How I Learned to Drive Straight into Storybrook

---

 

This story is one of disturbance. It centers around molestation and the vicious cycle that partakes in it. There is suspicion that Lil Bit, after being molested by her Uncle Peck, also begins to molest children when she get’s older. As evidence, is the strange looks she shares with a young boy on the train and the fact that she hallucinates her Uncle Peck in the backseat of the car. I personally take this occurrence as a metaphor that her Uncle is a “back seat driver” in her ways of molesting. The title of the play is in direct reference that the first occurrence of Li Bit’s molestation happened in the back seat of the car as her Uncle was teaching her how to drive. This title could also be metaphorical as “How I learned to molest” as awful as that sounds.

“That was the last day I lived in my body.” It is a quote that makes you think. Most people would say “That’s the day I lived in my mind.” Or so I thought that, but I take the quote as the molestation triggered her physically and she had no mental control over what was happening.

” Being the translator, the teacher, the epicure, the already jaded. This is how the giver gets taken.” I take this quote as evidence that she has moved from being the molested to the molester.

“For a thirteen-year-old, you have a body a twenty-year-old woman would die for.” This just makes me sick.

I’m not sure if I am able to connect this with any fairy tale, other than the real version of Sleeping Beauty. in that story, Briar Rose is molested in her sleep by her father, the King, and she gives birth to twins. I relate this simply because it was incest and molestation.

Comments

AMY POULTER
ANNABEL FLANAGAN
KRISTEN MCALLISTER

---

Questions
What do you think is the meaning behind the title of the play?
Do you think that Lil Bit is a molester now?
Is Lil Bit to blame for becoming a molester if so? Does she have any responsibility for her actions?

Sister Mary Explains the Tales

---

 

Sister Mary speaks up about church and institutions and asks the larger question “what do our moral lines actually mean?” When do we draw the line of judgment for how people are, such as being gay or getting an abortion? Why is it okay for them to judge, yet the bible says to ‘love all?’ The play picks up greatly with this hypocrisy.

I feel that it also deals with stereotypes, especially in discussion of the Catholic church. Sister Mary is to be this goody too shoes and very strict, just like the Catholic Church is like.

A larger picture of the play is existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. The play portrays this with the children; especially with the boy who comes out as being gay and the girl who had an abortion.

Judgment in this play by the “All Mighty Superior Church”–

“The Mother Superior of my own convent may get lonely, but does she have illegitimate children?”

Hypocrisy is great–

“I’m not really  within the letter of the law shooting Gary like this, but really if he did make a good confession I have sent him straight to heaven an eternal bliss and happiness. And i’m afraid otherwise he would have ended up in hell. I think Christ will allow me this little dispensation from the letter of the law, but i’ll go to confession later today, just to be sure.”
” It seems a very good reason to hit you. Knock some sense into you.”

This personally reminds me of Camelot from One Upon A Time. King Arthur was foretold that he would find Excalibur and become king and join the community together. However, in this version, he does become king, but only because he uses false magic and is corrupted. There is a stereotype that in fairy tales, A King is noble and loyal to the people, but this is not true for Arthur. Like Sister Mary and the satire of the Catholic Church, he is a corrupt ruler and gives false hope and messages to remain powerful.

---

---

Comments

AMY POULTER
ANNABEL FLANAGAN
KRISTEN MCALLISTER

---

Questions

Why did the author choose stereotype as a main character?
Is this a satire of the Catholic Church?
Do You think Catholics would have been offended?

Buried Prince

---

 

Buried Child was a very strange play and so hard for me to understand what was going on. It was confusing, so I am not sure how well this post will be. I know it is going to be rather short.

Because of the confusion I have, I don’t think I really enjoyed the play. I understand that it is about a dysfunctional family and a baby that was murdered by the wife and husband that they ended up burying in the backyard. There is also a strange part where a twin came to the house and claimed to be their son and they didn’t remember him? Yeah, I just didn’t like this. I don’t even think I can relate it to a fairy tale.

“How much do you think Tilden understands?” — How much do I understand? Nothing. I understand nothing.”Language! I won’t have that language in my house” Language I don’t seem to understand. 😀
“We had a baby. Little baby. Could pick it up with one hand. Put it in the other.So small that nobody could find it. Just disappeared. We had no service. No hymn. Nobody came.” — Because ya’ll murdered it? *tongue click* or nah?

---

---

Comments

ANNABEL FLANAGAN
KRISTEN MCALLISTER
AMY POULTER

---

Questions

What the hell is this about?
Why did they bury the child?
Is the child the other twin, or?

The Wizard of Oz- An American Dream

---

 

I am going to relate The American Dream with The Wizard of Oz. The play, a satire on American family life, concerns a married couple and their elderly mother. Albee explores not only the falsity of the American Dream but also the status quo of the American family. Discussion of the American Dream in class was that it was dead and is more of an allusion, myth, idealized, and a pacifier for immigrants. For most, the American Dream is situation because not everyone actually get’s what they come here for.

