Virginia Albee's Themes: Morality And Values

In my opinion, the key theme of this play is tyranny. How is tyranny exerted by a small group that is able to manipulate the situation for their own ends? One clear example is how the court arrests many people on the word of the girls alone. Contrastingly, Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor are shining examples of people who insist on the truth, regardless of the

A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry shows how people’s actions can be perceived as both good and bad. In this play, the Younger family is trying to achieve the American dream, “the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity traditionally held to be available to every American”(cite dictionary.com). The Youngers are a black family living in a poor part of Chicago. The family inherits ten thousand dollars from a relative. Each family member has their own idea about how to use this money to fulfill their dreams. The play uses the decisions of the family members to make the reader think about what are the right choices. Mama is the matriarch of the family, and she wants to use the money to buy a house in a white neighborhood. She wants to move to this neighborhood because it is a better environment for her family. Lindor is a man who lives in the white neighborhood and he appears to make decisions for the benefit of the family. The decisions that Mama and Lindor make and the actions they take can be viewed as good or bad for both the individual and the community.

August Wilson was a famous and influential playwright who wrote about the African American experience and conflicts with the White world. Although he may be argued as one of the greatest playwrights in America, I myself have only heard of his work once when my seventh grade English class read Fences, a play about a man and his son dealing with dealing with racism while also dealing with their own conflict when the son wants to follow in the steps of his father and become a professional athlete. I had honestly forgotten all about that one play I read eight years ago. Wilson’s name was barely among the many playwrights studied in my latter years. This could be because of the content of his plays. Much of Wilson’s work examines the negative aspects of being African American in America such as racism and poverty. When we read about African American literature in school, we read about empowerment and pride. It is ironic how students study White writers who tell stories like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness with mistreated African American characters, but barely study those same stories written by Black authors, poets, and playwrights. Because African American literature was not glorified in the past, specifically speaking of a time before the Harlem Renaissance, it may take time for certain works of African descendants to be glorified at the same level as those of White writers, especially if their peak wasn’t during the Renaissance.

At Pittsburgh’s Halfway Art Gallery he found his audience for poetry, and got to meet some of Pittsburgh’s black literati. In 1981, Wilson submitted Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and it was accepted in the O’Neill Center. It did however, undergo many changes in the summer of 1982, it went on to play at Yale and became the first Broadway play in 1984. His next play that he wrote was Fences. Now Fences is a interesting play to read, because reading the background information I feel as if he was writing this book from his point of view. His dad was not always there, his dad cheated on his mom, his mom raised the kids, and his dad was a worker and then came home and never messed with the kids or played with them. Not so much as he treated the kids like slaves, but in a way you could say he did. Reading the play and then writing this paper has been a wonderful experience. Reading the play gives us some back ground information about what the “1980s” were about. The racism, the abandonment, the shame, the cheating, we see it all in this play. Wilson did a good job at showing us what it was like to be a boy in this time when you wanted to play baseball but could not because you were black, or wanted to go somewhere and you could not because you were black. Some people would think that only “blacks” would like to read something like this because they would “understand” it, but that is not true. Reading Wilson’s

The origin of this novel stems from a time with great attitude changes within the African-American way of life. Tensions between gender specifically had begun to emerge, women, who were thought of as subservient, belonging to the house as well as to their husbands. During the timeframe of this story, women had been beginning to emerge with dignity, grace, and authority. The play takes place in Pittsburgh, during the 1950’s when the gap between genders had been shrinking, as women had been introduced further into society as more than just mothers. To most, this diminishing gap, to most would be a seamless concept, however, to the characters of this play would be a deciding factor for many conflicting scenes. The main characters of this play

Negroes do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic in its treatment of the basic problems of the race. Even [if] the book or play is written by a Negro, they still [would] not like it” (Henry). In addition, John Wallace believes that the word “nigger” is so offensive that he rewrote the novel without the word “nigger.”

