Thursday, October 31, 2019

West VS East. Racial And Gender Stereotypes And Power Relationships Research Paper

West VS East. Racial And Gender Stereotypes And Power Relationships - Research Paper Example Thus, this flow seems unstoppable on the example of Europeans and Asians. David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly is an applicable example of those fallacies white supremacist promoted about underdeveloped Asians. Turning up to this topic, the world knows many examples when cultural misconception brought a host of social, political, and economical conflicts based on the racial and ethnical difference. This popular trend in the East-West debate was broken down by means of Hwang’s M. Butterfly. Thus, Western influences on Asian culture refer to the imperial dominance, while Eastern identity cannot be trite even after the period of colonization. First and foremost, representatives from Asian countries and with Asian descent were always an object for Western mockery and humiliation. This trend is historically grounded. The question is that Asian people are quite different in their sets of virtues and values they carry on in terms of religion, society, money-making, and the like. O nce, it became annoying for the white supremacists that colonized much of the South-East Asian countries. The pressure started growing since that time. Hence, it overgrew into inequality and prejudices. Asian men and women were not considered equal with European men and women due to the higher, so to speak, status and position of the latter descent. Taking a look at the Hwang’s work, Rene Gallimard is an unhappy white man to be trapped into his own fallacy on Asian women. He fell in love with blindness in his eyes regarding the gender of an Asian woman he loved. The idea is that Asian men as well as Asian women were not considered sexually attractive for white people. Their asexual identity was another reason why they were mistrusted and discriminated by the white majority. Oriental sexuality bore a mark of impossibility. This bias embraced the cultural vision of Caucasian people worldwide. Hence, a host of different stereotypes is the reason why East-West discourse fell shor t of further clarifications. Misogyny referred to Asian men along with feminization referred to Asian women in a wider look at the Western imaginary are the main drives to declare inability of Asians to be attractive to white people. This is why Asians seem to be cast adrift far from where whites gathered. On the other hand, Asian women were considered incapable of their female potential so as to impress Europeans. Thus, East-West racial and gender stereotypes were well grounded on extrapolation of power relations with a century-long continuation. When Gallimard says: â€Å"I’m a man who loved a woman created by a man† – it is a justification of narrow-mindedness he possessed before which was imposed by the rest of his own society in Paris (Hwang ii). It is a remarkable episode depicting the way Rene Gallimard erred during his visit of China. On the other hand, framing Asian men as dangerous for women at large was another stereotype by the Western theorists. One can see it through the way Gallimard behaved in the first days of his trip to China. Frankly speaking, it is all about the way two cultures differ in their understanding of social equilibrium and harmony. Sorrentino points out in his study the following idea: â€Å"Most relevant in this case is the way the West has been described as having an individualistic culture with relatively â€Å"loose† social norms whereas the East has been described as having a collectivistic culture with â€Å"tight† social norms that emphasize social harmony† (51). This is the sticking point highlighting the point of misunderstanding between two cultures. Drawing the images of Asian people in strict accordance to the prejudices and stereotypes illustrating the Western supremacy over the rest of the world, asexual Asian men and hypersexual Asian women seem to

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Dubliners & stories Essay Example for Free

