Mud (1983) is one of Maria Irene Fornes 's best plays. Like Fefu and her Friends, it is set in ' 'the preindustrial society ' ' (Savaran 2012, 56); the incidents take place in a small unnamed rural town in the 1930s when feminism was not firmly established, and women were struggling to get their rights. The play revolves around three characters, Mae, the only female character in the play, and two male characters, Lloyd, her illiterate foster brother and former boyfriend, and Henry, her neighbour and new boyfriend. The society in which Mae lives is a patriarchal one where she was previously dominated by her father and later by Lloyd. In such a society women are considered subordinate to and of lower rank than men. They are looked upon as …show more content…
Explaining her relationship with Lloyd to Henry, Mae says: He [Lloyd] has always been here since he was little. My dad brought him in. He said that Lloyd was kind and that he would keep me company. He said he was old and tired [...]. My dad was good but he was sad and hopeless and when my mom died he went to hell with himself. He got sick and died and he left Lloyd here [...]. I don 't know what we are. We are related but I don 't know what to call it. We are not brother and sister. We are like animals who grow up and mate. (Fornes, Mud 1986, 28)
Both Mae and Lloyd suffer from poverty. However, Lloyd is careless; he mindlessly looks after their pig and farms the land. He is highly dependent on Mae; besides, he is satisfied with his own status. On the other hand, Mae toils in ironing clothes in order to support herself and Lloyd; she is the sole breadwinner of the family. Additionally, she prepares food. Mae is unsatisfied with her own conditions; she yearns to improve herself and her life, and plans to escape from the sexual and economic exploitation of Lloyd. She is aware that her aspirations can be achieved through education. Consequently, she attends literacy classes at a school; she as Mala Renganathan expresses it, ' 'dreams of educating herself and making herself literate ' ' (2010, 8). Lloyd is entirely unlike Mae, he is not eager to learn and improve himself;
Transition. Clara didn’t let her age or resources get in the way of her goals. She earned her own money to pay for her books by sewing and writing letters for neighbor who didn’t know how to read or write.
An illustration of this is when Helen describes Myra as having a “rotten-sweetish smell as of bad fruit.” Also, when Helen asks what she will become when she is older, she looks very confused and says, “I will help my mother, and work in the shop.” Helen replies to this by saying that she will become an airplane hostess. While Helen’s family does not have less money than Myra’s, she seems to have some issues when she says she is the only student in the classroom who, “carried a lunch pail and ate peanut-butter sandwiches in the high, bare, mustard-colored cloakroom…” She feels she is in danger because it could be somethings that separates her from the better off and popular children in the class. With this considered, if either of them had families with money like a classmate named Gladys Healey, they would not have differences they could bond
Jeannette and her siblings adapt to self- sufficiency from a young age, from being emotionally and physically neglected by their parents. The children don’t expect anything so they learn to work with what they have and what opportunities come their way. Jeannette saw the suffering of the family and took this leadership for the family guiding her sibling in the correct path.
