Analysis Of ' The Bell Jar ' A Streetcar Named Desire ' And ' Hamlet '

Death and desire have been linked closely together ever since Freud identified Eros (the instinct of life, love and sexuality) and Thanatos (the instinct of death and destruction) as two coinciding and conflicting drives within human being (Cranwell). In Tennesse Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) these fundamental drives of Eros and Thanatos dominate the story from the beginning to the end. This becomes particularly clear through the narrative of the protagonist of the play, Blanche DuBois, to whom the inextricable link between desire and death leads to tragedy.

‘Death of a Salesman’ and ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ are two texts that vary in several different ways but are fundamentally similarly themed, as they both centre on individuals who undergo several catastrophes which lead to their untimely deaths. Whilst it is clear that Miller has made death and suffering inevitable from just the ominous opening of the play - evident by the Loman’s kitchen having ‘three chairs’, in which the number 3 is often associated with bad luck, as opposed to four (the number of people living in the household) which foreshadows the death of a single character later on in the play – Keats also gives an impression of death being inevitable in the poem from the setting of the poem, which is implied to be autumn – the season

It is not an uncommon occurrence for a person to attend a funeral in their lifetime. They will experience the heavy feeling in their heart, hear the moaning and crying, and observe all the grief-stricken people, wiping tear-stained cheeks and wearing depressing, dark colors. Each person in this scene is attempting to comprehend what they have lost. Loss, whether physical or mental, can dismantle a person. The bonds and connections that people forge with each other defines their existence and gives them the drive to continue living, but when these bonds are broken the brain cannot cope with the detachment. A person is particularly vulnerable in this state and will do anything to replace the gaping hole that lingers in their life. In the novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and the Shakespearean play Hamlet, two women are put through various kinds of loss. While these women--Trudy and Gertrude--appear weak, they willingly accept the enchantments of Claude and Claudius only after enduring hardships which skew their judgments, revealing the effect of trauma and depression when a relationship is lost.

In these three literary pieces a prevalent theme is death. Death may be defined as the end-ing period of physical life. However, throughout the development of these stories, it was possible to distinguish plenty of physical but even non-physical death as well. This absolutely

Suicide was a major problem among many generations of teens that grew up in brutal societies. In the 1950s, suicide was not widely mentioned, and many people suffered without any treatments. In the novel The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, Esther tried to kill herself multiple times. Her life was planned by the society, and she was pressured into fitting in with others. Esther’s mental problems took over her life, and caused her to lose out on her teen years. She was a successful college student, who won scholarships, and was working at a fashion magazine. However, she went through many events that caused her to accept suicide as a way of running away from her problems. In the novel The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, Esther’s mental illness began to have an effect on her when she interfered with Buddy, Marco, and Dr. Gordon.

Over the past semester, we have studied many different works of literature. out of all the poems, stories, and plays, there are two works that stick out in my mind. These two works are Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Death of a Salesman is a play that takes place in the 1950s. The story is about a salesman named Willy Loman, and his family. At this point in his life, Willy is struggling to make ends meet. He is being underpaid to the point where he needs to ask his neighbor for money every week, he is struggling to keep his broken family together, he is trying to repair his broken relationship with his son Biff, and he is suffering from some form of dementia. Throughout the play, we get to see how Willy got to the position he is in, and how he tries to repair all of the broken aspects in his life. The Bell Jar is a novel that was published in Europe in 1963, and then in the United States in 1971. The book takes place in the Northeastern region of the Unities States in the 1950s. Esther Greenwood is a young woman who is spending her summer in New York for an internship. While Esther is narrating the novel, it becomes apparent that she is suffering from some form of mental illness, most likely to be schizophrenia. As her situation gets worse and worse, she makes multiple suicide attempts until she is put in an asylum. Readers are then left with the question, “Will Esther be okay in the end?” For this essay, I will be

The fear of death is arguably the most unwarranted of all fears. Most individuals can find a way to temporarily put death to the side or behind them, however in the long run, death is inescapable. Time is what makes death indestructible because in reality time only moves in one direction. Some may say that it only moves forward, but there is only one reason for which time comes to a stop and that is death. In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Blanche DuBois’ sexual desire produces the idea that desire results in death.

