Analysis of Three Literary Masterpieces: Streetcar, Earnest, Godot
A Streetcar Named Desire
This is a fragment from act (1, 2, 3 – 11) of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. He was an American playwright. Along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights in 20th-century American drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded to A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948.
The plot of this play, in brief, involves Blanche’s visit to her sister Stella and her husband Stanley. From this visit, many situations and problems arise from Blanche’s past and the future of Stella and Stanley.
We can say a lot about the characters in this work.
Blanche: Stella’s older sister, who was a high school English teacher in Laurel, Mississippi, until she was forced to leave her post. She is hiding from the ugliness of life, creating an imaginary world of luxury and pleasure.
Stanley: The husband of Stella. Stanley is the epitome of vital force. He is loyal to his friends, passionate toward his wife, and heartlessly cruel to Blanche. He is also realistic, pragmatic, and truth-seeking.
Stella: Blanche’s younger sister, about twenty-five years old. Stella in her late teens left Mississippi for New Orleans and married Stanley. She is caught between the two, she pities her sister and idealizes her husband.
Analysis of Main Ideas:
- Realism vs. Theatricalism
- Desire vs. Death
- Social Stereotypes
- Moral Ambiguity and Self-Protection
- Strong Light on Stanley and Dim Light on Blanche
CONCLUSION.
The Importance of Being Earnest
This is a fragment from the (first, second, third) act of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Wilde was one of the most important writers of the Late Victorian period.
The Importance of Being Earnest premiered in 1895, after several successful plays like Lady Windermere’s Fan or An Ideal Husband. However, The Importance… was not as well-received by the critics as Wilde’s former plays.
The play is set in Victorian times and is normally analyzed as a critique of Victorian values such as the importance of conventions and rites, good breeding, social position, and politeness.
Despite this, it’s a very important play that continues to be relevant nowadays.
Summing up the plot briefly:
Jack and Algernon are wealthy gentlemen. Jack (known to Algernon as Ernest) lives a respectable life in the country, providing an example to his young ward Cecily. Algernon lives in luxury in London and has invented an imaginary invalid friend (Bunbury) whom he visits in the country whenever an unappealing social engagement presents itself. Jack has also invented a character – a wayward younger brother called Ernest whom he uses as a pretext for going up to London and enjoying himself. From this, a complex and comic story arises that ends with an unexpected surprise: the protagonists have been telling the truth the whole time, even though they didn’t know it.
The fragment we are dealing with is…
Characters:
John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing, J.P.: The play’s protagonist. Jack Worthing is a seemingly responsible and respectable young man who leads a double life.
Algernon Moncrieff: The play’s secondary hero. Algernon is a charming, idle, decorative bachelor, nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest.
Gwendolen Fairfax: Algernon’s cousin and Lady Bracknell’s daughter. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest.
Cecily Cardew: Jack’s ward, the granddaughter of the old gentleman who found and adopted Jack when Jack was a baby. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play.
Lady Bracknell: Algernon’s snobbish, mercenary, and domineering aunt and Gwendolen’s mother. Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the same. She has a list of “eligible young men” and a prepared interview she gives to potential suitors.
CONCLUSION:
The Importance of Being Earnest was an early experiment in Victorian melodrama. Part satire, part comedy of manners, and part intellectual farce, this play seems to have nothing at stake because the world it presents is so blatantly and ostentatiously artificial. Below the surface of the light, brittle comedy, however, is a serious subtext that takes aim at self-righteous moralism and hypocrisy, the very aspects of Victorian society that would, in part, bring about Wilde’s downfall.
Waiting for Godot
This is a fragment from the (first/second) act of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Beckett was one of the most important writers in the 20th Century. He was also a key figure of the so-called theater of the absurd and one of the most influential writers of his time. He wrote his books in English and French and was an assistant and disciple of the novelist James Joyce.
Waiting for Godot was Beckett’s first play and was originally in French.
We could say that there is no clearly defined plot (which is one of the characteristics of the theater of the absurd) in this play.
In the play, Beckett shows us a representative sample of what happens every night in the lives of Vladimir and Estragon. Two men who meet near a tree. They converse on various topics and reveal that they are waiting there for a man named Godot.
Regarding Vladimir, it is important to analyze him as the more responsible and mature of the two main characters. Estragon calls him Didi. Nevertheless, Estragon seems weak and helpless, always looking for Vladimir’s protection. He also has a poor memory, as Vladimir has to remind him in the second act of the events that happened the previous night. Vladimir calls him Gogo.
Analysis of Main Ideas:
- “Against mimesis”: Art should not imitate life.
- Godot: a wordplay which comes from the name god (religious connotation).
- In psychological aspect: absurdity of life and lack of meaning or purpose.
- Existentialist “life has no meaning but we can invent”.
- Amnesia: characters forget many things.
- Repetition and doublings.
- Circular history.
- Variation: things changed here since yesterday.
- Humor: use of irony, wordplays, and nonsense.
CONCLUSION.