As a child, Jeannette’s sense of wonder and curiosity in the world undermine the need for money. During her young adult years, a new wave of insecurity associated with her poor past infects her. Finally, as an experienced and aged woman, Jeannette finds joy and nostalgia in cherishing her poverty- stricken past. It must be noted that no story goes without a couple twists and turns, especiallydefinitely not Jeannette Walls’. The fact of the matter is that growing up in poverty effectively craftsed, and transformsed her into the person she becomeshas become. While statistics and research show that living in poverty can be detrimental to a child’s self-esteem, Jeannette Walls encourages children living in poverty to have ownership over their temporary situation, and never to feel inferior because of past or present socio-economic
In the short story “Mud,” by Geoffrey Forsyth, a first person narrator is used to guide the reader in identifying with the daily internal struggles that the main character faces while attempting to cope with the grief, “mud,” of losing his family. When the narrator first notices his dead relatives alive and well, yet covered in “mud,” he acts as though this is an entirely normal occurrence. Forsyth introduces the characters in order of their deaths starting with the grandma. The narrator's grief, the “mud” his relatives are covered in, seems as though it is not weighing down on him as heavily as one would think, saying that, “Today is not a good day… People are counting on me.” Secondly, the narrator’s father appears. Upon seeing his father,
Furthermore, this is about how she has been in poverty ever since she was a little girl, how it evolved her, and made her the type of person she is. Poverty: This starts off while Ms. Anne Moody was a little girl her father
Many people define their lives by the relationships within their family. They are someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, or someone’s mother or father. The loss of a family member, especially due to death, creates a radical readjustment to people’s day to day lives and how they see and feel about themselves. Sometimes the process of grief can last over several years and how it is mentally processed and dealt with is different for everyone. “Mud” by Geoffrey Forsyth, shows an insightful view of a grieving man who had already lost his father and grandmother and is now just coming to terms with the loss of his wife two years prior. The entire story is written in first person point of view which allows for the reader to fully engage themselves in the grief and strife of the narrator’s life. Geoffrey’s story “Mud” begins in the home of the narrator where he encounters these dead family members and has to decide if he is ready to move on from his grief and say goodbye or stay behind and be consumed by it.
One point this author makes is his mother did not had a formal education, but had the ability to manage her time, multitask, and perform her job competently.
Have you ever been in a situation where your family couldn’t provide that much for education? Are you influenced by anyone that’s older than you? Marjane lives in Iran, where most of the revolution war between Iran and Iraq occurs. There’s a lot of discrimination that happens there for equal rights towards women. Marjane comes from a really wealthy family and they took this women away from her family when she was little to be there maid. Esperanza lives in Chicago where she wanted to become a writer. There is six people living in one bedroom with one bathroom, Esperanza is poor so her parents can only afford a little. Even though Esperanza knows that she doesn’t have much she tries to make the best of it. In Persepolis and the House On Mango Street, both characters are influenced by someone older than them, they want to help their family, and they both have trouble in school.
I recall growing up when my mother would lecture me prior entering a store. My mother would say, when we go in the store, do not touch anything because she did not have money to pay for broken items; or do you have the money to pay for it? I grew up poor, on welfare, and lived in the projects, so I can relate to Sylvia. However, my mother instilled in me that being poor do not define me, but that education is vital for survival. Just because one the lack resources for a better education, do not mean one must give up; perseverance and determination make you strong. If you think it, you can achieve it was my mother’s motto.
The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses
Sarah and her children discuss problems on the farm. This is because Sarah is lower than Edna on the social ladder. Sarah may not be poor, but she is not wealthy like the Pontelliers and thus must work. This makes her a much more necessary part of the household. So her choices and opinion are much more valued to her family then Edna’s opinions would be to her family. Edna may be able to do things that Sarah cannot do, such as throw dinner parties, or even attend them, but because Sarah works she gets more respect and does not have to end up committing suicide like Edna does.
Throughout the story there are several aspects of the Protagonist’s character that play a major role in the shaping of her future. During her childhood she
Mae’s best friend, Annie, gets her a job at one of the most prestigious companies in the world, the Circle. In her beginnings at the company, Mae focuses on her work but soon learns that another, almost more important, aspect of the job is keeping up with social media, which prompts her to pay more attention and rise to a very high achieving number in the PartiRank. At a company party, a mysterious new man appears named Kalden, a man who complicates Mae’s life at the Circle and her relationship with Annie, who thinks he might be a spy. As Mae continues to rise in station at her CE job, her work-home balance becomes increasingly complicated, resulting in a huge fight with her family and Mae breaking the law. In response, Mae goes transparent, and enforces
She is so naïve and adolescent that she leaves her worldly activities and gets ready to go out and spend time with her boyfriend. She gives him her possessions: her “labor” and “leisure” too (l. 7) for his politeness.