Title: Oedipus Rex
Summary
It is prophesied that a king's baby boy will kill him and marry his wife. The child, Oedipus is sent to be killed by a shepherd, but he merely abandons him on the mountainside. Another royal family finds him and takes the child in. Oedipus grows up to learn of the prophecy and in an attempt to avoid it, he leaves who he believes to be his parents. On his journey he kills a king who is actually his true father, and reaches the city of Thebes, which is being terrorized by the sphinx. Oedipus correctly answers the Sphinx's riddle and saves the city. He then marries the queen (his mother) and begins having children. He later tries to who killed the city's king, not knowing it was his own doing. Consulting the prophet and shepherd he learns that he has actually fulfilled the prophecy. His wife and mother hangs herself, and Oedipus gouges his eyes out with her amulet, and dooms himself to a life of exile.
Quotes:
Fear? What should a man fear? It's all chance, chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth can see a day ahead, groping through the dark. Better to live at random, best we can. And as for this marriage with your mother—have no fear. Many a man before you, in his dreams, has shared his mother's bed. Take such things for shadows, nothing at all— Live, Oedipus, as if there's no tomorrow!
People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus. He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance, he rose to power, a man beyond all power. Who could behold his greatness without envy? Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him. Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day, count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.
Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud,Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot,What pangs of agonizing memory?
Though I cannot behold you, I must weep In thinking of the evil days to come,The slights and wrongs that men will put upon you.Where'er ye go to feast or festival,No merrymaking will it prove for you,But oft abashed in tears ye will return.And when ye come to marriageable years,Where's the bold wooers who will jeopardize To take unto himself such disrepute As to my children's children still must cling,For what of infamy is lacking here?
I go, but first will tell thee why I came.Thy frown I dread not, for thou canst not harm me.Hear then: this man whom thou hast sought to arrest With threats and warrants this long while, the wretch Who murdered Laius--that man is here.He passes for an alien in the land But soon shall prove a Theban, native born.And yet his fortune brings him little joy;For blind of seeing, clad in beggar's weeds,For purple robes, and leaning on his staff,To a strange land he soon shall grope his way.
Vehicles:
Poetic Justice: It is only after Oedipus has blinded himself that he may truly see.
Irony: Oedipus in all his great intelligence and wit could not put the pieces together to reveal his true identity before it is too late.
Symbolism: Light is used to represent knowledge or enlightenment, often unwanted.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: In an attempt to avoid his destiny, Oedipus actually helps to fulfill the fate that was passed on to him.
Conflicts:
Fate vs Free Will
Blindness vs True Sight (Knowledge)
Mortals vs Divine Plan
Subjects:
Fate
Knowledge
Blindness
Characters:
Oedipus
Priest
Creon
Tiresias
Jocasta
Messenger
Shepherd
Themes:
Sometimes the blind man is the only one who can see the truth.
Limits of human free will.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The Stranger
Title: The Stranger by Albert Camus
Summary: Meursault's, a clerk before the Second World War in Algiers, France learns of his mothers death. He attends her funeral, but is unable to view her body. He returns home and helps his friend Raymond by writing a break-up letter to his supposedly unfaithful Moorish girlfriend. Later on a beach, the two find the ex-girlfriend's brother and an Arab friend. Raymond is wounded by a knife, and Meursault returns later with Raymond's gun when the sun gets in his eyes and he accidentally kills the Arab, but he later shoots his body again. Meursault is arrested, and shows no remorse whilst on trial, so he is seen as an unemotional killer. Sentenced to execution by beheading, Meursault is sent a chaplain in an attempt to get him to ask for forgiveness but Meursault sees God as a waste of his time.
Quotes:
She said, “If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.” She was right. There was no way out.
A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so.
I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn't dissatisfied with mine here at all.
As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.
Vehicles:
Understatement: Meursault is constantly grossly under emphasizing many dramatic points in his life (i.e. his appears relatively calm about the death of his mother).
Symbolism: The sun can be seen as some type of symbol for society's expectations or judgments of an individual, constantly bearing down on a person sometimes causing them to do foolish or unlikely things (such as shooting an individual)
Pathos: Meursault's emotion of lack thereof can be used to dry an instill some form of frustration or anger in the audience at his utter lack of concern for seemingly anything.
Irony: Meursault's unorthodox look on like can drastically differ from what we expect (when Marie takes the stand, he immoderately ponders on how wonderful her chest looks at that moment).
