that Thelma uses to persuade her daughter into staying alive. More precisely, Thelma Cates talks about the future to her daughter in hopes that it will change her mind. She also mentions life after death and she uses the guilt card to see if her daughter will change her mind. Firstly, the mother tries to imagine the future in order to convince Jessie to postpone her decision in committing suicide.
The first set of arguments that Thelma …show more content…
She absolutely wants to stop her from killing herself. Cates ends deciding that “none of them [are] ever setting foot” again in the house where Jessie and her are living (1004). But all that does not change anything for Jessie, they were not …show more content…
W can assume that the family comes from a Christian background, where Jessie mentions Jesus’ name (1002). Cates tries to scare Jessie scaring by saying that everyone is “We’re all afraid to die” (1002). An emphasis was put when she was mentioning “afraid” since no one knows what really happens after death. Furthermore, Cates says “You don’t know what dead is like. What if it’s like an alarm clock and you can’t wake up so you can’t shut it off” (1002). Cates hope to imply an imagination into Jessie’s mind of an alarm clock which never turns off that follows you everywhere. This argument is quite persuasive because it doesn’t have anything to do with religion. It is comparing death and afterlife to be like a non-stopping morning alarm clock which is annoying. However, Jessie seems as if she doesn’t really mind dying and is not afraid of what will be there in the afterlife. Moreover, Thelma reminds her daughter that killing herself is a sin and that she will definitively go to hell if she does that. But Jessie does not care since she believes that “Jesus was a suicide” too (1002). After all, it can be concluded that she is not sure of her faith when she mentions “I didn’t know I thought that” (1002) after mentioning that Jesus was a sin. We can see that after this, Cates just didn’t bother mentioning anything about death and afterlife because of the remarks that Jessie has
The first set of arguments that Thelma …show more content…
She absolutely wants to stop her from killing herself. Cates ends deciding that “none of them [are] ever setting foot” again in the house where Jessie and her are living (1004). But all that does not change anything for Jessie, they were not …show more content…
W can assume that the family comes from a Christian background, where Jessie mentions Jesus’ name (1002). Cates tries to scare Jessie scaring by saying that everyone is “We’re all afraid to die” (1002). An emphasis was put when she was mentioning “afraid” since no one knows what really happens after death. Furthermore, Cates says “You don’t know what dead is like. What if it’s like an alarm clock and you can’t wake up so you can’t shut it off” (1002). Cates hope to imply an imagination into Jessie’s mind of an alarm clock which never turns off that follows you everywhere. This argument is quite persuasive because it doesn’t have anything to do with religion. It is comparing death and afterlife to be like a non-stopping morning alarm clock which is annoying. However, Jessie seems as if she doesn’t really mind dying and is not afraid of what will be there in the afterlife. Moreover, Thelma reminds her daughter that killing herself is a sin and that she will definitively go to hell if she does that. But Jessie does not care since she believes that “Jesus was a suicide” too (1002). After all, it can be concluded that she is not sure of her faith when she mentions “I didn’t know I thought that” (1002) after mentioning that Jesus was a sin. We can see that after this, Cates just didn’t bother mentioning anything about death and afterlife because of the remarks that Jessie has