Arthur Miller's predictability

So I can't help but wonder if I'm the only one who feels that Miller gets pretty predictable after a while. I mean, the first play of his I read, "Death of a Salesman," threw me for a loop despite the ending being given away by the title. Just when it seems like everything's going to be okay and Willie will wake up and deal with reality, boom! Dead. And with "The Crucible," when Proctor seems ready to sell himself out in order to live, he gives us that powerful "leave me my name" speech, one that has apparently stuck with me.

But honestly? While reading "All My Sons," I knew for a fact that Larry was dead and Joe was at fault for the bad parts being sent out. The ending, while mildly surprising, wasn't nearly as shocking as "Salesman." My first reaction to the gunshot was, "Wait, what?" followed by "Jeez, not again."

However, I do admit that Miller has a talent for writing characters who have an unusual talent for avoiding reality. In fact, the characters are what make Miller's plays truly unique. Yes, all plays are character-driven. What makes these plays amazing is the fact that, while you grow attached to Miller's characters, they repay this with a betrayal of sorts. In "All My Sons," for example, the audience does not want to believe that honest Joe, as opposed to lying Steve, could have caused the deaths of 21 pilots. His denial is so emphatic that the audience begins to believe it in spite of themselves. This makes the revelation of his lie that much more bitter for the viewers as well as his own family.

Patron Saint of Youth

http://www.catholic-pages.com/saints/st_aloysius.asp A blurb on the life of Saint Aloysius, if anyone is interested. Apparently, he was the eldest son in his family, and therefore expected to carry on the family name. The fact that he didn't says a lot about his apparent devotion to the Church. Being the patron saint of youth, the parallel to Sister Aloysius is rather obvious.

In our group discussion last class, my group's conversation drifted to the subject of Sister Aloysius and her motives. It seemed to us that she cares more about the children than Sister James, no matter how much Sister James wants to show her love for them. In the end, she wants nothing more than to bury her head in the sand, pretend that the situation with Donald Muller and Father Flynn does not exist. When she speaks to Father Flynn, she grasps eagerly at his story because she doesn't want to deal with the potential reality of a horrible situation. Sister Aloysius, on the other hand, is willing to break protocol in order to protect the children in her charge, and is willing to lose her place in the church if she can keep her children safe.

She reminds me a lot of Joan Cusack's character in School of Rock (though I wouldn't choose to cast the actress as this character). Both care personally about the children, but find themselves unable to relate to them or to be soft with them due to the need for structure in the children's lives, and due to their position as principal. Joan Cusack's character has a monologue about this:

Intimidated? They hate me. Yes, they do. They sure do. I can see. I wasn't always like this. I wasn't always wound this tight. There was a time when I was fun. I was funny. I was. But you can't be funny and be the principal of a prep school. No, you cannot, because when it comes to their kids, these parents, they have no sense of humor. If anything goes wrong, it's my head. It's my head in the smasher. These parents will come down on me like a nuclear bomb. I can't make a mistake. I gotta be perfect. And that pressure has turned me into one thing that I never wanted to be. A bitch.

Blood

So for the past day or so I've bee walking around with the phrase "cleansing blood" written on my wrist so I'd remember to write this. I got a few funny looks from people who happened to see my little note, and had to explain to them that no, it's not what it looks like.

In any case, I wanted to discuss the concept of blood as a symbol of cleansing and purity. In Bynum's story of how he got his Binding Song, he had to rub himself down with the shiny man's blood. Similarly, Loomis slashes his own chest, out of some desperate need to prove that blood cannot heal him, and bathes in the blood. This leads to him regaining his song and being whole again.

Bynum also uses pigeon blood on what seems to be a regular basis. He kills the pigeon and buries it before pouring the blood over the grave. Given the symbolism of blood in this play, along with the symbolism of the dove, a bird very similar to the pigeon, one can assume that Bynum is blessing Seth and Bertha's home.

I was hoping to find other sources in which blood could be considered a purifyer, but apart from Christianity (which I assume is where this play's association with it came from), I could not find anything. I did, however, find a compelling essay on the various uses of blood in the play Macbeth: http://www.essaydepot.com/essayme/234/index.php

If anybody else knows of some sources with uses of blood, I'd love to see them.

Spinning into Butter

My first reaction to the play occurred when I first started reading it. With a title like "Spinning into Butter," I expected a play taking place one or two hundred years earlier, in a farm or rural atmosphere with family strife/bonding somehow being connected with the act of churning butter. Obviously, this illustrates two points: a.) that I did not read the back and b.) that I am not very imaginative when it comes to plays.

