Immortality in The Hours Novels and films each have their own strengths when telling a story. While books can characterize a character by providing their inner thoughts and intimately describe each detail of the setting, films can clearly portray a scene and add aesthetics such as music and color. In 2002, Stephen Daldry adapted the 1998 novel The Hours by Michael Cunningham into a movie also titled The Hours. The story has the same themes and plot elements; however, the director takes some creative license in order to add music, change dialogue, and adjust the details to create his vision of Cunningham’s work. Specifically, Daldry changes the way the audience sees Clarissa’s fear of morality when she questions her accomplishments on the …show more content…
After buying flowers, she decides to visit her lifetime friend Richard. On her way there, she comes across a celebrity believed to be Meryl Streep. Upon hearing two teenagers discuss the celebrity, she reflects on “actual immortality” (Cunningham 50), and how these two girls will one day be “a few silver fillings lost underground [while] the woman…will still be known” (Cunningham 51). Her thoughts about how life is a boring and predictable cycle for most aside from a select few is a sad, depressing perspective. Clarissa believes her life to be void of any real purpose. Cunningham contrasts this by giving Richard, who is dying from AIDS, the opposite perspective of believing that life centers about the happiness that one has with friends. In fact, Richard makes the people in his life “essentially fictional character[s]” (Cunningham 61) and appreciates them completely for who they truly are. Therefore, his friends become those who depend on his imagination to make them feel important. Clarissa needs this and so she keeps Richard, who is also an ex-lover, in her life. She celebrates him and his award because it gives her a purpose: she must visit him or no one else will. Richard is different from her in that he appreciates life and instead of caring about being immortal, he cares that his books, which will live on, do not include Clarissa and the life they could have had. This only highlights …show more content…
It has Richard moving about, exposing his apartment to light. He tells Clarissa that he still “has to face the hours,” but he is done with the pain and sorrow and staying alive for her. He wants his final moments to be about remembering their youth and what he considers most beautiful thing—an ordinary morning with her. His subsequent fall out the window deeply saddens her. However, this scene rings true to the words of Virginia Wolfe earlier in the film when she said, “Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.” It is after coming to terms with his death, Clarissa looks at her life and sees that happiness that her hours have contained. Subsequently, she chooses to live and celebrate her life and be happy rather than dwell on what she cannot change and be
The narrator is always trying to fit into ‘coats’ that are “too big” and “too long” that Rebecca has left. Everyone around her is subconsciously comparing her to Rebecca and the narrator feels very uncomfortable around most people. In some way it is almost like Daphne du Maurier takes the conventions of a romance-genre and twists them so although Maxim apparently ‘saves’ the narrator from Mrs Van Hopper in fact he destroys her life. His world is full of pain and torture and now she has to go through that too. Another way in which Rebecca subverts the conventions of the romance-genre is by incorporating a murder into the plot. The narrator thinks Maxim to be dark and mysterious, which he is, because he has been hiding the fact that he killed his first wife and apparently his child. Daphne du Maurier has written a romance novel that actually subverts the conventions of a romance in many ways.
The Stage Manager maintains a somber tone throughout the play that deeply contrasts with the joy perpetually exuded by the other characters. Wilder emphasizes this contrast particularly during the wedding, in which the Stage Manager offsets the “radiant” atmosphere and digresses: “The cottage, the go-cart, the Sunday-afternoon drives in the Ford, The first rheumatism, the grandchildren, the second rheumatism, the deathbed, the reading of the will.” In this passage the Stage Manager describes life as a list of events, thereby expressing his apathy for it. Wilder, therefore, conveys the consequences of recognizing life’s finality. The finality of existence consumes the Stage Manager and causes him to disengage from his surroundings which prevents him from seeing the meaning and importance in a particular moment. His aversion to life is evident when he states, “Once in a thousand times it's interesting.” The Stage Manager merely views life as transient, and despite having the capacity to appreciate it, he is unable to because he only sees value in things that have longevity. Hence, why he is so adamant about putting a copy of the play in the time capsule he mentions because it will be preserved and “the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about
She started to see beautiful things from her window that represented her new life. She wasn’t used to seen those things like this when her husband was around, because she was submissive to her husband and trapped. Another part of the story that i found ironic was when Kate Chopin started to describe the scene outside the window. She described the outside as “The delicious breathe of rain, the notes of a distant song, countless sparrows were twittering and patches of blue sky”. At this point is when i realized that she wasn’t sad for her husband and this was a sign of a new life.
