Blood Wedding #7

There are a variety of youth in the second act. Why? How does Lorca use the youth to affect the themes of the play?


Lorca uses the youth in the play to represent the generational struggle that has been part of the major families in the play. When this play was written, family feuds were still very common in Spain so the fact that Lorca uses the youth to symbolize this adds to the realism of the play. Some of the major fights and larger moments in the play come from this long term struggle between Mother and the Felix family. The youth can represent how it does not matter what age you are, you can still be pulled in to a hundred year old conflict. Also, the youth can show how they are important to what happens in their families even though they are smaller pieces of the puzzle. Maybe Lorca was trying to say that children are important factors and their problems can affect everyone so they should not be over looked. 

Blood Wedding #6

Which characters appear to be miserable int he play and why?  When and how do the characters express their misery? What do the characters desire and what stops them from going after what each desire?


The bride and the mother are both the characters that are most miserable in the play. The bride is miserable because she first has an internal conflict about marriage and then she loses both of the men that she loves. The mother is miserable because she does not want to lose her son, and she fears letting him away from her home. The bride expresses her misery when talking to the maid in Act 2 Scene 1. The mother expresses her misery openly to her son in the very first act. Both expressions are verbal, although the mother's is far more erratic. The  bride desires a happy marriage but Leonardo stops her from achieving that when he shows up speaking of the past. The mother wants her son to stay safe at home but his own goals and desires pull him away from her and result in his death, which ultimately stops the mother from achieving what she desires. 

Blood Wedding #5

Journal #5 Examine how Lorca characterize the archetypes of the play.  Does Lorca embrace or reject the archetype?  What is the effect of the characterization? 

I feel that Lorca embraces the archetype in the play. He embraces it by purposefully taking the names of the characters away except for Leonardo. This type of characterization, to me, de-individualizes the characters of the story. Names are usually partnered with originality and that is a crucial part of the human experience, so therefore by removing the names of the characters Lorca dehumanizes them. Except for Leonardo. The effect of this is that it forces the audience to focus more on Leonardo than the others. This results in more of a identification with Leonardo and it separates him from the other characters. Because of this Leonardo is seen as an outcast and the audience is more inclined to pity him but reject him at the same time. Due to Lorca's use of archetypes Lorca creates a separation between the major characters of the play.

Blood Wedding #4

Well the first, and most obvious symbol in act one of Blood Wedding is the knife. Like we talked about in class today, the knife is clearly as symbol for death. I also think it could be seen as a symbol for severing or tearing a life apart, like a serrated blade. This is because the murder of the Groom's brother and father was done by a knife and that tore their family apart emotionally. Also, at the end of the story it takes two more men from their respective families, so basing it off of those two events the knife could be seen as a symbol for separation. Another symbol I saw in the first act was the vineyard. To me personally I see a vineyard as a place of growth and life and as a source of money by selling wine. In the book, it also represents that, especially in the first act but in act two, I saw it turning into more of a symbol for decay, since the bride's father's vineyard was somewhat shabby. The symbol of the vineyard throughout the book serves as a small foreshadowing if it is seen as representing decay, and that in turn sets up the rest of the story.

The Wild Duck #2

Ibsen uses the motif of disease and illness to show the detrimental effects of living a false life and forcing an illusion upon someone's life to solve a problem in your own. When Gregers and Werle are arguing at the end of Act 1, Werle tells Greger that,"You have seen me through your mother's eyes. But you ought to remember that her eyes were- were- clouded now and then" (Ibsen 90). This quote happens during the middle of an argument so clearly that gives a negative and destructive connotation to illness. After talking about Gregers' mother's clouded eyes they continue fighting and then Gregers accuses Werle of messing up Hjalmar's life and says, "And there he is now [...] without the slightest idea that what he calls home is built on a lie" (Ibsen 90). This is important because it is a mention of lying and deceit during an argument immediately after the mention of clouded eyes which connect to being blind. This quote shows how Ibsen is making a connection between illness, specifically failure of eyesight, to the destructive effects of lying. When Gregers comes to the Ekdal home later in the story, Act 2, him and Hjalmar talk about Hedvig's eyesight and Hjalmar tells Gregers that him and Gina do not "have the heart to tell her anything about it. She suspects nothing" (Ibsen 101). This is another connection between lies and eye disease. The fact that eye disease comes up with lying connects to a negative thing pairing with not telling the truth. This helps to prove that Ibsen uses disease and illness to show the detrimental effects of lies.

The Wild Duck #1

Prompt 2:


I feel like Ms. Sorby has false conceptions of herself. She is a very kind and giving woman, but at this point in time she is still a housemaid that is employed under Werle. It seems that she is beginning to see herself as wealthy before she actually becomes married to Werle, but in reality she is just a handmaid for now. I think that it is safe to say that Hjalmar has false conceptions of the other people around him. He is in the blind about Gina having an affair with Werle and he thinks that Hedvig is his biological daughter when in reality she belongs to Werle as well. The person that recognizes the facades is Gregers. Gregers calls out Werle on everything at the end of the first act, and then makes all of it aware to Hjalmar near the end, sending Hjalmar's life into a downward spiral, which ultimately results in Hedvig's death. Hjalmar reacts to learning about the facades at first by freaking out and becoming angry with everyone, but then after Hedvig's death he accepts all of the new facts he has learned about his life. His wife Gina reacts rather calmly but that is only because she has known all of this information the whole time. When Gregers reaches the conclusions early on in the novel he reacts by getting excited about bringing his father down, and heads to Hjalmar's to set the tragedy in motion.

We #3

Motifs: There is a more apparent repetition of facial features and body parts and D-503 recognizes and describes people by their body parts in the final third of the novel. He does this because he has his soul so he is more imaginative with his description but he is also on a thin line between going back to his old ways of being straight-forward and fully accepting his soul. This is because his descriptions of people are often very creative and out of the box, but his ways of categorizing them is very logical. Body parts may also be foreshadowing for the Great Operation because D-503 describes a doctor as having "scissor-lips" and since it was a doctor and scissors are a surgery tool, it may be a way of subtly foreshadowing the Great Operation.

Setting: The setting changes to more of nature than sealed in walls in this final section of the book. Instead of being trapped within the walls of the city, D-503 breaks through the barriers by going beyond the green wall with I-330 and also flying into space with the Integral. Going beyond his enclosure really shows how he is going against society because of this soul he develops. He fully accepts having his soul in this part of the book, and because of that he almost attempts a traitorous act against the One State. The lack of boundaries in this last third of the book show how D-503 has broken all of the control that his government has over him.

Language: The language of this section of the novel is almost as it was in the second third. It is very complex sentence structure, however most of the sentences end with an ellipse. This is because most of this last part is D-503's internal conflict between himself coming to a resolve so he has a lot of thoughts that conflict, so his sentences trail off as a result of that. Although, in the last entry of the book, all of his sentences become short, and logical, and there is not one ellipse in the entire entry. This is because he had the Great Operation done on him and the part of his brain that contained the imagination/soul he developed was removed. As a result of this his sentences become very direct and logical as they were at the beginning of the novel. This shows how D-503 has come full circle since the start of his journal.