Iago’s behaviour and how that makes him a psychopath. Hans Jürgen Eysenck mentioned in his book Crime and Personality the following definition of a psychopath: Individuals who have considerable difficulty in social adjustment, without the traditional lack of intelligence or structural brain disease. Among the symptoms are lack of emotional control, unsatisfactory adjustment to social standards, irresponsibility of characters and impulsiveness. “The psychopath can usually verbalize all the social and moral rules but he does not seem to be able to understand them and to obey them in the way others do.” (Eysenck 54) Fred West characterizes Iago in Shakespeares’ Othello as a psychopath in his article “Iago the Psychopath” because of his manipulations and false honesty, yet his definition overlooks important characteristics such as his failures in relationships, parasitic lifestyle. unreliability and irresponsibility.
“Nothing Is certain when you’re around”: how does Waiting for Godot explore doubt and scepticism? Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot creates doubt and scepticism throughout the play by inspiring questions within the characters and audience that are never intended to be answered. The play explores the idea of purpose and meaning- or lack thereof - by locking the two main characters in a loop of stagnant and inconsequential dialogue and action. The characters themselves express their own scepticism and doubt relating to meaning, purpose and faith. This essay will explore doubt and scepticism within the play as well as it’s broader influence in instilling similar feelings of uncertainty onto the audience.
This is shown through their diminished memories, the play’s flat plot, and the repetition and cyclicality of the play. While these moments create a sense of meaningless in the characters’ lives, they also cause the audience to question the meaning of life. Is there really no purpose to life, or is there actually something worth waiting every day
Short Eyes is the prison play that Piñero wrote during the playwriting workshop in the notorious prison. After his parole in 1973, Short Eyes reached the stars among the readers and the same year won an Obie Award for the best play of the year and New York Drama Critics Circle Award, as seven nominations for Tony Awards soon followed. Miguel Piñero came to be the first Puerto Rican whose play ended up on Broadway. Short Eyes is a graphic portrayal of life between inmates behind the bars, the play is about life and death and above all, about survival. The play
Capitano plans to use Harlequin to do his dirty work because he fears getting in trouble. When you are in the audience you realize that Harlequin is not the main character in the play. In fact, I have reason to believe that characters in the play aren’t more important than the message that the play is delivering to the audience. I personally believe that harlequin serves as a symbol that stands for all of the prisoners in Terezín who were tricked and trapped. Just like harlequin the thousands of prisoners were under that impression that there were going to benefit from some of the worst conditions if they cooperated by boarding the many transport trains that went east.
Nihilism in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot ' T.Nandini Department of English ABSTRACT Martin Esslin writes very lucidly about how the theater of the absurd works like poetry rather than narrative. Traditional narrative drama tells a story, develops dynamically. The characters grow and change before our eyes, and that is the point of the story-to reveal that growth, that change. We reflect on why it happened, what it implies, how we relate to it ourselves, what it means. But the theater of the absurd doesn 't aim for traditional narrative because it rejects such narratives as too artificial, too contrived.
This absence of intent gives heightened contrast to the fact that the state of believing such surreality is perpetuated by the prisoners themselves. This is why the ability to manipulate what the prisoners see in the fire is so insidiously strong; one can show them just a single image, and they will trip over each other, fighting to believe in it themselves. There are some implications within the allegory that shows it is nigh impossible for a prisoner to escape this mental state. The first part is from Glaucon’s comment where he assumes the prisoners are unusual people, but Socrates states, “They are very much like us humans.” Glaucon thinking that the prisoners are unusual could be translated to the prisoners thinking that Glaucon, and anyone not following their views are the unusual ones. A small detail in the allegory shows that the exit to the cave is a “rough and steep ascent,” and this description showcases the stubbornness and difficulty for the prisoners to see anything past the ideology they have shackled themselves to.
Critics argue that Beckett’s non-traditional play, a classic example of what has come to be known as the Theatre of the Absurd, more fully clarifies the era’s bleak existentialist vision. It is a vision of irrationality- sheer waiting without end or outcome; yet these experiences of shapelessness and purposelessness are given powerful and distinctive shape by distinctive dramatic structure and elaborate repetitions. Swati Pal in her essay, Repetition and Recollection In Waiting For Godot says, “Act 2 is only a variation of Act 1, almost a near repetition of it”. Act I and Act II are threads in a repetitive pattern. Everything has happened over and over before and chances are that the pattern will continue to repeat itself over and over again.
When Curley is first introduced to Lennie and George, “He glanced coldly at George and then at Lennie. His arms gradually bent at the elbows and his hands closed into fists. He stiffened and went into a slight crouch. His glance was at once calculating and pugnacious” (Steinbeck 25). Steinbeck develops this image because it portrays how Curley is intimidated by George and Lennie and, therefore, has menacing and bitter actions toward them without knowing them yet.
Suspicious of all authority and especially of the authority of the founding texts of Western culture, Beckett studs Waiting for Godot with references to these very texts in order to make his readers think and speculate, to make them participate in his anxious oscillation between certainty about what is untrue and uncertainty about what may be true. This abdication of authorial power and this appeal to the creative intervention of readers mark Beckett out as one of the founding fathers of, and one of the major witnesses to, our post-modern