Ghosts work from home. Apart from the Flying Dutchman’s crew and the Wild Hunt, ghosts, ghouls, and other phantoms are homebodies, content to stick to one place to carry out their spooky business. Captain Alving is such a ghost, tormenting his long-suffering wife throughout the action of Ibsen’s Ghosts. Ibsen keeps Alving’s ghost in one […]
Read More →Archive for October, 2020
Ghosts and Suddenly Last Summer (Maitha’s Augmenter Post)
While reading Ghosts, I was struck with the theme of hiding the truth for the sake of maintaining ideals and reputation. One example of this is of the characters implicitly conversing with each other on topics too taboo to be explicitly articulated (Mrs. Alving saying “Regine belonged here in this house…” instead of explaining how […]
Read More →Whether Patriarchy be old or mere…(Augmenter’s Post by Mingu Cho)
In the most recent convener’s post, Mrs. Alving is described as a character that embodies a “progressive, feminist way of approaching marriage and motherhood.” However, the latter part of the play shows how her approach does lack progressiveness at some points, particularly in regards to motherhood. When Oswald says, in Act III, that he […]
Read More →Invisible Contagion
“When I heard Regine and Oswald in there, it was just like seeing ghosts. But then I’m inclined to think that we are all ghosts, Pastor Manders, every one of us. It’s not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. It’s all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of […]
Read More →Is it only a numbers game?
Johnson’s talk at Google regarding his book The Ghost Map celebrates the mid-19th century physician John Snow and a local amateur Henry Whitehead’s effort in finding the reason for cholera outbreaks in the city of London. At the centerpiece of their efforts is the construction of a map — a map of all cholera-related deaths […]
Read More →In Loving Memory
Oh, come not near then to your Jenny,No last kiss on her pale lips lay,Watch, but watch you from afar offWhen they bear her corpse away Feast During the Plague, Lines 60-64 What does it mean to grieve in a pandemic? All over the world, burial rituals have changed, and people are experiencing grief not […]
Read More →Facing Death
A common theme that interconnects multiple readings, and perhaps becomes more apparent in Defoe’s work and matures in Pushkin’s “A Feast During the Plague” is the personification of death. We are introduced to different descriptions of mortality and the plague and more importantly, further understand characters, figures and viewpoints through how ‘it’ is described. To […]
Read More →Religion and the Plague
Walsingham in Pushkin’s A Feast During the Plague is first seen as feasting with his friends. Later the Priest comes a criticizes their actions, especially those of Walsingham, who is revealed to have lost both his mother and wife. Religion has traditionally served as a way of finding comfort and hope for people during hard times. Walsingham in this play […]
Read More →Mr. Walsingham: Breaking Sad
“I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And, I was really…I was alive.” –Walter White, Breaking Bad The play begins with everyone making a toast to their friend who has just died. Mr. Walsingham is the chairman at the table, enthused to celebrate in the middle of the pestilence. […]
Read More →Bangalore and London: the city exposed
A Journal of the Plague Year is situated in a city that is forced to change, and reveal itself. Defoe details this drastic transformation of this city he once was familiar with by describing stories of people who now have to contend with the socio-economic structures that were never built to sustain them. This reminded […]
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