Analysis Of Understanding Sam Shepard

In the Westing game I believe that Sam Westing is not dead. Based on the clue that I have, I believe he faked his death. Sam Westing is trying to frame someone for his murder.

The upper Midwest is a region often viewed as unimportant or boring due to its seemingly endless plains and uneventful daily life. In her memoir, The Horizontal World, Debra Marquart challenges this view to show her fondness of the upper Midwest. By using techniques including juxtaposition, realism, and references to well-known people/works, Marquart effectively manipulates her audience to agree with her perception of the region.

Tennessee Williams is regarded as a pioneering playwright of American theatre. Through his plays, Williams addresses important issues that no other writers of his time were willing to discuss, including addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness. Recurring themes in William’s works include the dysfunctional family, obsessive and absent mothers and fathers, and emotionally damaged women. These characters were inspired by his experiences with his own family. These characters appear repeatedly in his works with their own recurring themes. Through The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents the similar thematic elements of illusion, escape, and fragility between the two plays, proving that although similar, the themes within these plays are not simply recycled, as the differences in their respective texts highlight the differences of the human condition.

Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams are each widely considered to be two of the most illustrious and groundbreaking modern American playwrights, and their signature work -- Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire – respectively, are also their most tragic pieces. Miller’s Death of a Salesman is, ultimately, a play focusing on the tragic consequences of Willy Loman’s unwavering belief in the American dream and its associated progress and success, where he is tragically too human, believing the values that matter in family are equally important in the world of business. Similarly, Blanche DuBois in Tennessee William’s Streetcar feigns her appearance and refuses move on from her past life of luxury, holding onto and creating new desires

The human body is an object in which one lives and the medium through which one experiences oneself and the world. The human body vests claims on ideology and space; and thus participates as the site on which conflicts about belief systems and territory contest violently. Gay bodies become entangled in violence when they enter into arenas that combat certain ideas. Gay bashing illustrates incidences all in which bodies experience physical injury. In modern U.S. communities various militant conservatives individually target homosexuals in "gay bashing." Though few conservative political groups explicitly avow targeting gays for physical violence, their members individually carry out anti-gay brutality. Mathew

This creative use of allegory by Williams significantly supports the theme of sexual intimacy and desires of the play due to its impactful sequence of literal events connoting the protagonist’s life. (322)

The literary rebellion, known as realism, established itself in American writing as a direct response to the age of American romanticism’s sentimental and sensationalist prose. As the dominance of New England’s literary culture waned “a host of new writers appeared, among them Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain, whose background and training, unlike those of the older generation they displaced, were middle-class and journalistic rather than genteel or academic” (McMichael 6). These authors moved from tales of local color fiction to realistic and truthful depictions of the complete panorama of American experience. They wrote about uniquely American subjects in a humorous and everyday

Although set in the 1930s, Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust ironically resembles contemporary Hollywood. Within the glamorous setting of Hollywood, West’s characters take on multiple roles instead of assuming individual personalities. They put on and remove these imaginary personality masks, similar to those in the Commedia dell’Arte, to exhibit a range of emotions that only their character type would exhibit. Consequently, West’s characters are trapped in this restrictive atmosphere, especially at the end of the novel when they become part of a collective mob. In these manners, the characters in The Day of the Locust exhibit qualities akin to modern actors,

The great state of Mississippi gained quite a treat on March 26, 1911 and that treat was a baby named Thomas. A native of Columbus, Thomas Lanier Williams would grow up to become one of the most well-known playwrights in theatrical history. Williams did not attend school regularly due to frequent and severe illness as a child. He was homeschooled for most of his life but did graduate from high school in 1929 ( Weales,7 ). The illnesses that he suffered from included diphtheria which caused his legs to be paralyzed for almost two years. Because he rarely left the house, it would not be unusual to find a young Tennessee in a pile of books in his grandfather’s library. Williams’ father was not often home because his career caused him to travel, therefore, the playwright spent the first decade of his young adulthood with his grandparents. When he was twelve years old, Williams’ family moved to St. Louis . Throughout the course of his childhood and young adulthood, Williams’ parents struggled to hold their family together. Finally, his parents separated for good in 1947 ( Falk, Chronology ). The instability in his family was both marital and medical. The psychological disturbances that appeared in many of his family members were great influences on his writings. Thomas L. King, in his journal “Irony and Distance in The Glass Menagerie” discusses the impact of

As we examined the essay “Sonny’s Blues” and “The Rich Brother” that may not have a great deal in common, but with more analysis in to the stories it becomes clear that they are similar but still have their own uniqueness. The stories are “The rich brother” which was written by Tobias Wolff is known for short stories or memoir and “Sonny’s Blues” which was written by James Baldwin also an American writer best known for its eloquence or rhetorical force in his writing. Both writers a best known for their famous writing than span for decades.

1.The Laramie Project and Fifteen Years Later was the most tragic, intense books of the summer session. The story revolves around Matthew Shepard, a well-liked, successful college student. He was killed because of his sexual preference. Laramie, Montana is a small, rural, close-minded community. Citizens with different sexual orientations are condemned and, “Locked in the closet.” The most important moment in the play occurred during the interview with Aaron Kreifels. He felt compelled to ride his bicycle on a dusty, unfamiliar road. “I didn’t know where I was going. I was just sort of picking the way to go, which now…it makes me think that God wanted me to find him because there was no way I was going

Within modern society when a character strays away from what society depicts as morally right, the individual is frowned upon as if he or she doesn't belong. In “Angels in America” a gay fantasia on National themes, characters struggle to be themselves upon fear of whether or not society will accept them as an individual. The characters not only struggles with whether or not society will accept them, but they also struggle with their inner demons, and ultimately the question of what is truly good or evil. In this paper several characters will be analyzed and discussed from several different viewpoints.

Through critical analysis, historical research, and textual evidence, a study on Kurt Vonnegut’s background will be conducted in order to display the effects that the era in which he lived had on his writing.

Overall, both Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and Miller’s All My Sons inform their audiences about various social issues with similar and different devices in order to achieve their purpose. Both plays utilize outer dialogue in order to present the issues with the American Dream in Miller’s work and mental health with Williams. However, they also use different devices such as motifs or mood to raise other problems in society such as spousal abuse and social

Truth and illusion are utilized in Tennessee Williams “Streetcar Named Desire” and Arthur Miller's “Death of a salesman” through the use of the character; to lead the reader to a possible conclusion on the beliefs that went into the American dream that prompted people to work hard was that america was the land of opportunity while in fact that opportunity is used to manipulate those who follow this dream something that is most evidently shown in Millers main character Willy and to put forward a essential criticism of the materialistic