Use of Time in Waiting for Godot and Mrs. Dalloway Essay

In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” author Kate Chopin presents the character of Mrs. Louis Mallard. She is an unhappy woman trapped in her discontented marriage. Unable to assert herself or extricate herself from the relationship, she endures it. The news of the presumed death of her husband comes as a great relief to her, and for a brief moment she experiences the joys of a liberated life from the repressed relationship with her husband. The relief, however, is short lived. The shock of seeing him alive is too much for her bear and she dies. The meaning of life and death take on opposite meaning for Mrs. Mallard in her marriage because she lacked the courage to stand up for herself.

‘Mrs. Dalloway’, by Virginia Woolf is a derivative text of ‘The Hours’, written by Michael Cunningham. The novels both share an important theme of mental health. The circumstances of mental health are commonly sympathetic, and empathetic. The characters Septimus and Clarissa in ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ and Richard, Laura Brown, and Virginia Woolf in ‘The Hours’ show the strongest symbols for this theme. Most of the problems and treatments these characters face are in direct result of the age they live in. Both novels express a relationship between era, illnesses and treatments.

Woolf uses multiple focalizers in Mrs. Dalloway to create a new point of view in the story. Woolf indicates these changes through subtle transitions that are hardly noticed at, as the story shifts to another viewpoint of a character. Sometimes we are lead between focalizers in ways, such as at the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway when Clarissa begins to transition into the past reminiscing. This is shown through subtle changes in tense that Woolf uses, as she switches from present

Time is the advancement and continuation of existence and events. Authors use time to their advantage when writing stories. Time can be altered to make points and draw readers’ attention to certain things. Nathaniel Hawthorne manipulates time in A Scarlet Letter to alter the reader’s perspective on situations among Hester, Dimmesdale, Pearl and Chillingworth and Puritan Society.

The comparative study of texts and their appropriations reflect the context and values of their times, demonstrating how context plays a significant role. Virginia Woolf’s novel modernists Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Steven Daldry’s post modernists film The Hours (2002), an extrapolation, explore the rapid change of social and philosophical paradigms of the 20th century, focusing on women whose rich inner lives are juxtaposed with their outer lives. They place the characters in their respective context, to respond to, the horrors of the consequences of war and AIDS and the vagaries and difficulties of relationships, sexuality and mental illness. Through their differing intertextual perspectives the film and novel represent similar values, within different contextual concerns.

Mrs. Dalloway will continue to develop into a plot-twisting, eventful and alluring story that readers will continue to enjoy in the future. It is extremely important to take a step back from the theory side of a novel and to simply enjoy the experience that the text is portraying, and to always remember language and literature is of humane values. This is something that expresses our humanity and provides readers with an experience in a way which will remain timeless and

During our interactive oral, we discussed the cultural and contextual considerations of the work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich written by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The subjects referred to where the importance of time and place, setting, and culture.

Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf uses the characters Clarissa and Lucrezia not only to further the plot of the story but to make a profound statement about the role of wives in both society and their marriages. While these women are subjected to differing experiences in their marriages, there is one common thread that unites each of their marriages: oppression. These women drive the story of Mrs. Dalloway and provide meaning and reason in the lives of the men in the story; however, these women are slowly but surely forced to forsake their own ambitions in order to act in accordance with the social standards set in place by marriage for women. For women outside of many modern cultures, marriage has been a necessity for a woman’s safety and security, and it required her to give up her freedom and passions and subjected her to an oppressed lifestyle. Ultimately, through the wives in Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf communicates that marriage is an institution where in women are forced to suppress their individual desires and passions in order to serve their husband and further his own ambitions as first priority.

  Clarissa Dalloway, the central character in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, is a complex figure whose relations with other women reveal as much about her personality as do her own musings. By focusing at length on several characters, all of whom are in some way connected to Clarissa, Woolf expertly portrays the ways females interact: sometimes drawing upon one another for things which they cannot get from men; other times, turning on each other out of jealousy and insecurity.

