The Island (1973) Athol Fugard
A Quick Rundown of The Island
- The Island is a Fugard play that resorts to the Classics to protest Apartheid.
- It takes place in four scenes, opening with a lengthy mimed sequence in which John and Winston, two cell mates in prison on Robben Island, carry out one of the totally pointless and exhausting tasks designed by warders to break the spirit of political prisoners.
- Winston has been sentenced to prison for life because he burned his passbook in front of a police station.
- John has been imprisoned for belonging to a banned organization.
- The story traces the relationship of these two men. Winston is the active rebel,
- and John, the intellectual, is trying to persuade him to play
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- 1970s: Early 1970s seemed to be continuation of ‘60s. Banning of news reports of opposition and overseas, but impossible to silence people completely. Exiled parties and people who were released from the problem tried to let me people know what was happening, but difficult to create literature and art: segregational theatres and restaurants. Act of creating The Island is an act of defiance in itself: different people of different races coming together, monument to defiance of political tyranny, extremely difficult strategy: no written script until after internationally famous, no evidence, no arrests!
3. The Playwright: Athol Fugard
-Grew up in Port Elizabeth (deeply symbolic place for him.) Lower middle class environment poor whites of 1930s vs. political conservatives (generalization!) Fugard epitomizes fact that we can’t generalize like this because for five decades, he voiced against racial oppression. Port Elizabeth represents what it’s like to be poor and white in South Africa.
- Scholarship to UCT but never finished his degree, went traveling instead, but always kept in mind his existential philosophy.
(Existentialism: We as humans have some control over our own destinies. We may not be able to choose our situations (like where and when and what colour we are born) but we can choose how we live our lives and what we do with them. For instance, when Winston has to face the fact that John is leaving in 3 months and he is only leaving in 10 years,
The book New Found Land was written by Allan Wolf in 2004, Allan used striking poetic features and fictional characters to recreate Lewis and Clark 's expedition across the continent. There mission, find the fabled Northwest passage to the pacific ocean, this group of courageous Americans may never come back. Through his use of Historical and fictional characters, Wolf was able to showcase the different viewpoints of Lewis and Clark 's crew. One of the key characters that led the expedition to success was Meriwether Lewis. I chose to look up his last name due to the fact that his last name is the more well known than his first name. Lewis is the english form of the french name Louis, this form was also derived from the german name Ludwig
Existentialism is a philosophy for the twentieth century that revolves around being alive and the rationale of why humans find themselves to
This document states that the Dutch colonists bought the island of Manhattes (Now, Manhattan) for sixty guilders. The island is about 11,000 morgens in extent. They purchased the island from the local natives(the lenape tribe). Then, the colonists planted grain such as, wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, canary seeds, small seeds and flax in the middle of May and harvested in the middle of August. It also explained that the contents of the ship that was sailing back to Holland from New Netherland had 7246 beaver skins, 178.5 otter skins, 675 otter skins, 48 mink skins, 36 wild-cat skins, 33 minks, 34 rat skins, logs of oak and nutwood. This was written by Peter Schagen, a dutch official.
Existentialism is a European philosophy that began in the mid-19th century but reached its peak in the 20th century. Existentialism became popular following the catastrophic years of World Wars and the Holocaust when many people began to question the traditional belief systems and ideas based on the terrifying events committed during the wars. Existentialism is a set of philosophical systems, which emphasize individual existence, freedom, choice, and personal responsibility. Pursuing this further, existentialism is the idea that human beings simply exist and choose their actions for themselves. To summarize, existentialism believes that people exist and live through their own behavior and perceptions and without any certainty about right or wrong. This is unlike those who believe that everything that occurs is fated or that there is a plan for life that one must follow and live based on it. The movie Forrest Gump (1994) directed by Robert Zemeckis is an existentialism movie because the movie shows the existentialism theme of freedom and choice as the main character Forrest Gump played by Tom Hanks was born without a purpose in life and he makes his own decisions throughout the movie for himself while facing many conflicts and, he was responsible for his action.