Dubliners stories Essay James Joyce’s book, â€Å"Dubliners† offers a variety of stories about the city of Dublin. James wrote the collection of short fifteen stories where each story adds to the wonderful completion of the book. Each story was so different from the previous and it was very interesting to read various tales that took place in Dublin where each of the stories were kept interested and ready to read the next short story about a great love for the country and you could easily see the disappointment the writer held for some of the country people and the way they lived. I found myself glued to the pages while reading most of the stories and I would be eager to get to the next short story, and occasionally the next wasn’t quite as good, but I continued in my reading and I was never fully disappointed. Some of the stories were better than others, but as a whole, I would have to say that the book, â€Å"Dublin† was well worth the extra time I spent reading it, and I would recommend that others read the book, as well. Reading Joyce’s book is a wonderful way of learning about the country of Dublin and viewing how people live in the country. It was interesting to tour the country using a mental image that guided me along with Joyce’s words. Joyce used impressive and descriptive words to describe the surroundings in Dublin, such as â€Å"glow of a late autumn sunset† which gave me a feeling of serenity and full color description. Joyce used the color gold more than once in her writing, which I assumed was a color that she closely associated with the country of Dublin. In one of Joyce’s short stories, I found it very interesting when she told about Gallaher, from the title, â€Å"A Little Cloud† and told about the man returning from London and she had a way of clearly describing the man as dirty and dear. Gallaher brought interesting light to the short stories because he was able to bring in a different perspective of Dublin, because he wasn’t one that resided in the country. Joyce, in my opinion, possessed a love and hate relationship with Dublin. The author would tell stories of the country which left you feeling as if you never wanted to go there, but would then he would leave you feeling as if you had a deep respect for the country and the people who lived there. In the short story, â€Å"The Dead† Joyce talks about a marriage that was all wrong and failed because the relationship was full of deception and lies. The secrets destroyed the marriage, but at the same time, I liked and appreciated how the author was still able to show the love that was in the failing relationship. Joyce was able to teach me that it’s okay to still love someone, even though there are problems. I was able to see that you can still love someone, even though they are not perfect. The story made me think of unconditional love. In some of the stories, the author was able to come across strongly when she told about alcoholism and how it effected the lives of those who lived in Dublin. I was also able to feel sorry for the poor residents. It was sad how some of the Dublin citizens tried to escape the country only to end up in prison. It took some of the hope away that you had previously wished for and left a stagnant impression of Dublin. In the story, â€Å"Mother†, I found that it was depression that was the main theme of and I found it to be, less than entertaining. It was interesting to see how the author was able to move the story from ones youth to that of an adult. The author brought the words of the stories with anger at times and then gentleness with others. Joyce was able to display both good and bad emotions, from love to hate, and from depression to hope. The young characters in the story made me want to reach out to them. They seemed to be starving for affection and looked so helplessly for a means to escape from the country of Dublin. It was sad to see that hope diminish with the turning of the pages and watch as the young characters grew up to be defeated in their possibilities of escaping. The author spoke with an artistic ability with the words he chose for the story. He spoke in rhythm and it was easy to follow his writing. He had a remarkable way of describing the characters in his short stories and a means to help me closely identify with the characters. â€Å"His eyes burned with anguish and anger† was a line at the end of one story that was more frightening than entertaining. The author spoke bluntly about what he was saying I could clearly see the rage in the eyes of the person. The character, Farrington is such an angry individual in the story â€Å"Counterparts† and you can sense a hatred in his character. You had to wonder if Dublin brought out the worst in everybody. Dublin is a country that I see as oppressed through the authors writing and I don’t feel that I’d enjoy visiting the country, in fear that some of the anger and depression may rub off on me. I sense too much struggle in the daily lives of Dubliners, some which manage to survive with some hope and other characters that I just saw no hope for their eventual happiness. Joyce seemed cold and agitated in his writing when he talked about Dublin as if he had some type of hate for the country. But, in the end you have to ask yourself if he really did hate the place as much as he tried to make you believe he did. His writing was extremely creative and interesting and I’m happy that I read each of the short stories because I did learn so much the people who lived in Dublin. Their lives seemed so dull and full of despair which reminded be how fortunate I am to be able to live in a great country like The United States of America. The author very successful at opening up my imagination and I felt like I was in Dublin with the characters. I would have like to been capable of intervening for many of the characters, which is why I feel that â€Å"Dubliner† was a book that made me feel and react with several emotions. â€Å"Dubliners† by James Joyce is a story that I will always remember, but not with fondness. I will never forget the characters or the country of Dublin. I didn’t realize how old the book truly was, and I found it very impressive to read about the stories of Dublin in the early years. Joyce, James, 1914, â€Å"Dubliners† Penguin Group