In America, the genre’s association with the nation as it develops in the twentieth century is different: either America itself is glorified as the fairy-tale realm where wishes come true, or the Utopian project of the fairy tale works to remark on the failed American Dream and at the same rekindle hope for change.

As Albee states in the preface to the play, “It is an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, emasculation, and vacuity; it is a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen.” The Wizard of Oz is the first real American fairy-tale and can be related to the American Dream in a way that you have four characters in search of something and the Wizard or Oz can represent the place itself, America, or the idea of the American Dream. Follow the yellow brick road and you’ll reach your destination- follow the rules to the American dream and you’ll reach that dream.

---

---

Comments

ANGELIQUE JEFFREY
NATHAN WALKER
BENJAMIN DERONDE

---

Questions

What is your idea of the American Dream?
Is the American Dream just an illusion?
Would you agree that the Wizard of Oz is an idea of the American Dream?

Tell Tale to the Past

---

The Death of a Salesmen is a sad story about a family that has lost dreams. While Willy had great hopes and dreams for his sons, Happy and Biff, he grew greatly disappointed when they failed. The main character, Biff, is more of a disappointment to Willy because he was a rising high school football star until he flunked college. Later we find out that his flunking was because of his discovery that his father was having an affair, and Biff never really forgives him nor has any desire to follow in Willy’s footsteps as a business man.

The play is a pretty good rendition of a lot American Dream. Willy was living his lost hopes and dream through his son, Biff, and when Biff also failed, he grew angry and hopeless. Biff’s failed football career also represents the broken American Dream and the illusion of a happy American family is also destroyed in learning of the father’s affair. Essentially, the family is dysfunctional and an illusion to the American nuclear family.

“He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.” (138)
“Let me talk to you — I got nobody to talk to. Bernard, Bernard, was it my fault? Y’see? It keeps going around in my mind, maybe I did something to him. I got nothing to give him.”
“And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! That’s whose fault it is”

These quotes all support the idea of the lost American dream and Willy’s subconscious knowing why Biff did not go to summer school or college.

This play reminds me a bit of the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin in Once Upon A Time. He becomes this angry and vengeful dark one because he only wanted the best for his son. However, instead of the father cheating, the mother is the adulteress and the son resents Rumple for his cruel actions- even though Rumple does them because he wants the best for his son. In the end, the son, Neal, ends up dying, but forgives his father before he does.

 

---

---

Comments

AMY POULTER
JOI WHITEHURST
ANNABEL FLANAGAN

---

Questions

In what aspects does the American Dream play a background for this story?
Why name the other son Happy?
What is an underlying reason for this play?

Red Riding Hood and the Big Hairy Ape

The Hairy Ape is one that contrasts human’s and animals and feeds on the building blocks of identity. The ideas of Super Ego, ID, and ego are evident and the main character deals with moral standards, reality, and primal instinct. He moves  from human to animal, as in Once Upon A Time’s Little Red Riding Hood. In this story, Red is the wolf and her moral compass shifts from reason to primal instinct, as seen in the Hairy Ape.

We also experience a blend of fantasy and reality when Yank dies in a gorilla’s cage from an “ape” throwing him in the cage. This could be possible reality, or it could be a projection of self on to the animal ape scene at the zoo from earlier in the play. This is mirrored in the Little Red Riding Hood when a blurred line of reality and fantasy takes place when she morphs from human to wolf-or perhaps she, like Yank, projects her human self upon a wolf.

 

---

---

Comments

BENJAMIN DERONDE
ANGELIQUE JEFFREY
DEANDRE TAYLOR

---

Questions

Why use the ape as the animal of choice?
Is it because we are believed to have evolved from apes according to Darwinism?
What was the use of Mildred?

A Whorable Tale

---

In Treadwell’s Machinal, the young woman face the decision to partake in a marriage without love and was unsure of the situation. Her mother basically references bartering virginity while discussing her daughter’s insecurities towards a loveless marriage, “Love! What does that amount to? Will it clothe you? Feed you? Pay the bills?” The mother pushes the young woman to barter away the chance for a marriage with love in exchange for money and financial security in a loveless marriage.

Machinal exemplifies young women as either the virgin or the whore. If the female is not guilty, then they are the tragic victim, and if they were guilty, then they are perceived as the evil whore. Perception of an ornament of ideal womanhood is piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. We see the main character move from a virgin, when she is submissive to her husband, to the evil whore upon becoming involved with a new man and murdering her husband. I guess you can say the husband gave her the courage when he told her, “Now see here, my dear, you got to brace up and face things. Everybody’s got to face things and brace up. That’s what makes the world go round.”

Bartering of virginity and virgin vs. whore are often seen in almost any fairy tale. The trade of money for marriage is seen a bit in Disney’s Aladdin, when Aladdin sees the only way to win over Jasmine’s love is putting on the mirage that he is a wealthy prince. However, Jasmine, very much seen as a virgin, chooses Aladdin for his heart and not his wealth- because he was a thief and dirt poor. However, the pressure of marriage was pressed upon Jasmine, and this is a repeating ingredient in most literature and fairy tales.

