Everyman Play Summary

The adults in Salem, Oregon in Stephen Karam’s Speech & Debate had good reason to treat the teens as if they were children. If Diwata, Solomon, and Howie were an accurate representation of the other students at the school, it is no wonder that the parents, teachers, and school board sought to exercise an abundance of control and provide too much guidance in their lives. The three teens dealt with “grown-up” issues throughout the play, but they tried to tackle them in characteristically childish ways.

“If civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that people must learn to reject.” -Ayn Rand. To be compassionate and unselfish seems to be a noble and magnanimous pursuit. Altruism is admired, it is beautiful, and it is praised. And yet, it goes against our very natures. There is no reason we should sacrifice ourselves to save a dying child. Our instincts tell us to keep ourselves alive, that we are important. Thus, altruism is a beautiful conquering of our savage animal instincts. Ayn Rand disagrees. In her book, Anthem, the protagonist, Equality 7-2521, heroically conquers the evil Collectivist ideas by discovering the idea behind the word, “Ego.” She argues against brotherhood and altruism through her loveless, beautiless society. Selflessness is not in human nature, so by replacing egotism, the society replaced art, love, and all of the things that used to be paired with altruism as beautiful. Selflessness must be balanced with egotism, lest we lose the things that make us human.

In The Canterbury Tales, out of “The Miller’s Tale”, “The Wife of Bath”, and “The Pardoner’s Tale”, “The Pardoner’s Tale” should win the storytelling contest. The contest rules include that the story must have a moral and be entertaining. “The Pardoner 's Tale” meets both of those requirements. The moral is a valuable lesson, and also entertaining by incorporating dramatic irony into the story for the reader.

The historical context of Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is widely debated, with connections being made towards a variety of religious influences. However, due to the plays continuous’ references to the Protestant religion, the play’s message can be traced back to Martin Luther; a disgruntled monk with a desire for change. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet the use of Protestant principles and allusions of Martin Luther’s 95 theses directly influences the character development of Hamlet, and reinforces the rebellious Protestantism versus the Catholic corruption paradigm in the play.

Human is a species that live in group, and conformity is one of the distinct characteristic of human nature. In the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller investigates various natures in community throughout Act 1 and 2. The play took place at Salem, a town that primarily based on puritanism, the major plot of this play is about witchcraft and witch hunt. Miller conveys a essential message of people always search for conformity from society as a form to prove their identity, further, any rebellion would consider as outcast from majority. The author explores the theme by the use of conflict, this literary element best demonstrates changes of characterizations and complication between others and internal struggle.

“Life is like being chained up in a cave”.(Alex Gendler) The novel, Fahrenheit 451, definitely compares to the film, Plato’s allegory. Everything from the truths to the differences reflects in both the novel and the allegory. There were many things that were very similar between the two, that were in fact startling and shocking. Throughout this essay, similarities of the two, will be discussed, and most importantly prove how the different aspects of the novel relates to the allegory.

In my opinion, I think that the movie version and the play version, of Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare, are not very different. They have a lot of similarities for example; Hero and Claudio met and thought they should be together, Claudio thinks he saw Hero cheating on him with another man. So therefore at their wedding he demanded for her to die because of her relations with another man. Claudio realizes he was wrong about what she did and he had to marry her cousin without seeing her at all till they’re married. The wedding day comes and once she uncovers her face its hero, and Beatrice and Benedick are in love with each other.

The definition of human nature often serves as a quick and a prominent explanation for how people behave under a variety of circumstances within their cultural boundaries. Similarly, in William Shakespeare’s play “Much Ado About Nothing” the 16th century Sicilian culture in which the characters live in, defines the complex relationships and interactions that shape characters human nature in this dramatic comedy. In comparison, I have often heard people refer to the nature of humans in the 21st century, as a way to distinguish a person’s violent actions under wartime circumstances. In “Much Ado About Nothing” the culture of social and wartime influence is defined through the relationships and interactions between characters with the heart and mind of the characters in constant conflict.

The “Belly of the Whale” situation, an allusion to the biblical story of Jonah and the whale, is the hero’s near death experience and his symbolical rebirth. “The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died. […] the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation […]. But here, instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again” (Campbell 83-84). As soon as the hero “crosses the first threshold” and escapes the “belly of the whale” he is a changed man and his previous life is no more. The everyday man becomes the hero. “The hero appears to die, but is resurrected, perhaps in a new form. The hero’s old self has died, a new one born. Although the belly is dark and scary, it represents the final split between the known and unknown worlds and thus the start of enlightenment. Here the hero shows his willingness

Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men contains a plethora of ubiquitous themes and tropes; it espouses disparate motifs such as corruption, fragmentation, and nihilism. However, the most conspicuous subject that is touched upon is that of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The paramount thematic concepts of Christian theology throughout the novel are explicated by use of literary devices such as diction, imagery, and tone; moreover, these convictions are hypostatized through Willie Stark, Jack Burden, and Tiny Duffy.

“We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don 't know.”

Jean- Baptiste Molière’s play “Tartuffe” is an unquestionably humorous comedy. The play defines the hypocritical acclaimed “Christians” we have in society. Daily, many people are blinded by admiration of religious figures who they believe are Gods disciples and can lead them to the gates of heaven. In “Tartuffe”, the author uses irony, satire, and tone to uncover a man follies of unreligious faith, the lust of women, money, and power.

When Moliere wrote the play Tartuffe, he was clearly focused on religious themes. However it may seem, it is important to understand that Moliere’s work means to unmask the dangers of hypocrisy, not to ridicule religion itself. In the play Tartuffe, the man of a well to do family, named Orgon, is deceived by a self -proclaimed “holy man.” So much so that he neglects his entire family and ignores one major and perhaps obvious fact: that Tartuffe, whom the play is named after, is a complete fraud. Tartuffe represents everything wrong with religion and turns out to be a terrible influence on Orgon.For example, when Orgon returned home, he did not care that his wife ad been ill, instead he continually asked about Tartuffe. Orgon was unconcerned

“Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together” (Alejandro Jodorowsky). Comedy and tragedy have been two popular forms of entertainment for people throughout the ages. From Greek performances to contemporary plays, the art of theatre is well and thriving. While the styles of playwrights and the way theatre is experienced changes through time, the messages these plays gaves have more or less stayed the same. Drama can, for the most part, be classified as either tragedy or comedy. The conventions of tragedy and comedy, such as the tragedy in Oedipus Rex and the comedy in The Taming of the Shrew, can shape the way the play is developed. Thorough analysis can reveal these dramas to be discussions of human experience. As Laurence Olivier once said: “The office of drama is to exercise, possibly exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.” Through the outcomes of both plays, the audience is able to receive some hard truths and be confronted with reality. In their respective ways, the two plays reveal truths about the human experience in the way that the plays are symbolic of very real human or societal problems.

The Pilgrim 's Progress is an allegory of Puritan ideals. This allegorical story have extended metaphor representing larger concepts or idea. Every element of the story (characters, actions, events, dialogues, etc.) is representing analogy for typical Christian concepts (faith, hope, love, temptation, salvation, etc.). The Pilgrim 's Progress is considered to be one of the greatest Christian allegories ever written. In the further part of the paper here will be content about influence of Christianity in his life and how Bunyan have used Christian allegory in the text “The Pilgrim’s Progress”.