Saturday, October 26, 2019

William Shakespeare An Analysis

William Shakespeare An Analysis Why was William Shakespeare regarded as the best English play writer? In his book Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt describes Shakespeare as â€Å"the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time†. This echoes the fact that ‘the Bard’ is often considered to be one of England’s greatest authors. Even today his work is read by thousands of schoolchildren, his plays are performed in many theatres (including the replica Globe in London which is named after him), his plays have been repeatedly filmed and turned into parts of popular culture, and his language is often quoted in various forms. In addition, his home town of Stratford has become one of England’s premier tourist attractions. Considering Shakespeare is such a famous figure, it is remarkable how little we actually know about his life. In fact, some critics have suggested that this is one reason for his continuing success or for the ‘cult’ of ‘The Bard’: if the man himself is a myth then he can be permanently recreated for many generations. However there are some details that we can identify with relative confidence. Shakespeare was born in 1564, probably on April 23rd as he was baptised on the 26th. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwickshire where his father was a glover and alderman. He   received a good education at the local grammar school, the Kings New School, where boys were taught Latin grammar and classical texts (he later used Latin sources for the plots of some of his plays, for example Titus Andronicus refers to Ovid’s tales Metamorphoses). By the time Shakespeare was 18 he was married to a relative and local woman named Anne Hathaway, with whom he eventually had three children, called Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 there are few records to indicate where Shakespeare was living and under what occupation, though a number of different stories suggest he was already in London, or had fled accused of poaching, or was in fact himself a teacher: â€Å"He had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country† wrote John Aubrey. But by 1592 records suggest that he was established in London as a playwright, where he continued to write and perform plays with considerable success until shortly before his death in 1616 (coincidentally, on April 23rd, his birthday). When Shakespeare’s plays were originally published all together in the First Folio of 1623, they were collected for the first time, and were divided into comedies, tragedies and histories. While these generic categories are not always upheld today, and there are some plays such as Measure for Measure which do not easily fit into one group or another, there are consistencies between some of the plays which allow them to be grouped in this manner.   We can identify certain patterns based upon genre. For example, in Othello, Othello’s murder of Desdemona followed by suicide restores the social status quo of a powerful state under white leadership. Hamlet’s death in Hamlet disrupts the royal line but succeeds in first purging the state of the corruption, the â€Å"something rotten†, that affects the country. However both of these plays, like Macbeth, are mainly concerned not with social relations but with following the decline of a powerful character. It is true that there is often a comic subplot in the plays to provide a light relief, but the main plot follows a tragic flaw in character to a tragic conclusion usually of multiple deaths. By contrast, where tragedy has multiple deaths, the comedy plays usually offer multiple marriages – this is one of their most characteristic features. Confusion and misinterpretations are resolved not in duels or deaths but in reconciliation and the restoration of characters to their proper social roles. At the end of Twelfth Night, Orsino responds to the revelation of Sebastian and Viola’s identities with the following lines: â€Å"If this be so, as yet the glass seems true, I shall have share in this most happy wrack† (V.i) Although â€Å"wrack† suggests the potential for catastrophe, it has found its proper romantic conclusion and the love-plot is untangled. Viola is released from her disguise as the boy Cesaro and restored to her proper female role, and everyone’s identity revealed. Social reconciliation usually takes this form in Shakespeare’s comedies as lovers are united in marriage, usually in groups of two or three pairs whose plots are followed together throughout the play. Multiple narratives are drawn together often in the final scene. The ability to resolve complex plots in such a way is one of the features that make Shakespeare such a great dramatist. Shakespeare’s construction of love, though often seemingly simplistic in its conclusion, is sophisticated in being able to question each character’s ability to make the right decisions for themselves, and the different layers of narrative serve as comments upon the other plots that work alongside them. In the complex reversals of affection in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s most popular romantic comedies, the proper order of the lovers is disrupted and then restored by Oberon and his servant Puck: â€Å"When they next awake, all this derision, Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision† (III.ii.370-1) A popular theme running throughout the plays is disguise and the complication of identity which in the case of gender roles enables Shakespeare to further entangle the male-female tensions which are at the centre of marriage plots. Famous heroines who dress up as boys include Viola in Twelfth Night and Rosaline in As You Like It, who are able under the cover of their male identities to act out courtship activities, Viola acting on behalf of Orsino in carrying his suit to Olivia and Rosaline teaching Orlando to woo in the guise of Ganymede. In Twelfth Night this then creates comic confusion (and sometimes pain) in a typical love triangle: â€Å"My master loves her dearly, And I (poor monster) fond as much on him, And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me† (II.ii) Viola is a â€Å"monster† in the play because she is not in her proper position as a woman, and cannot express her feelings to the Duke. It is only when she is restored to her female role that the plot can be properly concluded. In speeches such as this one, the audience’s ability to see which way love is really directed in the play create a distance of dramatic irony that reduces the damaging effect of characters who are experiencing pain. Also, the passionate language that Shakespeare is sometimes so flowery that it enables him to generate comedy from expressions of passion: â€Å"O when mine eyes did see Olivia first, / Methought she purged the air of pestilence† (I.i). Unlike in tragedy, when Gertrude â€Å"protests too much† in Hamlet and is then horribly implicated in the crimes which have so upset her son, this kind of exaggeration in comedies creates the effect of laughter, because the audience realise that they have more knowledge than the charact ers in the play. One of the reasons often given for Shakespeare’s enduring popularity is his â€Å"universal† appeal: his stories cross many genres and different places and periods in history and thus they always seem relevant to a particular society at a particular moment in time, or can be adapted to seem relevant (and they have been adapted into many languages around the world). Sometimes this provides a political context for the plays, sometimes it merely serves to add fresh ways of interpreting the language and the scenery, for example in Baz Luhrman’s film William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet the story takes place in a futuristic modern-day setting at ‘Verona Beach’ in America, where the commercial rivalry of the Capulets and Montagues replaces their social positions and where guns and advertising are everywhere, contrasting with the romantic poetry as it is retained from the play. But it remains a tragic and affecting story. Shakespeare himself created an impression of universal drama in the language that he uses in suggesting that what was represented in the theatre could represent the whole world. In As You Like It he wrote the following famous lines, â€Å"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts† (II.vii) Here he refers to the activities in the theatre, the actors coming on and off stage, to suggest a metaphor for how people live their lives. He suggests that anybody could play a different part, or any part, so we could all recognise ourselves in a Shakespeare play. It also hints towards the way that characters such as Olivia and Rosaline dress up as other than they are, assume different roles or become different ‘players’. It was common in Shakespeare’s time for the actors in each company to play many different roles, sometimes within the same plays and sometimes across several plays that were being performed in the same week. This kind of language is also reflected in plays such as Macbeth, in tragedy rather than in comedy, where in the dying speech of the play’s hero or antihero he says, â€Å"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.† (V.v) Here the metaphor extends to the process of life itself, which is only like a â€Å"poor player† who has only an â€Å"hour† to perform. This is perhaps wishful thinking on the part of Macbeth who would like to imagine that his actions were only â€Å"performed† and that they â€Å"signified nothing†, as he is now consumed by guilt for the murder of Duncan. The metaphors of theatre run right through the plays in a way that both playfully emphasises their artificiality, as stories and characters who are performed many times in many different ways, and a way that makes them feel eternal, that they could be acted a countless number of times and still have something to say to us. Also, it is notable that the theatre in which Shakespeare spent the longest years working was called The Globe, drawing attention again to the round stage as representing the universe. The legacy of Shakespeare’s language can be observed not just in how frequently his plays are quoted but also in everyday language and conversation; even without realising it we have absorbed many of his sayings into modern English which we now take for granted. From Lady Macbeth saying â€Å"what’s done is done† in Macbeth to Juliet parting from Romeo in â€Å"such sweet sorrow,† these phrases have become part of our vocabulary so that often their use is unconscious. Shakespeare also used proverbs which may have been popular at the time and which have been handed down to us through the medium of his plays, including phrases like â€Å"to the manner born† and â€Å"brevity is the soul of wit†, both of which can be found in Hamlet. By the time Shakespeare died in 1616 he had written a remarkable quantity of plays and enjoyed a successful career as both playwright and actor. When his plays were finally published together in 1623 they were preserved for future generations to enjoy and to adapt. Today the popularity of Shakespeare appears to be as high as ever, as people all over the world continue to read the plays and to recognise the universal value of the ‘great Bard’. Bibliography Shakespeare, William, Macbeth, Penguin (1967) Shakespeare, William, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Arden (2005) Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night, Penguin (1994) Shakespeare, William, As You Like It, Arden (2006) Crystal, David, Think on My Words: Exploring Shakespeare’s Language, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (2008) Greenblatt, Stephen, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, London: Pimlico (1995), Macrone, Michael Lulevitch, Tom, Brush Up Your Shakespeare!: An Infectious Tour Through the Most Famous and Quotable Words and Phrases from the Bard, Collins (2000)