7. The setting is used as a reflection of the woman's inner emotions. The sun shines and birds sing with no sign of gloom because she is not actually mourning as she thinks to herself. The lack of sorrow from the woman cause the setting to seem even more lovely to her as she realizes she is feeling joy. The details used by the writer portray a sense of well being and positivity. The woman reaches out towards the window as if her joy is tangible, this is a vey important
Women in the early Victorian Era were very limited in their individualism as they were expected to conform to societal norms. The narrator craves freedom from the society she lives in, dreaming of having a room "downstairs that opened on the piazza and [has] roses all over the window." (Gilman 3) The narrator wants nothing more than to be able to express herself, yet she is held back as she reveals that "John would not hear of it." (Gilman 3) She knows her place is not to question her husband, so she finds other creative outlets that she keeps secret. She knows that these outlets of creativity are found, she risks her husband’s reputation as she would disrespect him. Throughout the narrative, the heroine acknowledges the importance of status in society. Even when her madness drives her to contemplate committing suicide, she says, “I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.” (Gilman 15) Even in the most stressful times, it is the fear of ruining her husband’s reputation that keeps her from obtaining what she wants. Finally, the narrator breaks free of her confinement by tearing off the wallpaper, saying, "I've got out at
The plan of the “Steel Magnolias” is an autobiography or a bond narrative. While a lot of the action occurs offstage, the on stage (Salon) is the culmination of the emotions generated by the action that takes place off stage. Shelby numerous challenges such her aspiration to become a pregnant besides her illness, breakdown of her health due to diabetes, and her conflicts with her mother takes place offstage. Annelle’s troubles with her husband, who is a villain, and pregnancy and remarriage follow the offstage action. Emotive complexity drives the film (Grandin, 2013).
Due to postpartum depression, the narrator, Jane; her husband, John; their child; and the narrator’s sister-in-law, Jennie, rent an isolated countryside estate in hopes to cure the narrator’s illness. Causing an external conflict with his wife, John forces her to live in isolation forbidding writing, working, and socializing. As a result, the narrator becomes fascinated with the wallpaper, begins to hallucinate, and believes another woman is trapped behind the patterns. Jane is hopelessly insane believing there are multiple creeping women present and that she herself has come out the wallpaper. Suspecting that John and Jennie are aware of her obsession, she resolves to destroy the paper by tearing and biting it off the wall and save the trapped women. By the end, the narrator convinces herself that she has achieved liberation freeing herself from the constraints of her marriage, society, and efforts to repress her
She moves into a new home with her husband, John. She describes the new home as a “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house” (Gilman). Her description of the home is a negative feeling she has towards the house. The description of the home being haunted shows her terror because she sees it as an imprisonment. In this home, there is a yellow wallpaper in the room she is staying in. She describes the wallpaper, as “the color is repellent, almost revolting; a shouldering unclean yellow” (Gilman). In this wallpaper, she tries to see the figure out the patterns and comes to find a woman. In comes to conclusion that she is living life like the woman in the wallpaper. In the statement, “And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody can climb through that pattern, it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads” (Gilman). She empathizes with the woman in the wallpaper because they are both in pattern that they cannot break through. The pattern being in a home that feels that haunted and with a man that watches every move and empowers her through her
Another small but important window scene takes place after Clarissa returns home to discover that her husband has been invited to Millicent Bruton’s lunch party but she has not. After reading the message about the party on a notepad, she begins to retreat upstairs to her private room, “a single figure against the appalling night.” As she lingers before the “open staircase window,” she feels her own aging, “suddenly shriveled, aged, breastless… out of doors, out of the window, out of her body and brain which now failed…” Again, there is a hint of danger as death is portrayed as a somewhat alluring transcendental experience,
