Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Love! Valour! Compassion!
Certainly the nature of the dialogue in this play, the bounce around order of events, and the juxtaposition of both makes for a double take when reading the play for understanding. It is clearly not a cause and effect scene for scene structure that you get in Glass of Water or The Children's Hour. Another separating element in this play would be its separation from society. The lake house functions as a safe haven or getaway from the rest of the world (America specifically). This makes the capital T truth something separate from a societal norm. I'm not quite sure what it would be, however. Friendship? companionship? art?
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I like that you compare the beach house as a safe haven. I feel as if myself also viewed it in this manner when reading the play. It's separation from society is almost representative of it's separation from the capital-T truth. It goes against many ideas set by so cite and actual reality. It challenges this ideas set in reality.
ReplyDeleteWhat a cool discovery... It seems like the fact that the house is so far from the rest of society is almost the key to unlocking this play! In my L!V!C! post I talked about how on the surface everything seems normal, but once you start to notice the structure of the play, you realize this a very abstract show. The distance of the house from the city allows it to become its own world, it's own little planet where A to Z doesn't exist and where ambiguity reigns supreme. I think you're on to something with that idea and I'm loving it. I'd love to explore that more with another reading of the play. Very cool.
ReplyDeleteI also had trouble seeing what the Truth of this play might have been. I read it a couple of times, and it almost seemed that the characters themselves may not ever have figured out what their Truth was. Maybe? Possibly this was intentional, a statement about the declining belief in a capital-T truth. I think Scribe exemplifies the post-modern views of doubtfulness towards metanarratives, and does so by having a discrete, or nonexistent Truth.
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