Friday, October 25, 2019

To His Coy Mistress :: essays research papers

Seduction has been the game most played through out the centuries, as males attempt to convince and invite females into their beds. In Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Donne's "The Flea", the speakers, propose a peccadilloes offer, which is so cunningly backed up by a liberalistic argument and is presented to each female when the generous request has been declined. These arguments are designed to induce thoughts of a carnal nature. The persuasions used by each are completely different but are structured entirely for one purpose. To corner or trick the maiden into saying "Yes". Though both arguements are supurb, Marvell's has a nicer, refined style to it. In "To His Coy Mistress" and "The Flea", there is an exemplification of just how crafty men can be during the hunt. The speakers, in both poems, makes a "modest" but declinable offer for sex to their maiden of choice. And, upon rejection, each male begins a fluent yet rh etoric arguments on why the maiden should accept his simple offer of passion. For Marvell, the argument was that there wasn't enough time left in the world, and that the maiden should partake in indulgence before it is too late." But at my back I always hear/ Times winged Charriot hurrying near"(lines 21-22). He also states the unpleasuarble thought of the worms enjoying her verginity instead of him. Suggesting that if she continues to waste time she will die a virgin. "then Worms shall try/ that long preserv'd Virginity:"(lines 27-28). Whereas Donne's argument revolves around a metaphorical flea. Which as claimed by the speaker, represents his union with the maiden in matrimony, since the flea has taken blood from them both."It suck'd me first and now sucks thee/And in this flea our two bloods mingled be"(lines 3-4). And, since their bloods have already mingled together, intercourse with him wouldn't be a sin and no honor would be lost if she yields to him."Though know'st that this cannot be said/A sin nor shame nor loss of maidenhood:" (lines 5-6) Though however similar the gist of the poems might be, the art of seduction used by each speaker is quite different. The speaker in "To His Coy Mistress" seems to change his tone of persuasion rapidly from stanza to stanza. At first he is sweet, comming across as a gentleman and overstating how many ages he would spent on a single part of her anatomy "A hundred years should go to praise/Thine Eyes.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Civil Rights Essay