Conflicts:
The need for emotion vs The simple desire to exist
Society's expectations of how an individual should be vs How that person simply desires to exist
The desire to pursue an afterlife vs the desire to concentrate on what is real and at hand
Subjects:
Death
God
Remorse/Grief
Characters:
Meursault
Marie Cardona
Raymond Sintes
Chaplain
Magistrate
Salamano
Celeste
Prosecutor
Arab
Themes:
The importance of the material, physical world
The absurdity of the universe and human society
Summary: Meursault's, a clerk before the Second World War in Algiers, France learns of his mothers death. He attends her funeral, but is unable to view her body. He returns home and helps his friend Raymond by writing a break-up letter to his supposedly unfaithful Moorish girlfriend. Later on a beach, the two find the ex-girlfriend's brother and an Arab friend. Raymond is wounded by a knife, and Meursault returns later with Raymond's gun when the sun gets in his eyes and he accidentally kills the Arab, but he later shoots his body again. Meursault is arrested, and shows no remorse whilst on trial, so he is seen as an unemotional killer. Sentenced to execution by beheading, Meursault is sent a chaplain in an attempt to get him to ask for forgiveness but Meursault sees God as a waste of his time.
Quotes:
She said, “If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.” She was right. There was no way out.
A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so.
I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn't dissatisfied with mine here at all.
As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.
Vehicles:
Understatement: Meursault is constantly grossly under emphasizing many dramatic points in his life (i.e. his appears relatively calm about the death of his mother).
Symbolism: The sun can be seen as some type of symbol for society's expectations or judgments of an individual, constantly bearing down on a person sometimes causing them to do foolish or unlikely things (such as shooting an individual)
Pathos: Meursault's emotion of lack thereof can be used to dry an instill some form of frustration or anger in the audience at his utter lack of concern for seemingly anything.
Irony: Meursault's unorthodox look on like can drastically differ from what we expect (when Marie takes the stand, he immoderately ponders on how wonderful her chest looks at that moment).
Conflicts:
The need for emotion vs The simple desire to exist
Society's expectations of how an individual should be vs How that person simply desires to exist
The desire to pursue an afterlife vs the desire to concentrate on what is real and at hand
Subjects:
Death
God
Remorse/Grief
Characters:
Meursault
Marie Cardona
Raymond Sintes
Chaplain
Magistrate
Salamano
Celeste
Prosecutor
Arab
Themes:
The importance of the material, physical world
The absurdity of the universe and human society
Make Nike, not War
In the words of TEAM USA TRACK Olympic coach, Bill Bowerman, "there is more honor in outrunning a man than in killing him." He delivered this statement to his team (which Steve Prefontaine, pictured in the commercial, was a part of) upon the killing of Jewish athletes during the Munich Summer Olympics. He urged his runners not to think their events frivolous in the face of such hateful violence, but to approach them with a renewed vigour and sense of purpose. In the same spirit in the uniting, human nature of sport Nike has employed pathos to connect with the human side of athletics.
Trying to sell all of their products, Nike has shown clips from nearly every sport imaginable, from Michael Jordan's basketball highlights, to Olympic hurdling. The song chosen is, "All These Things that I've Done," by The Killers. The energized track emphasizes the qualities admired in a soldier, specifically courage is emphasized, but the athletes are shown to be courageous in their nonviolence. Athletics is shown to be a uniting force to humanity across all cultures in its pain, displayed by Lance Armstrong lying in the hospital alongside gored bullfighters, and its glory. Sport is made to be a celebration of life and what makes us all people is that desire to hunt, to conquer, and to achieve without the bloodshed made in war. The montage of animal imagery reminds us of ancient times when finding dinner often meant running it into the ground. Many sub-four minute milers claim to experience the same type of exhilaration as flying through the jungle, chasing prey. Lifes a game so don't just sit there! Get up and go do it, and don't forget to buy NIKE!
Trying to sell all of their products, Nike has shown clips from nearly every sport imaginable, from Michael Jordan's basketball highlights, to Olympic hurdling. The song chosen is, "All These Things that I've Done," by The Killers. The energized track emphasizes the qualities admired in a soldier, specifically courage is emphasized, but the athletes are shown to be courageous in their nonviolence. Athletics is shown to be a uniting force to humanity across all cultures in its pain, displayed by Lance Armstrong lying in the hospital alongside gored bullfighters, and its glory. Sport is made to be a celebration of life and what makes us all people is that desire to hunt, to conquer, and to achieve without the bloodshed made in war. The montage of animal imagery reminds us of ancient times when finding dinner often meant running it into the ground. Many sub-four minute milers claim to experience the same type of exhilaration as flying through the jungle, chasing prey. Lifes a game so don't just sit there! Get up and go do it, and don't forget to buy NIKE!
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