Essays on Plays

In this essay, I will discuss and analyse the significance of the past in 1920s novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will also discuss the past of A Streetcar Named Desire A play written in 1947 by Playwright Tennessee Williams. Moreover, I will discuss how the past foreshadows and more accurately...

The play, An Inspector Calls, written by J.B Priestley, was first performed in 1945. Set in April 1912, it is a three-act drama that takes place on a single night in the upper-middle-class Birling household, where the family are celebrating the engagement of their daughter Sheila Birling to her fiance Gerald Croft. The family is...

In the play, ‘An Inspector Calls’ By J.B Priestley, the audience are encouraged to find Mrs Birling unappealing due to her incredibly cold-hearted actions throughout the play. Sybil represents the wealthier, privileged classes who see themselves as the working classes moral superior. At the beginning of act 1, Mrs Birling is introduced as ‘his wife’,...

Both Williams and Ishiguro use the theme of the past in ‘The Glass Menagerie’ and ‘Never Let Me Go’ to show how individuals can retreat back into their memories, creating a nostalgic and reminiscent tone. For Ishiguro, he explores emotions in his 2005 novel focusing on the sadness of the human condition as well as...

The past is unquestionably a key topic reviewed by both Williams and Ishiguro in their novels “The Glass Menagerie” and “Never Let Me Go”. Both author’s use of dialogue presents this act of looking back as means of reflecting how it shapes their character’s future events and actions. Though in some cases, the past is...

“Never Let Me Go” and “The Glass Menagerie” can be seen to be products of the society they were created in. In fact, the dystopian novel presents the past as an escape from an inhumane reality, while the WW2 play presents a poverty stricken society during the Great Depression. Ishiguro could be trying to explore...

Twelfth Night is like. Similar to many of William Shakespeare’s plays, Twelfth Night, has been around for many centuries and is still applicable in current society, because there are many important life lessons provided. Twelfth Night, moreover, provides important life lessons about love, friendship and deception. Twelfth Night, to begin with, provides lessons about the...

In the play Antigone, by Sophocles, the two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices die fighting for the position of King. Their uncle, Creon, then turns to take the throne. Creon rules that Eteocles has a proper burial and since Polynices was fighting on the opposing side, he considered him a traitor, so he left...

The great writer Vicki Harrison is known for saying the famous quote “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it’s overwhelming. All we can do is learn how to swim”. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Hamlet encounters the loss of many...

Within both the play by Tennessee Williams and the 1951 film titled A Streetcar Named Desire, the relationships of the characters are very similar, yet their personality traits are occasionally more prevalent in one medium than the other. Since the work is essentially centered on three people, Blanche, Stanley, and Stella, it is not very...