During the time of a young modern society, there were ideals and social standards that led people to feel isolated from their own expressions and thoughts. In Mrs. Dalloway, identity is a significant theme depicted in the novel and is prevalent between the characters portrayed throughout. One character in particular that represents the image and reflection of identity in the British society during the first world war is Clarissa Dalloway. All the attributes such as her love for flowers, her lavish entertaining parties, and the bonds she has between her friends and lovers reveal something about her identity that she discovers about herself at the end of the book. Clarissa’s personality is complex and moving as her emotions and life events are unraveled in the moment as things happen.

The play "Waiting for Godot” performed at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts provides an impressive adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s original work. First off, the Irish theatrical troupe, Gare St Lazare, is one of the foremost specialist on Beckett’s work, which includes modern interpretations of his work in “Waiting for Godot. This production combines a strong does of slapstick comedy, which is typically found in the way Vladimir (Nathan Lane) and Estragon (Bill Irwin) are often seen physically interacting with each other when taking off boots, running about the circular stage, and other back-slapping styles of “Laurel and Hardy” methods of interaction. In comparison, Beckett’s play tends to reveal the absurdity of poverty of the two men, which is depicted in a more serious depiction of their wretched lives. For instance, in one scene Beckett’s Vladimir is more prone to somber bouts of violence in the original play: “Enter Vladimir, somber. He shoulders Lucky out of his way, kicks over the stool, comes and goes agitatedly” (36). In the Gare St Lazare production, the slapstick style of comedy is far less violent in terms of projecting a more comedic view of poverty in the dire circumstances portrayed by Lane’s portrayal of Vladimir. However, there are some elements of the absurd, which are dictated by the presentation of Beckett’s play in a smaller venue, such as the Skirball Theater at New York University.

In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, one of the most prominent dramatic styles Beckett uses is the tragicomedy. This blend of the two classic forms of drama adds a sense of dark humor to the play. When it is performed, the play’s seemingly random acts of comedy are dispersed through the tragedy. which provides a physical act to be performed on stage, as well as expanding the depth of the ideas presented. Beckett uses the tragicomedy style to demonstrate how tragedy and comedy are two of the most important parts of life, and to provide a shocking and stark contrast between ideas presented in the play.

Throughout Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, a deceptively simplistic tale of two men waiting for the arrival of a seemingly divide entity uncovers the truth of mankind’s existence. Estragon and Vladimir, the two protagonists, are stuck in a vicious cycle of hopeful waiting, only to find that Godot, the mysteriously omnipresent and omniscient being in the play, never arrives. While they patiently anticipate his arrival, they encounter a type of bondage that illustrates the very significance of insignificance as illustrated through Pozzo and his human slave, Lucky. All four characters are destined to acknowledge the nonexistence of life itself, each being on his own path to a sacred state of endless acceptance that is ultimately reflective of mankind in its entirety.

In Waiting for Godot, Beckett often focused on the idea of "the suffering of being." Most of the play deals with the fact that Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for something to relieve them from their boredom. Godot can be understood as one of the many things in life that people wait for. Waiting for Godot is part of the ‘Theater of the Absurd’. This implies that it is meant to be irrational and meaningless. Absurd theater does not have the concepts of drama, chronological plot, logical language, themes, and recognizable settings. There is also a split between the intellect and the body within the work. Vladimir represents the intellect and Estragon the body, both cannot exist without the other.

In her own writing on the novel Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf stated, "I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work at its most intense…“ In this essay, I shall use this quote as a means to examine the theme of love and solitude in one of her most famous novels which follows a set of characters that go about their day. Virginia Wolf was able to illustrate the isolation one experiences within its own mind and the importance of one’s soul and ways in which souls connect through different memories and events. Even though independency is highly valued, the inability for people to communicate and build meaningful relationships is the most important aspect in the novel.