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Essay / Analysis of Marsha Norman's Plays "Night Mother"
Unlike many other plays you have read or seen before, "Night Mother" written by Marsha Norman is a play that focuses on only two main characters. The entire play is told through the thoughts of a mother (Mama) and a daughter (Jessie). Most of their conversations revolve around the informal but bizarre revelation of Jessie's suicide plan. In Mother Night, we can discover the true psychological identities of the two main characters. As you discover the stories behind these two characters, you begin to realize that each has a different perception of life. That being said, we all face obstacles during our time on this earth. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay In this play, Jessie Cates faces many challenges in her life. She faces depression, seizures, memory loss, abandonment, a forced marriage, as well as a controlling mother. She has known no other world where these feelings and conditions have not controlled her every move. This made his concept of time fuzzy in a way. “Night Mother is a play filled with turmoil, failed existence and tragedy. Death creates a new life, as it were, because it symbolizes the liberation of oneself from the slavery of a miserable and useless existence. This play takes place strictly in the house that belongs to Thelma Cates, better known as Mama, throughout the play on a secluded country road. The house is filled with afros, knitting baskets and many of “Mama’s” latest works in progress. The house is very compact and appears to be filled with a jumble of possessions, all belonging to Mama. The lines of the set are also filled with static and give a feeling of confinement in the stage space. The static lines symbolize the static, dead place that Jessie feels within herself, clearly showing that Jessie has a sense of disconnect between her mother and her sense of alienation within her. own house. This overall highlights the fact that even though Jessie has been living with her mother for a while, she doesn't have personal values or connections that make this home a place of safety, as it does for most. idea of why Jessie is considering suicide with the idea of cutting the ties of her current life of repetition and struggle, believing that there is no other option for her or that there is no There's no one she thinks she can turn to. The suicide in this play seems to be the catalyst that causes Jessie and Mom to finally open up and talk to each other. Some might begin to believe that Norman is implying that suicide is an acceptable alternative to continuing a life that one might consider unbearable, but Jessie's is far from the playwright's. Norman doesn't take an authorial stance at all, she simply allows the women in her play to speak frankly. The result of this in "Night, Mother" turns out to be a tragedy in that the characters have missed a lifetime of opportunities to understand each other and are given the chance to achieve mutual understanding in the final hours of life by Jessie. Unlike characters in a more classical tragedy, neither is capable of realizing the full extent of the other's loss. Which, one would think, would be inevitable living in such a small house, constantly surrounded by the presence of others. The family home located on a secluded country road suggests that isolation is a key factor in the play. Thelma, on the one hand, is comfortable with.