Hamlet and Horatio then approaches them, with the former asking about death in general to the gravediggers. One of the gravediggers hands Hamlet the skull of Yorick, the old king’s jester. Contrasting with Hamlet’s initial perception of death and the afterlife, his conversion with the gravediggers portrays a transition from an inherent fear of the afterlife to a more inevitable condition. To analyze the interpretation of the text during this particular moment in the play, I examined two film adaptations of this play: one directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh in 1996, and another one from 1990 starring Mel Gibson as as the same titular character. While both actors succsededare skilled in their own wayscraft, they interpret the scenes differently, as slight nuances lead to an overall different effect on the

Believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is still globally studied and analyzed today. Along with personal reflections and countless interpretations of the piece, thousands of pieces of artwork have been created based on the play. To me, the three pieces that most accurately depict the ideas and events within the play are Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard’s Hamlet and His Mother Seeing His Father 's Ghost, Paul Albert Steck’s Ophelia, and Benjamin West’s Ophelia and Laertes. In the following essay, I will be describing the media and creation of the artwork itself as well as the accuracy each piece entails.

Sylvia Plath’s, “The Bell Jar” follows the story of Esther Greenwood. The novel starts out with Esther in New York City as an intern for a magazine. Esther has this numbness throughout her time in New York. Her downfall starts when she gets rejected from the writing course she applied to at Harvard.. Esther loses the ability to read, write, even sleep. She hovers over several ideas of suicide and fails and finally decides to hide away and overdose on sleeping pills. This final attempt lands her in a mental asylum. In the asylum she meets a proper psychologist and receives proper treatment. She finally feels like she is free from the depression she felt, the bell jar she was trapped in. This depression or madness did not fall upon Esther suddenly. She felt the pressure to conform to society's expectations but also had ideas about her own future that did not satisfy those expectations. Esther may have been mad but society drove her to this madness.

Our modern literature holds many works from brilliant writers that challenge readers to think outside the box. Shakespeare’s play Hamlet never failed to impress scholars from all over the world because the play can be interpreted in many different ways. Hamlet is performed in all over the theater and never ceases to amaze those who read Hamlet and know the play by heart. Plays in theater can open a brand new perspective of the play Hamlet because readers can actually visualize scenes from Hamlet through the actors and have their own opinions about the play. I choose to analyze and review Hamlet because this play intrigues me due to the facts that the play contains many elements that would not normally exist in a play.

A person’s death is commonly responsible for affecting those close to him or her. This relationship between death and change is prominent in many literary works but a notable example is present in the play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare. The play’s plot is driven by the death of King Hamlet and by the appearance of the ghost of King Hamlet, although he only shows up in three instances through the entire play. The ghost has influences beyond the concrete plot of Hamlet by also having an impact on Hamlet’s mental state. The first two visits from the ghost shapes Hamlet’s behaviors and thinking.

Depression is a four-letter word. Despite its prevalence, people just do not talk about it due to its stigma. Depression manifests itself in sufferers with recurrent thoughts of death and dying. Sometimes these thoughts progress into thoughts and even plans for suicide. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath writes from the protagonist’s point of view, who is known as Esther Greenwood; therefore readers witness first hand Esther’s personal journey as her thoughts become increasingly centered on death and she becomes disenchanted with what the world has to offer. As a novel about suicide and death, it is also oddly obsessed with babies and birth. Death and birth are ways for Esther to think about the most extreme transformation of herself in which the death of everything she resents about herself is to be reborn into a self entirely new and authentic, expelled of all the hypocrisy, inadequacy, and fear of domestic life. Esther 's attempted suicide is just the most radical situation she seeks out in order to undergo a transformation of herself. In The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood’s descent into the pits of depression as the protagonist is revealed by the images and symbols of death and birth that permeate, and her suicide is a metaphor for her attempt at self-transformation, a rebirth into a more authentic self.

Tardat’s haunting novel, A Sweet Death, and Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, both closely examine through the lens of the protagonists, both of whom are young women, deep psychological illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and dissatisfaction with societal expectation, and the struggle to live a liberated life, without restraint. In both novels the protagonists spiral down into their own despair, ruminate about death, and contemplate suicide. The lack of control both characters feel over their own lives manifests itself in suicidal ideation, knowing if they can’t control their lives, death is the only control they can salvage. Both novels deal with feminist themes, about the beauty and social standards demanded by our patriarchal society. But where A Sweet Death ends on a dark note in which the protagonist ultimately succeeds in taking her own life, The Bell Jar suggests an optimistic future for the protagonist.

There is a commonly used literary theme in modernist literary movements: death. The Victorian age was well known for its customs related to death and that death was considered high importance. The Victorian Era was well known for having a fascination with death and dying. World War one brought about the writing of more controversial issue about the war and the damage it did to the soldiers who fought in it and the affects it had no the home front. Literary novelist used the influence of the death of the Victorian age and deaths and tragedies of World War One to write novels that consisted of literal and metaphorical death amongst characters. Looking at Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and James Joyce’s The Dead there is a widely used theme of death that builds around the characters and shapes the way the characters develop and assist plot progression.