(McEwan 234) At this point in the novel, Clarissa has lost all faith in her relationship with Joe. Joe’s madness slowly pushed Clarissa away, and all she felt was cold resentment rather than the warm emotion she had
While Mrs. Mallard remembers Mr. Mallard as a kind and tender man who loved her, she also viewed him as the oppression that marriage put upon women and men. While Mr. Mallard was kind and loving to his wife, he was also controlling and overbearing. Josephine, Mrs. Mallard’s sister and Richards, Mr. Mallard’s friend is there to break the news of Mr. Mallard’s death. Richards has learned of Mr. Mallard’s death at the newspaper office, not wanting to believe the information that was received, Richards waited for the new to be delivered for a second time before enlisting the help of Josephine. They are both there to support Mrs. Mallard and their support shows that they care for Mr. and Mrs. Mallard.
After reviewing two shows broadcasted on television (NBC News and a television series called 60 Minute Overtime), a newspaper article from Daily News, and two articles online that focus on the Challengers story, I believe the shows broadcasted on television are the most reliable. The newspaper article was very reliable especially since it was published the day after the explosion. It had a lot of the emotions felt during that time period. Unfortunately, the newspaper was not able to provide a definite answer as to why the crash was caused because the cause was not for sure then. This Day in History: Challenger Space Shuttle Explosion Kills Seven is a reliable article that provides just enough information to understand the story, but not the resolution. Anyone
It is because of the awareness of death that even the most ordinary everyday events become meaningful for the characters; because we are aware that we are going to die at some moment. If death did not exist, there would be no point in doing anything. Additionally, Clarissa is often contrasted with Septimus, a shell-shocked World War I hero who is mentally ill. He can be seen as Clarissa’s alter-ego and Woolf’s double as well, since he has a similar mental disease. Since Clarissa and Septimus never meet, the mention of Septimus’ suicide during Clarissa’s party is important because Mrs. Dalloway becomes aware of death; that death is part of life; that there is no life without death; that we cannot truly live until we accept that.
From the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf establishes that Clarissa’s bright and hopeful spirit has become dulled and burdened when subjected to the oppressive nature of marriage. During a glimpse into her younger years, the reader is able to see Clarissa. With each flashback into Clarissa’s youth, the reader is provided another image of Clarissa before marriage, one that highlights her passion and curiosity for life. While Clarissa felt a passion and connection with Peter, she could not bear to live in a marriage where her freedom was something she had to sacrifice. The decision she makes is logical in some ways, but her choice also brings into question the fault of her marriage in the first place. In Clarissa’s world, the option for passion and the security of her freedom was not available nor would it ever be; therefore, she was forced to choose between the two. Men, however, were not forced to make such decisions and were given the liberty to wait well into their later years to find a spouse suitable to their liking. By choosing to marry Richard over Peter, Clarissa forsook the option of passion in
Author, Kate Chopin, presents the character of Mrs. Louis Mallard. She is an unhappy woman trapped in her discontented marriage. Unable to assert herself or extricate herself from the relationship, she endures it. The news of the presumed death of her husband comes as a great relief to her, and for a brief moment she experiences the joys of a liberated life from the repressed relationship with her husband. Finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow: "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." In her soul, the dark clouds are disappearing because she is illuminated. All the memories of her husband are now of the past. She is living in the present. At this point, she is no longer "Mrs.Mallard." She is Louise and is ready to welcome a new horizon of freedom : "Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own." Overwhelmed with a new sense of herself, she feels as if she