Being the protagonist, Sarah's character was the most intriguing to me - not because she was the protagonist, but because there were so many facets to her character. Being a white female, I could associate with some of the earlier points she made, such as with Patrick Chibas. Why would a person object so strongly to a title of race in exchange for a twelve thousand dollar scholarship? To me it seemed as though she was trying to help him out. Even when reading his motivations for the protest, I still can't claim to understand fully what goes on in his head.

Learning of her racist tendencies was both surprising and anticipated. I suspected that there were some misconceptions due to ignorance on her part, but never fathomed just how much she hated black people, and therefore the cruel irony at being hired for the sake of becoming a racial liason of sorts.

I don't understand the big deal about her dislike of Toni Morrison. Of course she won't like it; she is more accustomed to a different style of writing, no matter how many courses she took on the subject. And really, everyone's tastes run differently; would my dislike of Ernest Hemingway make me sexist against men, rather than simply being unable to enjoy his writing?

Upon reading her opinions of Morrison's Beloved, I sought out some criticisms of the work, and found one that addressed the very aspects Sarah disliked in it. The article states the following: "In a process of personal and social transformation, Beloved's spaces and times change through geographical and structural movement and through storytelling. Narrative processes are linked to spatial formations and communal configurations. Morrison's simultaneous working through of history and memory by describing bodies and social structures makes the novel useful not only for projects of remembrance and revision, but also for building new social configurations of family and kin." The rest of it can be found here.

I do have to agree that, in my experience at least, everyone does the picking and choosing on a train or a bus - not necessarily due to race, but individual criteria that everyone has. I, for example, will admit that I would rather sit next to a woman older than me (what I view as the least physically and socially threatening), preferably away from children of any kind. In fact, I am curious about this possibility; does anyone else have any criteria for a potential seat on a hypothetical bus?

Why theater? continued

Okay, so after reading Amadeus I came up with another reason why people still go to theaters: the method of character development. Movies can't usually get away with monologues and asides, and this prevents viewers from truly getting into the characters' heads. Would Amadeus really have been worth watching, reading or even writing if the audience were not privy to Salieri's innermost thoughts? Doubtful.

Rock me, Amadeus

I have to say that this is one of the few cases in a story where the villain has done something to make me wish for his ultimate defeat, not for the happy ending and peace in the world of the story, but so the villain suffers. At first, I could sort of sympathize with Salieri; here he has spent his entire life following the word of God, even remaining faithful to a woman he doesn't love when he is in love with a student. Then along comes this foul-mouthed upstart who not only sleeps with said student, but is also a vastly superior composer to Salieri with seemingly no effort. His initial goal, to get back at Mozart, seems very human; all he wants is simple vengeance. When he learns, however, of Mozart's talent, he lashes out at God through the young artist - "shooting the messenger," as it were.

This reminds me of Will Eisner's "A Contract with God," a story of a Jewish man who, as the title implies, entered a contract with God (though he never actually received confirmation of agreement from the other party) that, if he were to live a pious life, God would never inflict harm upon him. For a long time this agreement goes unbroken, until one day when his daughter dies. The man renounces God, uses money entrusted to him by the Synagogue to buy some property, and eventually gets rich. Later in life, he decides to try a new contract, and pays a group of Rabbis to make an unbreakable contract between him and God. The night he receives the finished copy, he has a heart attack and dies.

In both cases the main character presumes to force God into helping him for a price. God, an omnipotent being to whom humans owe their very existence according to the religion each character worships. It is the fact that they believe that God must adhere to the laws of man, that they can demand things of him in exchange for their faith, something God probably believes should be given willingly, that shows that gluttony is not the only deadly sin Salieri practices. This presumption on his part is a clear expression of hubris; not only can he order God around, he can also harm God's messenger when the deity doesn't obey.

"Art"

First of all, this was a good play to start off with; it was simple in cast, writing, set design and character development. A good start for people such as myself, who have less experience in reading scripts than many FPA majors.

I also enjoyed how I didn't have to be told that the play takes place in Europe; the use of francs as currency, as well as many turns of phrase, gave that away without someone having to announce a trip to London or wherever.

Of the three characters in the play, I feel like Yvan really got the short end of the stick in the end. Serge gets to keep his painting and his friend, while still gaining a sense of humor. Marc gets the reassurance that he is not being replaced by a painting. Yvan gets a marriage he didn't really want, a job that relies on said marriage, and the burden of knowing the reconciliation of their friendship started with a lie. Where the other two gain peace of mind, Yvan loses what little he might have had.

The painting in the play seems to me to be a reflection of the play itself. "Art" is rather minimalist in style - only three characters, two representing artistic movements, simple dialogue with frequent repetition, and minimal set design. Especially when compared to "Amadeus," a much grander production with more characters, props and a more convoluted plot.