In the novel Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson mysticism is used to address serious topics that are rooted in reality. The problem plaguing the Aunts that drives them to their decision to kidnap children is their concern about the Island and its continuing existence as a shelter for creatures, magical or otherwise. The reason they are so overwhelmed with the continued care of the Island is that there have been so many visitors staying on it, and while it is never explicitly stated, a theme of environmentalism is evident throughout the book. It is never named as such, but the aunts’ determination to protect their home and its inhabitants speaks toward this message.
As defined in The American Heritage College Dictionary, existentialism emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards existnece as unexplainable, and stresses free choice and responsibility for one's actions. Existentialism is personalized from other schools of thought by its embodiment of three important criterion; 1) the emphasis of the individual as the centerpoint of his domain; 2) an accentuation of human choice and freedom; and, 3) a critique of social norm and its aim for individuals to congregate as merely part of a herd. These three standards of action are present in all works defined as existential, and are absorbed in Achebe's Things Fall Apart.
Existentialism is a philosophy dealing with man's aloneness in the universe. Either there is no God or else God stands apart from man, leaving him free will to make his own choices. From this basic idea of man being alone in an uncertain and purposeless world, many related ideas have developed. One great worry of existentialist writers is that life is becoming too complicated and too impersonal. People become more and more involved with their work, which is taking them away from their friends, family, and culture. However, these provide the only "meaning" that life could possibly have. One author prominently known for his work with existential ideas was Franz
Throughout the play, he grapples with his desire to work against the government, mostly referred to as simply the Party, and his unwavering paranoia that he will be exposed and punished for his crimes. He finds solace in his hiding spots, away from the seemingly inescapable eyes of Big Brother, reassuring himself with the phrase “No telly screen, no one is hearing or watching.” In actuality, Winston’s most damnable and intimate moments in the
In our society there is many sayings that "power corrupts." In most works of fiction or nonfiction when men has authorized a certain amount of power, the temptation and tendency has always been to abuse that power or authority in favor of selfish gain, i.e. control, influence, money, prestige, etc. In the book "The island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells made all the main characters abuse their power and have paid for it by becoming the monster or dying in the proses.
Athol Fugard’s play “Master Harold” … and the boys premiered in Connecticut in 1982 at the Yale Repertory Theatre, but the setting of the play is quite different from that of Yale: South Africa in the 1950’s. The setting is familiar to Athol Fugard himself, who grew up in this time during the Apartheid. Hally, one of the three main characters in the play, shares a similar background with Fugard: his parents own a tea room and his father is very pro-Apartheid. Within the play, the audience sees Hally interacting with two middle aged and black workers of the tearoom, Sam and Willy, who offer an interesting contrast to Hally. As the men struggle to help Hally through his homework, due to the looming return of Hally’s father, a struggle ensues
The gist of this lecture was of how the demise of many historical civilizations is related to significant influences from environmental changes. John H, Chafee lecture began by identifying why societies collapses and states that there is overwhelming evidence that it consists of self-inflicted ecological suicides and inability to master their environmental problems. He specifically goes in depth to describe the mystery of Easter island and how the actions of the islanders such as the elimination of the forest and the birds set of chain reactions which only further fueled the seeds of revolution that would come and play an active role in the society's collapse. His in depth examination of Easter island served a purpose of helping him show how
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This famous quote summarizes the gloomy philosophy of existentialism. Schopenhauer, using this philosophy, believed that the universe was meaningless and irrational, and that his irrational life was full of choices that brought him in contact with the nothingness of the universe. Existentialism has no definite description because individuals create their own meaning by making sense of the world as it pertains to the individual. While individuals create their own meaning, there are several common themes that are followed. These themes fall under the general idea that reality is absurd and it is the responsibility of humans to make their own choices and accept the consequences of these choices in regard to the individual’s experience. Some
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Beckett concludes that through Existentialism, individuals are to be independent and choose their own life decisions.