American plays

In Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby,” the narrator explicitly expresses the abnormality of Bartleby’s features by illustrating Bartleby to have machine-like characteristics. The narrator establishes the fundamental depictions of Bartleby as soon as they start to interact with each other through their work. The narrator always interacts with Bartleby when he is working, which reveals that Bartleby lives off of his work. Similarly to how Bartleby’s life and soul is figuratively pulled out…

Throughout the play Shakespeare explores leadership through Henry. One of the first qualities we admire in Henry is his ability to keep his temper, even when insulted and provoked. This is shown in the line “we are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for”. Here, Shakespeare’s use of sarcasm and alliteration are proof that Henry is speaking with care and thought, rather than with an emotional outburst. This makes him a much more effective and…

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen is considered to be one of the greatest realistic dramas written, following the character Nora in her secretive and complex life. Being a well-made play, all is naturalistic and not overly dramatized. However, Ibsen makes use of features within the setting to subtly convey and emphasize the story and its messages. One such feature concerns the doors within the house. At the beginning, he describes four doors in the house: two at the back, and one on either side. In…

Being accepted by other parties plays a very important role. A child will develop normally both emotionally and mentally if it is accepted and receives affection. However, over protection and over affection will have the reverse effect as this will lead to dependency and immaturity. On…

Madness is an idea that has been widely explored and theorized throughout the ages, particularly within Shakespearean literature and other works along those lines. It is nearly impossible to establish a working definition of madness itself, because there are so many different forms of madness shown throughout time, as well as different contexts. It breaks down to subjectivity, along with time and place, and situational circumstances. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” a perhaps unusual form…

The Flower Girl’s Great Transformation “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” In George Bernard Shaw’s fictional play, Pygmalion, Liza Doolittle also known as The Flower Girl, is the protagonist and is under an experiment for six months. Liza lives with two old gentlemen, Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering. She later discovers her new identity, a better lifestyle where there is education, etiquettes, social class, and fashion…

The First Time I Got Bullied Tymir Vickers Have you ever been bullied before? Well I have this is how it all happened, it was my first day at John B Kelly Elementary school 8:00 2016 Philadelphia I was in fifth grade and it was my first day I was kind of shy until I met to people named Ciani Barkers and Nasai Gordon. They showed me around the school they told me about themselves and I told them about me. Me and my friends were walking down the hall with each other that’s when I heard…

The namesake of the play, “Macbeth” is a man who faced a decision between his own personal passion and his moral obligations and duties. The two choices pulled at him and seemed to torment him even after he made a decision. Through the conflict that Macbeth felt because of his decisions, the reader can better empathize with him, and can obtain a more profound lesson from the story concerning decisions between personal passions and moral obligations. Macbeth is not what one would call “perfect.”…

Feminism has gained a new definition a new understanding of female roles since the Elizabethan Era. Hamlet, a play written by William Shakespeare, is about a young prince, Hamlet, being visited by his father’s apparition urging him to avenge his death by murdering Prince Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius. All the while, Hamlet is enraged by his mother’s hasty marriage to Claudius and is showering his supposed love, Ophelia, with gifts and words of affection. Queen Gertrude and Ophelia are blindly…

The Crucible and 12 Angry Men are two plays that expressed the same theme of justice differently throughout each play. From their differing time periods and setting, both plays explore the justice system within society and the role people play within the system. Both 12 Angry Men and The Crucible have similarities, both plays have main characters that are attempting to right wrongs that they see being committed in their respected plays. Once the authors introduced the characters to us they then…