Sample Paper, my comments in blue
This paper is based on a play you will read in Unit 11.
Jolene Student
Ms. Radek
Film 2010
February 10, 2002
Form-to-Content
Paper # 2: Silence can be Deadly
While reading Susan Glaspell's play Trifles,
the use of characters, descriptive language, and symbolism teaches the audience
that one person's home and one person's way of living can also be an
introduction to one person's private hell.
Throughout the play, discoveries are made to teach the audience that
maybe things are not what they seem and that sometimes people must take a deeper
look into what is around them.
Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, the county attorney, and the sheriff are the four main characters of the play that introduce the audience to the crime that has just been committed. The sheriff and Mrs. Peters are married so the audience also learns from these characters and their interactions what is expected out of a wife. These four characters, while showing the audience, the house, and the background of the murder, teach the audience how society was acting at that time and what was expected from the opposite sex. While the men are talking, they start to listen to Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters in the room and their bickering over preservatives. One of the men even says, "Well, women are used to worrying over such trifles" (6). When the county attorney makes this statement, the women become aware that the men are listening to the words that they are saying but the men do not really care about the women's opinions and continue their mocking discussion. This behavior reminds Mrs. Hale of Mrs. Wright and her husband.
Mrs. Hale has memories of Mrs. Wright and the way she
used to be before her marriage to Mr. Wright.
She feels ashamed that she did not help Mrs. Wright and says, "I
might have known she needed help! I
know how things can be--for women…
We live close together and we live far apart.
We all go through the same things--it's all just a different kind of same
thing" (13). Her statement expresses to the audience that sometimes we need
to take a deeper look at what is around us and see if help is needed.
In
the play, descriptive language teaches the audience more about the surroundings
than what the characters are actually saying to one another.
"I've not been in this house--it's more than a year" (6),
Mrs. Hale tells the county attorney. It
is a very run down house, and the audience discovers there are no signs of
anyone really ever being happy. The
kitchen is dirty, and the women begin to feel
uneasy about being in a house where there is nothing but darkness and coldness.
The darkness is to signify how alone and
empty Mrs. Wright was feeling while living with her husband.
Mrs. Wright did not feel wanted, and
she felt like all hope was lost which the audience recognizes with the help of
Mrs. Hale’s saying, "…he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters.
Just to pass the time of day with him.
Like a raw wind that gets to the bone" (11).
Mrs. Hale conveys these important details to Mrs. Peters, which proves
that the environment in the Wright house was dark and dreary.
The audience can imagine living in house where there is nothing but
solitude and misery. The solemn
atmosphere makes the readers start to understand how lonely and depressing
living in the house actually was. Can you relate this
darkness to the theme, now?
The
coldness also helps convince to the audience that Mrs. Wright felt very unloved
and unimportant. Even when they
start a fire in the house, the fire always
seems to die and dim out leaving the house cold and chilly.
I believe this signifies that whenever Mrs. Wright had any sort of hope
or dream, her husband seemed to ruin that for
here. As one of the
women mentions, "I've never liked this place.
Maybe because it's down and hollow…I dunno what it is, but it's a
lonesome place and it always was…" (11).
Can you bring this coldness back to the theme?
Then a new paragraph, maybe? Two more words
describe life in the Wright house: lonesome and hollow.
These words, plus the fact that it is always cold in the house, prove
that there was really no love in this home.
Nobody tried to visit, so Mrs. Wright really never had any friends,
and her husband really never minded her. With
these factors, it is not a surprise that she began to go insane little by little,
reinforcing (enter theme here) because . . .
A birdcage is found in the Wright house that symbolizes either broken dreams or freedom. The broken hinge can mean broken dreams in the sense of whenever Mrs. Wright was happy or looking forward to something in her life, her husband took that away from her. This could be one of the reasons Mrs. Wright felt justified in killing in her husband. The broken hinge on the birdcage can also symbolize freedom. The door was open, and the bird, at first, we are led to believe, flew away, that it got to leave and be free and happy. Now, that Mrs. Wright was rid of her husband, she now had that same option of being free to enjoy a life that was taken away from her. This birdcage being all rusted and broken shows the audience that nothing in the house was good, and everything that happened to this woman was depressing. Bring your discussion back to the theme now.
The bird itself symbolizes freedom, great strength, and happiness. This
bird is the one thing that the ladies presumed kept Mrs. Wright from going
insane. Mrs. Hale remembers that "She--come
to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself--real sweet and pretty, but
kind of timid and fluttery. How--she--did--change."
(11). Mrs. Hale continues to
remember how happy Mrs. Wright used to be at one time before she was married,
explaining "I wish you'd seen Minnie Foster when she wore a white dress
with blue ribbons and stood there up in the choir and sang" (13).
This memory helps to convince Mrs. Hale that Mr. Wright killed Mrs.
Wright's spirit for life while they were married. Mrs.
Hale tells Mrs. Peters that "No, Wright wouldn't like the bird--a
thing that sang. She used to sing.
He killed that too" (12). This
line proves that Mrs. Hale believes about what really went on inside this house
for all these years: Mr. Wright had been killing his wife's spirit. The
conclusion the women reach is that Mrs. Wright then killed him. Back
to theme!
The ladies (women might be a better word choice here and following) in this play are brought together by one thing and one thing only: that they are ladies. We notice that Mr. Wright killed the spirit of his wife by not letting her grow as a person and never really letting her have anything in her life that would make her remotely happy. The two men in this play fall into the same category as Mr. Wright. They fall into one of his characteristics; they patronize the woman. One syas, "No, it's strange. It must have been done awfully crafty and still. They say it was a--funny way to kill a man, rigging him up like that" (8). I believe that this is one of the reasons that the women do knot tell the men they figure out why Mrs. Wright did what she did. They proved to themselves that women could do things better in the end and that was something neither of them wanted to forget. They were not going to let anything affect their newly gained spirit.
Glaspell uses characters, descriptive language and symbolism to prove to
the audience how living in solitude can really be lonely—you
seem to change your theme here a little.
She helps convey many messages through characters that act so well
rounded and real. Her use of
language lets the audience look deeper into the words around them, which helps
them look deeper into the setting, while the symbolism used helps the audience
realize there are deeper meanings to the simplest things like a birdcage.