..:: A lot of drama ::..

          Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, as any literary piece of art, represents life. This theatrical script portrays manners and behaviors followed by elitists in the Victorian period. The play provides an account of the upper class’s standards and strict social rules, which proved to be hypocritical and fairly artificial.   Cecily and Gwendolyn, two of Wilde’s characters, ironically oppose some of the Victorian principles by breaking gender roles.

          Gwendolyn is a fair representation of the Victorian woman, for she has thoughts and morals that apply to the societal rules. She is a well rounded women, who attends lectures  and strives to improve herself in every aspect.  But on the other hand, as any other character in the play, she is feigned and exaggerated and pretends to be someone that she is not.

          Cecily displays a more contrasting personality; she is ingenuous and pure. However, her ingenuity seems not to exist in its integrity, after the reader becomes alert of her love and fascination with the name Ernest. To keep her memories, she keeps a diary in which she writes her love stories with Earnest. It’s possible to perceive that she is not so pure, because in her diary she starts to live a love story with someone called Earnest, putting out her transgressive attitude in opposition to the Victorian Age.

          After the two female characters reveal their true personalities, it’s visible that both Gwendolyn and Cecily broke some of the gender rules that were imposed during the Victorian Age. Gwendolyn assumes a new condition, putting down some rules that were forced upon her. She assumes a new a “condition” as a woman by leading Jack to propose to her and also to say what she wants to hear from a gentleman named Ernest. Cecily, regardless of her obedience with the English upper class, breaks down the women’s condition: she writes a story about her romance with a man that she always dreamed of marrying.  These events are some examples of transgressive attitudes displayed by Gwendolyn and Cecily.  Lastly, its notable that both women act as they please, treat men as they wish and enforce their desires upon the men they intend to marry.

        Many are the meanings that we can give to a blue rose. General a rose is a “symbol of completion of consummate achievement and perfection” (CIRLOT, 2002, p. 275). But we must do not miss the color. According to the Cirlot we must take into consideration the color of the rose too. A blue rose is the symblol of the impossible (CIRLOT, 2002, p. 275).

       In a first moment, the blue roses represent the uniqueness of Laura.  Blue Roses do not naturally exist.  This rose is different from other roses just as Laura is different from other girls. 

       But in the play The Glass Menagerie the blue roses also represents the sadness.  Laura felt. These feelings are caused by her unpopularity, different from her mother.  Amanda’s expectation caused Laura to feel bad when she does not meet her requirements. Laura had left out of the business college and she cannot find any gentleman caller. Another point are the roses that represent Laura’s beauty and innocence.

       The author, with the symbolic construction of the blue roses, gives us the idea that Laura is a unique, rare, fragile girl, supported by her mother and brother.

 Reference

 CIRLOT, J. E. A dictionary of symbols. Mineola: Dover, 2002

"Lady Macbeth" by George Cattermole, 1850

“Come you spirits […] Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murth’ring ministers, wherever in your sightless substances, you wait on Nature’s mischief”. (Act 1, Scene 5)

Based on the fact that Lady Macbeth is naïve we can point two different points in which she shows some guiltiness. In the first  scene we have Lady Macbeth saying to Macbeth that Duncan’s blood that he has in his hands will be washed with some water:

 “A little water clears us of this deed.”  (Act 2, Scene 2)

 As deeper as we get on the reading of the play we can see another aspect that shows Lady Macbeth guilty. Starts to see spots of blood over her hand, and try to clean it. She in some way shows that, her guiltiness on the fact that she is the “mentor” of Duncan’s murderer, as we can see bellow:

 “ Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why, then ’tis time to do ’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” (Act 5, scene 1)

So, as shown above, Lady Macbeth is guilty as Macbeth in the murderer of the king. This happens because they have already a Christian view of life and, as they have broken many taboos, they will suffer not God’s punishment, but they will suffer with their aggression against the moral.

In the play Macbeth we can easily see how Shakespeare used Lady Macbeth as part of his guilty and achievements. She is an engine behind his evilness and his acts. Lady Macbeth, is a good example of guiltiness, by her acts through the play. Part of her guiltiness comes from her naivety. This naivety is seen in the scene when she asks the spirits to became her a kind of man. On the scene bellow, we can easily see that she believes that mans are too much strong to not feel guilty about something.

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning “action” (Classical Greek: δράμα, dráma), which is derived from “to do” (Classical Greek: δράω, dráō). The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.”