---

---

Comments

TAMARA DESENBURG
DAVANTE PARRIES
BENJAMIN DERONDE

Questions

Is the machine society or the roles given to women? Perhaps both?
Can this be related to The Yellow Wallpaper?
Why must Helen gain courage to murder her husband only once she is with another man?

A Natural Beast

---

In the play Margaret Fleming, we shift from a melodrama style to realism. Not only us this a realistic play and the characters are more developed for psychological analysis, but  naturalism is introduced. Instead of focusing on the plot of the play, I am going to focus on American literary realism and naturalism as I relate it to Disney’s well known movie, Tarzan.

American literary realism juxtaposes rural vs. urban, farm vs. country, immigration, rise of investigative journalism, and the camera for “capturing” reality. Almost all of these aspects are evident in Tarzan. If you’re wondering how immigration plays a role, its more of the whites becoming immigrants to the jungle during the imperialism time; the time when the British begin taking land in Africa and is the background to why Jane and her father arrive in Tarzan’s land. Jane and her father are both, I would say, scientists and are interesting in investigating the animals and the environment that have discovered. They use cameras to document the reality of their surroundings and to capture evidence. In Margaret Fleming, immigration is evident based on Lucy’s character; she is an immigrant from Germany.

Her affair with Philip speaks not only of how easily immigrants were taken advantage of, but the “beast” qualities of humans and naturalism. The Human Beast concept saw hereditary and environment as influences on human motivation and behavior. This is interesting to me because that’s basically what Jane and her father are studying in the jungle, especially Tarzan himself, who is basically a “beast” because of his animalistic characteristics. The point of naturalism is to expose social evils and truth. In Tarzan, the evils of imperialism and captivity of animals was evident.

“Maria! Stop! How dare you talk to me like that? Give me that pistol. You think-I-am happy-because i am his wife? Why, you poor fool, that girl never in all her life suffered one thousandth part what I have suffered in theses past five minutes.” Margaret Fleming, the exposed truths of what may happen behind closed doors of a “happy couple” and the norm to take advantage of immigrants.

---

---

Comments

NICK STONE
ROBIN HUTCHINS
DACIA MCBRIDE

---

Questions

Was Philip a representation of the Human Beast?
If Phil did the wrong deed, why is Margaret paying the consequence and having to take care of the child?
What made Margaret want to take care of the child and how does this reflect human nature in women?

Sisterhood in a Patriarchal Society

---

It’s nothing new to read about how women are repressed in literature and they have been given roles, an absent voice, and no identity in a patriarchal society. Even today, the society we seem to live in is undoubtedly controlled by men. Even with in the Bible women are given blame for anything bad or, if dared to defy a man, were sent to hell or shamed. Through the best known fairy tales in literature, females are continued to be given these roles or are killed off before the story is even begun. Walt Disney was known to hate his mother- for reasons I personally do not know- and thus, every mother figure in just about all Disney shows and movies are either absent or killed. Whether done on purpose or accidental, it gives opportunity for a patriarchal story line.

In Glaspell’s Trifles, gender roles are emphasized through symbolic objects and subtle actions that are suggestive. The society in Trifles is patriarchal, forming the bond of Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Wright because they “know how hard it can be for a woman. [They] live close together and [they] live all apart. [They] go through the same thing.” Subtle mentions of an unfinished quilt and housewife duties are evidence for ornaments of gender role. Mrs. Wright was ornamented as a quiet housewife who properly fulfilled her gender role. The death of the cannery by strangulation was also a representation of how Mrs. Wright’s husband would abuse her and strangle her. In a patriarchal society, Mrs. Wright would have only been found guilty by an all male jury, so essentially, a sisterhood was born between the three females in order to save one from being taken down by men.

---

---

Comments

BRIANNA LONG
JOI WHITEHURST
TAMARA DESENBURG

---

Questions

Was Glaspell trying to speak about patriarchal societies?
Why choose a cannery?
Why choose strangulation?

The Heroes Journey

---

The Drunkard has a similar plot use like Hercules by Disney or any other superhero storyline. In the heroes journey, there is usually a “hell” or underworld that the protagonist travels. In the Drunkard, the “underworld” is in New York- a freezing and miserable setting in the plot. With a “hell” there is also a “redemption”; whether or not it’s successful.

The Heroes Journey begins with a hero who is called to an adventure—> a supernatural aid—>accompanied by a threshold guardian—-> goes through challenges and temptations—->Revelation—>Transformation—->Atonement—-> and then returns.

There is also a faithful sidekick. In the Drunkard, the faithful sidekick is Bill or perhaps Middleton.

---

---

---

Comments
ANNABEL FLANAGAN
DACIA MCBRIDE
KRISTEN MCALLISTER

---

Questions

Since this was a melodrama and characters are usually held responsible for evil, are the characters being held responsible for their alcohol problem here?

Is the blame on the industries themselves and not individual?

What did Miss Spindle stand for?