The Road to Mecca – Study guide questions
Exercise page 75
1) 3
2) Helen, she is the protagonist of the play. The entire play is played out in Helen’s home. She is also the reason Elsa comes to New Bethesda, to visit Helen because she is worried about her emotional state. Helen is also the reason for Marius’s visits; he cares for her and tries to fit her into his world. All of the characters gather at Helen’s home to discuss her emotional state and future.
3) Elsa relates to Helen through her “Mecca” she sees it as Helen wants it to be seen and she has been drawn to it from the first moment she saw it as she states “ Believe me Helen, when I saw your “Mecca” for the first time, I just stood there and gaped.”(Page 22). To Elsa,
Helen’s
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Another example is the women Elsa meets beside the road that was evicted from the farm by the “baas” because her husband died.
Trust: The trust between Helen and Elsa how it is broken in the middle of the play but built up again at the end.
Journeys: The journey Helen takes her entire life to complete her “Mecca” and the one that lies ahead now that her “Mecca” is completed. Elsa’s journey to forget all the negative things in her life and to move on to a better place. Marius’s journey to save Helen ever since she started her “Mecca” as well as the journey he completed since his wife passed, and in the end of the play to forget Helen and how he feels about her.
Exercise page 81
1) At first glance I found the art strange because it reminded me of a graveyard, but you look at the individual pieces you can see the different images that she tried to depict, but I still don’t find them attractive.
2) I think she would have been a creative person with an interesting imagination, who loved making statues and incorporating them in her garden. I think she also had a love for animals and the middle-east with the different images she depicts.
3) Yes, there is a sculpture that looks like a church which reminds me of
This shows that Helen knows she is responsible for the war and is the cause of many sufferings. She blames
3. Some of the characters in the play are blind to the truth. Choose three characters and discuss why they are blind to
Amidst the journey of the last woman executed in Iceland is the ‘nature [that] is watchful of all of us.’ Kent parallels the protagonist Agnes’ story alongside the force of the harsh Icelandic climate and country that ‘is as awake as you and I’ and often determines key events in the novel. The ominous foreshadowing of death represented in elements of the landscape highlights how the country is an essential aspect of the novel, often adding to the dramatic effect. Agnes’ road to spiritual redemption, both religion based and personal, is greatly influenced by the natural occurrences of the country. Ultimately, the harsh Icelandic conditions impact the lives
Lena revisits her ancestry after a terrorist attack in Jordan. When a voice beckons her for “the time to return home” she obeys. She had been called back “to the land of [her] ancestors” who “had tracked [her] down and [were] speaking” to her (Howe, 20). Lena’s mother had died in childbirth, leaving Lena an orphan. Ezol guides her to reconstruct the history of the Miko Kings: to “unwrap the team’s stories as one might open birthday gifts. Out of order, but with a gift for celebration” (Howe, 22). Ezol’s nightly stories allow Lena to reconstruct lost history, in which “time opens like a coffin”(Howe, 33).
Helen’s death became a meaningful experience during Lily’s adulthood. Lily’s younger sister, Helen had found herself in an insecure position as a young pregnant woman where she considered herself no longer fitted in society. Instead, of moving back to her parents, she moves in with Lily where she could not do anything to prevent Helen from committing suicide. This demonstrates to the readers, how tough it was for Lily to lose her sister, knowing that she had a great and long life ahead of her. Instead of Lily doing what she enjoyed the most all she could think about was her sister’s death and feeling nothing but, hopelessness and, pain. The readers are able to note how significant this passage is because losing someone close and building good memories was a strong thing for Lily to let go. She preferred staying home in bed and there were even times where everything bothered her such as the birds chirping and the kids laughing, which made her considered in quitting her job as a teacher. In conclusion, as Lily slowly begins to recover,
their happiness when she is forced to move to the Congo. She sacrifices Leah because she leaves
children. Her sacrifices helped to push the story of a family holding onto to who they were, and
Helen explains to him that drugs do not explain violence. He still blames Vaccaro for all the crimes. The only crime he admits to doing is the time he killed a drug dealer for 10,000 dollars. He faults himself for ever getting involved with Vaccaro. He says he wants to apologize to the Harvey’s
Having no other option Menelaos goes to the house of Theoklymenos to beg for food. He is turned away and Helen enters the scene having just returned from the oracle. They meet each other and it is not 'love at first sight' as Helen was promised. Nevertheless Menelaos soon believes that his new-found wife is the real Helen.. She has remained loyal to him unlike his deceitful apparition. He wants to take her away and she disobediently refuses. Helen comes up with a plan of her own to reunite the two, a unique twist in the typical hero-rescues-damsel story. The roles have been changed and Helen is in charge. She, like Thenoe, is not an obedient female-she is loyal. Helen then turns to Theoklymenos and play-acts as if her husband has died. She feigns obedience to her (soon-to-be) husband to lure him into allowing the plan to work.
As I walked into the first gallery, I saw a wood sculpture that stood in the
trying to help her dead brother be redeemed by the gods. Her pathetic martyrdom automatically
Next, comparing the stages of Elsa’s “coming out” and the paradigm between coming out and peoples initial reactions. In the movie Elsa lacks control of her power, during her coronation she gets into an altercation with her sister Anna, causing her too emit a barricade of
Even in her state of anger she cannot help but once again be the restrained and subdued one in their relationship. Despite all of the happiness she has found with Rochester she still cannot bring herself to stay in a relationship in which she sacrifices part of herself, because she doesn’t know how to reconcile her need feel like she belongs and is taken care of while at the same time remaining uncorrupted.
Helen was designed to show the struggles of the many people who lived in such conditions that their greatest wish was to be in heaven. They had abandoned hope of improving their social class and rather sought to remain as faithful as possible. Helen’s quiet, almost angelic, piety was a symbol to those people of strength and sacrifice. Her death especially proved her strength as well as solidifying her connection to Maria. Helen, through the mix of these two things, became a combination of tragedy as well as victory, a memory of her sister and inspiration to all those like
her all, by that I mean, she worked two jobs to make sure her children ate properly and