Civil Rights essay â€Å"l have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true mea inning of its creed: â€Å"We hold these truths to be selflessness: that all men are created equal. Martin Luther King Jar. The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE is an American civil rights organization n that played a major role for Fragmentariness in the Civil Rights Movement. Found deed in Chicago in March Of 1942 by James Farmer, CORE was one Of the â€Å"Big Four† civil rights or sanitations, along with the CLC, the SYNC, and the NAACP.CORE did many things that we re important to the civil rights movement including Freedom Rides, desegregating Chicago schools, and the Freedom Summer. O n April 10, 1947, CORE sent a group of eight white and eight black men on a 2 week â€Å"Freedom Ride† with a sole purpose of ending segregation in interstate travel. The riders of this group were arrested and jailed several times, but they received a great deal of publicity, a nd this marked the beginning of a long series of similar campaigns.By the early 1960 s, Farmer desired to repeat the 1 947 journey, developing a new name for it: the Freedom Ride. On Maya, 1961, volunteers journeyed to the deep South, this time including women. The rider s endured severe violence. White mobs attacked Freedom Riders in Birmingham and Month ere. The violence caught national attention, sparking a summer of similar rides by other Civil Ri sights organizations and thousands of ordinary citizens. In 1 960, CORE began to challenge racial segregation in the public schools of C hijack.Black schools were in poorer neighbors of Chicago and white schools were in richer parts. Many segregated schools were overcrowded, and in order to ease overcrowding, the e Board instituted doublethink's at some of the schools. Doublethink's meant that students in fee acted schools attended less than a full day of class. Less school meant that Africanizing children would be receiving less educa tion. CORE was not pleased with the results so they pr tested, along with the Chicago community.The following 4 years, CORE along with the SYNC and the NAACP helped organ nice the â€Å"Freedom Summer† campaign aimed principally at ending the political super session of African Americans in the Deep South. CORE, SYNC and COIF also built 30 Freedom S schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum n owe included black history. These Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So were the e homes of African Americans involved in the campaign.That summer 30 black homes and 37 blab KC churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs and three CORE activists were murdered by the K on June 21 SST, 1964. These deaths created nationwide PU ability for the campaign. As you can see, life was very difficult during the Civil Rights movement for Afar can Americans living in the Deep South. Thanks to organizations like CORE and AN CAP, life may have seemed hard and it may have been a struggle to live back in the day, Afar can Americans still had hope. Civil Rights Essay Civil Rights essay â€Å"l have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true mea inning of its creed: â€Å"We hold these truths to be selflessness: that all men are created equal. Martin Luther King Jar. The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE is an American civil rights organization n that played a major role for Fragmentariness in the Civil Rights Movement. Found deed in Chicago in March Of 1942 by James Farmer, CORE was one Of the â€Å"Big Four† civil rights or sanitations, along with the CLC, the SYNC, and the NAACP.CORE did many things that we re important to the civil rights movement including Freedom Rides, desegregating Chicago schools, and the Freedom Summer. O n April 10, 1947, CORE sent a group of eight white and eight black men on a 2 week â€Å"Freedom Ride† with a sole purpose of ending segregation in interstate travel. The riders of this group were arrested and jailed several times, but they received a great deal of publicity, a nd this marked the beginning of a long series of similar campaigns.By the early 1960 s, Farmer desired to repeat the 1 947 journey, developing a new name for it: the Freedom Ride. On Maya, 1961, volunteers journeyed to the deep South, this time including women. The rider s endured severe violence. White mobs attacked Freedom Riders in Birmingham and Month ere. The violence caught national attention, sparking a summer of similar rides by other Civil Ri sights organizations and thousands of ordinary citizens. In 1 960, CORE began to challenge racial segregation in the public schools of C hijack.Black schools were in poorer neighbors of Chicago and white schools were in richer parts. Many segregated schools were overcrowded, and in order to ease overcrowding, the e Board instituted doublethink's at some of the schools. Doublethink's meant that students in fee acted schools attended less than a full day of class. Less school meant that Africanizing children would be receiving less educa tion. CORE was not pleased with the results so they pr tested, along with the Chicago community.The following 4 years, CORE along with the SYNC and the NAACP helped organ nice the â€Å"Freedom Summer† campaign aimed principally at ending the political super session of African Americans in the Deep South. CORE, SYNC and COIF also built 30 Freedom S schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum n owe included black history. These Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So were the e homes of African Americans involved in the campaign.That summer 30 black homes and 37 blab KC churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs and three CORE activists were murdered by the K on June 21 SST, 1964. These deaths created nationwide PU ability for the campaign. As you can see, life was very difficult during the Civil Rights movement for Afar can Americans living in the Deep South. Thanks to organizations like CORE and AN CAP, life may have seemed hard and it may have been a struggle to live back in the day, Afar can Americans still had hope.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