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New semester, new teacher, new subject

All about Almodóvar

All about my mother (also known as Todo sobre mi madre) is the thirteenth movie directed and written by the Spanish movie director Pedro Almodóvar in 1999. The film revisited Almodóvar’s familiar themes of the power of sisterhood and of family

The film is focused on Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a nurse who manages donor organ transplants in a hospital in Madrid. On his seventeenth birthday, her son Esteban (Eloy Azorín) is struck by a car and killed while chasing actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes). Hopeless, Manuela journeys to Barcelona, where she hopes to find her son’s father Lola, a transvestite she kept secret from the boy, just as she never told Lola he had a son.

All about my mother received more awards and honors than any other film in the Spanish movie industry. Its awards includes an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, a Golden Globe in the same category, Best Director Award and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury Award at Cannes; the French Cesar for Best Foreign Film, the Goya Award as best film of the year, best Actress in a Leading Role for Argentine actress Cecilia Roth and a twelfth Annual European Film Award.

All about my mother is a movie to touch everybody. Almodóvar mixes the drama and the comedy to show us how life really is, how people deal with their problems. Once more he uses his extremes giving us the opportunity of seeing a beautiful movie with beautiful images and wonderful interpretations, as the perfect Cecilia Roth’s Manuela.

A travel trough the childhood flavor

Charlie and the chocolate factory was written in1964. It is a children’s book by British author Roald Dahl. The book was first published in the United States in 1964. The book was adapted into two major motion pictures: Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory in 1971, and Charlie and the chocolate factory in 2005. The book’s sequel, Charlie and the great glass elevator, was written by Roald Dahl in 1972.

The story tells the story of a young boy from a poor family, Charlie Bucket, whose life is turned around when he wins one of the five popular places on a tour of a world-famous, factory, that produces chocolate and other variety of candy, owned by the Willy Wonka.

His grandparents are storytellers and tell Charlie about the chocolate factory’s history: how it was closed and how all its workers were fired when Willy Wonka believed they were spying from rivals candy-makers. However Willy Wonka told his workers that he would close the factory forever, he mysteriously reopened it some time later. No one knows who works for him now.

More then a book to children, this book can be classified as an adult book too. It show children how to behave and act in certain situations, showing them that more you desire something more you have to have responsibility to deal with it. Roald Dahl’s books are this: a mixture between magic, reality and dreams, where everything makes senses and where all the pieces fit wit each other.

Letras + me = the big improvement

Learn a language is a long process, and it demands dedication and hard work. Since I have started study at Faculdade de Letras, I saw how I learned and how I improved English. When I got into  the university, I used to thought  that my English was advanced, and then I saw that I will  deeply learn a foreign language if I practice , and study  it deeply, forgetting past experiences of the right accent to use.

Since my first day of  English class I observed  that as much as I practice, it means, as much as I write, speak, read or listen, much more I improve my abilities with  English. I can see these changes when I am listening a dialog or when I am talking with someone, I can understand what the person is saying without ask the person to repeat. Another think that can show my improvement in English is how much greetings I received from foreigners about my spoken English. These kind of feedback only shows me that I am in the right way or my language improvement.

Another important think that changed in me is my point of view about teaching. At first I thought that teaching was only give subjects to the students and then ask them a feedback with a test. But my life time into the university showed me that it is only the beginning of what really is teaching. It involves so many theories, points of views and, especially, a lot of readings and studies about what really is being a language teacher.

Until now I should see how wonderful is to be a teacher. The course showed  me that it is more than giving classes, and this  two lasts  semester  helped  me in my language improvement; it is possible to say that they were the two moments that I learned the most during my “English course” here at Letras. And for the first time since I got into the university I can say that I am prepared to be an English teacher.

Simple acts to save the word

Day by day, with the high increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere, global warming is more evident to happen in the future. But, if we get together there are some actions/attitudes that we should take to help the low issue of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Thus, it is important to everybody make their part, because, little by little, we can revert the actual situation of the word in relation of the high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

One simple act that we can have to help reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is change a bulb light to a compact fluorescent light. When we do this, we save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. Another easy thing that we can do to help is to use less our cars! If possible, take a ride, go walking or biking, letting your car once a week you can save some pounds of CO₂.

One important thing to do is recycle. When we recycle we save prime materials and we pollute less the air, because we avoid sending CO₂ into the atmosphere. Another example that we can have is not use plastic or paper bags when we go to the supermarket. Always keep with you a reusable bag; with this you save a lot of CO₂ too.

A simple act would be to plant a tree. When you do this, you can save a ton of CO₂ during the tree’s life. And, the most important thing to do: save energy. When you are not using your TV, DVD, computer or anything that uses electric energy, turn it off completely. When you do this you can save a lot of pounds of CO₂ issue.

These simple acts can help to decrease the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is important to have in mind that you are doing your part, but if everybody does his/her little part, we will change the actual situation of the world. Thus, let us keep the word and preserve this, because here, in our house, will be the house of our children.