Memory And The Imagination In Amy Bloom's 'Sliver Water'

The beginning of the production is, for the most part, light-hearted with comic relief coming from the princes, Red Riding Hood, and Jack and his mother. The musical number “Prologue” sets up the storyline and shows the audience what familiar characters they will be seeing, it is a catchy number that gets the audience engaged from the very beginning. Sondheim, the lyricist of the musical, gives just the right amount of discourse in his music to keep progressing the storyline but keep it engaging to audiences. The over encompassing theme of the first act is to pursue what you want and your happy ending will come to you. However; this theme changes within the shorter second act. After the characters obtain their “Happily Ever After” they realize that it is not all they wished for. I feel as though this fundamental shift Sondheim and Lapine portray is very deliberate; they want to make the audience feel for these characters and their loss and pain. The music of this musical plays a key role in this, more so than the script in my opinion. The compelling melodies and heart-wrenching lyrics, like in “No One is Alone”, highlights the character’s pain and keeps the audience emotionally investing in the production. While the second act portrays a more depressing storyline, the end-like any good fairytale-shows that you can

In the book “A Long Way Gone” music plays a role as a healer and a saviour.

The story mentions at one point that the music stops and so does the barmaid. It has her full attention and she waits for it to start back. The music is the manipulator and she is its marionette waiting for it to guide her again. A few more examples that music soothes and comforts the soul are the mother gently humming while Sonny is out on the streets, Sonny’s brother, the narrator, whistles to keep from crying after reconciliation with Sonny fails. At first glance these may seem to be insignificant details, but when analyzed they prove that music is a source people lean on for comfort whenever they are in a state of worry or despair.

     The music helped in elaborating this great film. As I mentioned in class different instruments helped create different moods for different scenes in the movie. We heard the cello and the violin to create sadness and remorse. The flute created eeriness and the trumpet created awareness. I thought these were instruments and tools that help make this film extraordinary.

Usually, music from the side of the listener is heard differently, it could be appreciated but music from the side of the originator, from the person who is playing it has a different feeling. The interaction between the instruments, the players and the band in general is a beautiful thing to witness. And as the narrator explained, as one instrument beckoned to the other, as as another instrument answered with an equal amount of sonorous beauty, it created a cacophony and beautiful sounds that the singer called “the

Memory is the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information. In times of trauma the mind has been known to do immaculate things, in particular repressing memories. In the culture of the south is infamous for the repressing of memories, the civil war for example. The culture as a whole is known for trying to suppress and ignore the things that cause it distress or simply just want to ignore. In The Prince of Tides the repression of memories plays a crucial part in the novel. The repression of memories sheds light on the tragic culture of the south and how family secrets can have damaging effects that repression can do to the psyche of the mind. Throughout the novel each character reveals a more about the repression of memories in a southern culture and how it can impact a person

Thomas Carlyle said,“Music is well said to be the speech of angels”("John Bartlett Familiar Quotation."). Music is the speech of angels because music is universal just like the thought of angels. Music speaks to everybody in a different way. Music is a way for people to escape their feelings and know that they are not the only one in this world that feels that way. Music is the universal language of the world and can be interpreted in so many different ways. The theme is the author's message that can be interpreted in many ways. Each song uses different elements to create their theme. The Eli Young Band’s song, “Guinevere”, uses imagery, repetition, vivid diction, and a wistful tone to create the theme of people getting hurt so much that they

Soundtracks to films often strive to represent the themes and feeling of the film, and direct the audience towards particular emotions. A good soundtrack not only allows for the listener to understand the film better, but it should also bring to mind particular scenes, images, or characters. Soundtracks for books can do the same. In my creation of a soundtrack for Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, I strove to encompass Lauren’s journey throughout the novel and the various emotions that she experiences. Since Lauren is reflecting on her experiences, her journey becomes central to how the audience feels and experiences the emotional aspects of the book. The songs not only represent Lauren, but also the entire feel and theme of the text. The songs follow along with Lauren, with her despair, death, and the need for survival. As I scoured through song after song, I tried to connect each song choice with a particular moment in Lauren’s story and the hopelessness of a dystopian future Butler warns her audience about.

The most obvious thing that is important to the character is his adopted daughter, Anna. Throughout the narrative he shows that he cares for her happiness and her health. She is unable to speak clearly and tell her own story, so the character (father) tells it for her. The character is trying to show the reader how effective music can be as a therapy, and is using his own experience to prove the worth of musical therapy. He gives example after example of how music improved the life of his daughter, and how she looks forward to her day with music so eagerly. One line he says, “Ask her a direct question and you will get a stammered word or two at most. Play a song and she will begin to shout out the words, even if she has never heard them before. ”It is a testament to how much music can change her attitude and behaviours. It seems to fill her with confidence and strength where usually she is frail, a picture painted by the quote above.

Many more moments like these are worked into the story. The mother hums a hymn under her breath; it comforts her while she watches for Sonny, who is out on the streets (419). The narrator whistles to keep from crying after Sonny refuses his attempts at reconciliation (428). These bits of music are tiny but significant; small musics performed by non-musicians demonstrate how music creates good feelings. The mother may be singing off-key and the narrator probably whistles flat, but because of their nature as song these tunes are suffused with bits of happiness, and by making the music, the

Constance Squire’s Running Out Of Music portrays Major Collins as a minor character, but in reality his misunderstanding of music and the importance of it plays in Lucinda’s development of identity plays an integral role in the short story through the theme of the unknown importance of music.

A certain image, scent or sound can bring back moments that may have been forgotten. The speaker is astonished by the dreams she has of her mother. Her mother died very ill, the person who she was when she died was merely a shell of who she truly was. She describes her as “so much better than I remembered.” (Monro, 151). At the end of her mother’s life she could not hear her voice. She remembers her “mother’s liveliness of face and voice before her throat muscles stiffened [as] a woeful, impersonal mask fastened itself over her features.” (Monro, 151) In her dreams she was able to hear her mother’s voice again, opposed to the reality before her death. A mother’s voice is beautiful, and there is no other sound that compare to something as unique. Elliot writes “The unconscious sifts through memory, and then offers up details either strangely distorted or implausibly combined. As in art, as in story, dreams too, render experience metonymically.” (Elliot, 79). With time memories inevitably fade, but the dreams bring a sense of comfort and replenish the image of her mother. “How could I have forgotten this?” (Monro, 151). Heller writes that this scene “serves as a springboard from which the narrator launches into a story being told by her mother.” (Heller, 1). This scene leads us to the central conflict in the story of her mother’s life, and assists in understanding the conflict

can be more flawed than the average person, and portrayed was the fact that the

While well-crafted sound design and sound effects are so very necessary in the creation of a film, music touches the emotion, the psyche, and the things you cannot see. Sound design and effects don’t do this nearly as efficiently and naturally. Without music it would be much more difficult to follow the emotional ups and downs of a film. (Freer)

“…the tale always reveals what has been called his tragic flaw, a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness.” Miller mentions this in his reading as he explains that to have a flaw is not always something bad, but something good and something you should accept, rather than believing you are someone you truly are not. A great example of this comes from the novel “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. Throughout this novel, the main character, Okonkwo, is known to be the complete opposite of his father just because he was not successful like the rest of the