The Flint Street Nativity Essays

The Flint Street Nativity Essays The Flint Street Nativity Paper The Flint Street Nativity Paper In this essay, I am going to compare and contrast Blue Remembered Hills and The Flint Street Nativity. I will write about the social context, themes, style of presentation and genre. Throughout this project we studied and watched the flint street nativity and we acted out blue remembered hills. Blue Remembered Hills was written by Dennis Potter. It is set in the West Country in 1943, during the time of the Second World War. Blue Remembered Hills is a tragedy but has a funny spin on it. The play is about a group of seven, seven-year-olds who are all fighting for hierarchy.Their days consist of bullying and being very immature towards each other. The children all tend to pick on one character, Donald. Their bullying eventually results in Donalds death, when they trap him in the burning barn. Dennis Potter used adults for this play as he does not want the audience to feel sorry for the children. He also wanted to show how cruel a child could be and how their behaviour leads to bad things happening. The themes which are shown throughout blue remembered hills are childhood, status abuse and war. Childhood is shown through how the characters respond or react to act other.Status is used when the characters are arguing about who is going to be number two after Wallace Wilson. Although we dont see Wallace, the other characters make it certain the Wallace is known as the best and highest, therefore being number one. Child abuse is shown when Donald is abused by his mother, we dont see this but the other characters talk about Donalds misfortune. The last theme is shown throughout the play as the play is set in the time of the war. This is also shown when they are running away from the Italian prisoner of war.The dramatic purpose of this play is to show the audience how stubborn children are. Also to show how adults shouldnt always feel sympathetic to children as they cause most of the trouble themselves. Using adult actors made an impact as the audience didnt feel sorry for the characters. The Flint Street Nativity was written by Tim Firth in 1999. It is about a class of year four pupils-aged around eight, who are doing a school nativity play. The style of this play is similar to blue remembered hills although is has a more comical storyline.The style of this play is to show the audience how children feel and behave towards each other. Tim Firth has also used adults to play children as they can show more emotion. I made decisions about blue remembered hills by using what I saw on The Flint Street Nativity. I made the decision on this as they act very kid-like in the flint street nativity so I used some of this is Blue Remembered Hills, although I had to be very careful not to make it too funny. Blue Remembered Hills was written in 1984 whereas The Flint Street Nativity was written in 1999, so the dates are over 10 years apart.Because of this, the themes and subjects used and talked about are very different. The Flint Street Nativity is set in more modern times where a lot of the parents are divorced, so they have chosen to be apart. But in Blue Remembered Hills, their parents are forced to be apart due to war. The similarity is that in both plays most children only have one parent but the difference is through choice and being forced. Also another theme which is different is child abuse. We dont see a lot of this in Blue Remembered Hills but we do know it is going on and nothing is being done to stop it.We do not see any of this in The Flint Street Nativity as more was being done to stop child abuse. There are several main characters in Blue Remembered Hills and The Flint Street Nativity. Many of these characters have similarities. One of these pairs is Wallace Wilson and Christian Jerrums. Although we dont see Wallace, we know that he has the highest status as the other characters always talk about him. Christian is similar as he is very mysterious and keeps himself to himself. Although we see Christian we cant tell that he is a dark character as he doesnt really talk a lot.Also another pair of characters who are similar is Donald and Adrian Atherton because they both get bullied. They both have the lowest status. In both plays the boys have difficulties and get bulled for it. In Blue Remembered Hills, Donald gets abused and in The Flint Street Nativity Adrian has speaking difficulties. The writers wanted to achieve the effect of people seeing what life was like for the person with the highest status or the person who is always getting bullied. This worked as it made an impact on the audience.The themes of Blue Remembered Hills and The Flint Street Nativity are similar but they do change, for example, child abuse is not shown in The Flint Street Nativity. The themes are similar as they both show high and low class and status. This is because some people get singled out by the others. Also, the class is different as it shows different peoples family lives and how they are affected by it. Also another theme which is similar is childhood as in both plays, it shows the children all growing up and going through life.It shows them growing up and going through difficulties in life. This all happens within a short time. These themes are similar to life as we all go through childhood and difficult times, but what is different is divorce, in Blue Remembered Hills, divorce is looked down upon, so hardly anyone is divorced, but in The Flint Street Nativity, many of the childrens are divorced. The genres of both plays are similar but in Blue Remembered Hills, there is a serious tragedy at the end, as Donald dies. Blue Remembered Hills is also a comedy though as many aspects of the play are funny.In The Flint Street Nativity the story line is very different but it has the same genre, comedy, this is because the play has been made to be funny, such as when they are looking for the escaped lizard. It is also slightly tragic as one boy is bullied for his speech difficulties. Dramatic devices are used throughout each play, such as suspense, monologues and multi-rolling. In The Flint Street Nativity there is multi-rolling as the actors going from being the children to adults. In Blue Remembered Hills suspense is used when they are hiding from the escaped prisoner of war.During this project, I have learnt how to read lines and make up stage directions. It is also very easy for me to speed read now, which proves I know my lines. When looking at scripts, I now know how to read stage directions and put them onto the stage. Whilst studying Blue Remembered Hills we watched The Flint Street Nativity. This helped as it showed us how adults acted as children; they made their movements very over the top and looked always excited. This helped as I then knew how to act like a child and move like one.