Wright uses Bigger’s psychological corruption to send a message to the reader. It offers a new view on the underlying effects of racism on the black community of the time period. Wright creates Bigger from the diversity he saw throughout American society. “I made the discovery that Bigger Thomas was not black all the time; he was white, too, and there were literally millions of him, everywhere... I became conscious, at first dimly, and then later on with increasing clarity and conviction, of a vast, muddied pool of human life in America. It was as though I had put on a pair of spectacles whose power was that of an x-ray enabling me to see deeper into the lives of men. Whenever I picked up a newspaper, I 'd no longer feel that I was reading of the doings of whites alone (Negroes are rarely mentioned in the press unless they 've

The playwright, 40-year-old Young Jean Lee, is currently one of the most acclaimed writers in America according to New York Times. Her work revels in subverting generalizations. With Straight White Men, Lee was contemplating and investigating the issue: What do you do with privilege— and do we abuse it and take it for granted? Lee, who is Korean-American, aimed to make Straight White Men, a play with four straight white men discussing this issue on stage in front of an audience. For the 21st century audience this play is more relevant today than it would have been a few years ago. It portrays opinions and displays some of the world's most pressing problems and debates that are surrounding us today. Yet, to what extent has this impacted upon her work? Using only 3 brothers and their father as the driving force behind the production, Lee’s intriguing play, performed by La Boite Theatre in association with State Theatre Company South Australia, goes a long way past cheap satire. It turns into an

August Wilson was one of the most accomplished African-American playwrights of this century and was one of only seven to win the Pulitzer Prize. He dedicated his entire career to documenting the 20th century struggles of African-Americans in a cycle of ten plays. He completed the cycle shortly before he died on October 2, 2005. His plays were themed around The Middle Passage, The Underground Railroad, The Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, The Northern Migration, Pittsburgh’s Hill District, Oppression , Civil Rights Movement and Black Nationalism, Developing Personal “Songs” and Cultural Mythologies, Sports Discrimination, and City Politics Wilson’s main goal in life was to make sure a realistic view of how the African-Americans was put on stage for everyone to see the struggles of African-American. He bridged the gap in tradition, modified tradition when experience demanded it, and he translated experience into meaning and meaning into belief. He deserves a lot of praise, but did he also backtrack on his original thoughts? In this paper, I will give a short biography of him, discuss his plays, and discuss how his plays and his paper/film The Ground on Which I Stand contradicts each other.

the play are ―rich symbol[s]‖ that convey the barriers of a ―racist society‖ (Kenny par. 18). The

Within popular black music from the early 1900s there was often a duplicitous message, allowing the authors to both entertain their audiences and provide a social critique. In their song, She’s Getting More Like the White Folks Every Day, George Walker and Bert Williams tell the story of a young black girl who, after working in a hotel for a richer white woman, takes on the habits and affectations of white folk. While at first this song might appear to simply be making fun of a young girl whose mannerisms have changed, when examined closely it reveals a powerful commentary on the meaning of blackness, specifically in regards to race relations, social progress, and gender. Black performance in the early 1900s, whether it was minstrelsy, vaudevillian, or coon songs, all relied upon the perceived differences of the black lower class. They usually featured white or black actors parodying black persons, with blackface a common trend. However, in She’s Getting More Like the White Folks Every Day, this mimicry is reversed. Rather than a white man taking on black traits, they show a young black girl adopting the mannerisms of her rich, white boss. Instead of using blackness as the primary source of humour, they rely upon a satire of white culture. By showing how unusual the young woman is acting, Williams and Walker impress upon their audience ideas of contrast between lower class black culture, and upper class white culture. Unlike usual themes present in the black and white

The first element, thought/theme/ideas, encompasses what the play means. Although they don’t directly state any themes there are two clear meanings to this play. The first theme or meaning is you have to stand up for what you believe in or what you believe is not right. For example, Juror 8 believes the kid on trial did not murder his father while all other eleven jurors did believe so. As he talked, using hard evidence, he slowly persuaded everyone until they believed the kid was innocent although one of them was racially biased and others strongly believed what they said. Another theme is you can’t make immense decisions based on opinions or prior judgements but rather on what is genuinely true whether it affects your life.

The production spearheaded with a solemn poem by Langston Hughes entitled "Harlem." Preparing for an emotionally empowering theater piece, the poem quieted the audience and placed a serious blanket over us. While appropriate for me, I found it extremely coincidental that the poem's title, ties in directly with James Baldwin and his extensive writings on the 1943 Harlem race riots. With the lights off and just a solitary voice reciting the poem, it gave us, the audience, an immediate notion of play's melancholy style.

Theme – the reason behind why the playwright wrote the play. “Patterns of life”, a slice of reality.

“Justice is the quality of being just as well as complying with the principle of righteousness and also performing one’s moral obligations” (Oxford Dictionary). Moral values are important in Silas Marner throughout the novel as those people who do good deeds are rewarded while those who fail in their moral duties to others are punished. As George Eliot was a religious person, she believed in fate and providence as there was a higher being rewarding and punishing our conduct. This theme is portrayed throughout the book and seen most prominently in the characters of Silas Marner and Godfrey Cass.