Week Thirteen Blog

Week Thirteen Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Donna Stevens

April 13, 2011

Comments on “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell

The setting of this play is the kitchen of Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s home. The atmosphere is inside a home that was childless, quiet, sad and lonely. The atmosphere changes to back up Mrs. Wright’s motive for murder. Mrs. Hale, the neighbor and Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife were in the kitchen while the investigation was going on. The reason the women stayed in the kitchen was to get a better read on Mrs. Wright. These women knew if they spent enough time in the kitchen where Mrs. Wright spent the majority of her life, they could better understand what happened and why. Minnie Foster Wright was a person who sang like a bird in the church choir, seemed happy and wore ribbons in her hair. After she married Mr. Wright, he quieted her just as he probably quieted the bird. John Wright seemed like a rigid, unhappy man who lacked self confidence so he had to put Mrs. Wright under him in an emotional way in order to make him feel superior. I think he was probably not very successful so he needed to assert his authority upon his wife. The significance of the bird cage being handled in a rough way was to infer that Mr. Wright roughly opened the cage and strangled the bird, so Mrs. Wright strangled him in retaliation for the bird and for being his doormat. I think he probably did strangle the bird and she took this out on him, but is all very circumstantial. The two women do not reveal their evidence because it is very much a women’s observation and again, very circumstantial. It would not prove or disprove anything and the bottom line is that she did it. The men think she did it and so do the women. However, the women have a strong opinion on her motive, but nothing more than that. The men are not capable of understanding why she would kill over that bird, so it is not worth it to tell them. The men constantly say the women are worried about fruit. The men don’t understand how much of Mrs. Wright’s life went into those jars. The jars represented all that she was as a woman. They were her life’s work and just as important as the sheriff’s or the attorney’s. Glaspell only wants us to hear from the women in order to set the motive for the murder. The last line “we call it knot” was condescending toward the men because, just as they will never understand why Mrs. Wright killed her husband, they will never understand the world in which they are currently passing judgment. The titles Trifle or “A Jury of Her Peers” are equally sarcastic. What a man calls little trifles is what a woman pours her life into. If her jury were made up of men, they cannot possibly understand her motive; they would simply say she was being emotional about little things that don’t matter.

Comments on “Naked Lunch” by Michael Hollinger

I think I identify more with Lucy than with Vernon. Lucy has made up her mind to separate herself from everything in their former relationship that made her feel uncomfortable. She is not communicating with him during lunch. He is doing all the talking about his self-important things. She is staring at and picking into her corn. She is just passing time and not really caring about what he is saying. I think possibly she is reaffirming to herself why she dumped him in the first place and that was that he needs constant affirmation and control. He cooked the dinner and it was about him wanting sex and to talk about how important he is and how well his life is going. She was there to satisfy her curiosity about whether breaking up with him was the right thing to do. When he shoved the steak into her mouth like he probably shoved every story and every other particle of his important existence down her throat in the past, this affirmed to her that ridding herself of him was in fact the right thing to do. She knows he is bad for her. The steak was just a metaphor for him. She has given up on him. Steak probably reminds her of him, so she is experimenting with giving it up and is finally giving up on him and his shoveling. The play’s central conflict is that their lives are going in different directions and because Vernon is such a pig, he cannot see that his controlling nature is driving Lucy away. The central conflict is resolved when he shoves the steak into her mouth. She decides he will never change and she is doing right by breaking up with him, therefore their lack of communication within their relationship will not be an issue any longer.