This can be seen in the second scene of the play when Carl and Rod exchange a conversation regarding their loyalty: What are you thinking? Sweetheart honey baby I have a name. Can I have your ring? That is all right. He is seen as an idealist lover who makes commitment that only death can stop him from loving. His thoughts appear to be outside the place that he lives in. Promising love, honesty and loyalty in that situation makes readers and audiences suspicious of his pledge.
Surviving is the most important thing that they should look for in that bad condition. Carl pleads Rod to exchange that ideal love with him. His continuous demand makes Rod answer him and state: I love you now. Rod bounds his love with a time limit. Stylistically, it shows the importance of time according to Rod; he is aware of the difficulties that confront them.
Feeling the darkness of his future, Rod vows to love at the moment not later.
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The dominance of love and sexual instincts within Carl and Rod is apparent although they know that their relationship is not accepted by Tinker and they are likely to face unimaginable consequences. Yet, they refuse to give up the passion and continue meeting in different occasions.
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Accordingly, they underestimate the pain that they are going to experience as a result of their act. It is not easy for Rod to trust Carl that he will remain truthful. In truth, the play focuses on that point as Sierz asserts: Tinker knows about their relationship. In scene four, Carl is taken into the university sports hall and tortured severely by Tinker and his unseen men.
After a while, Carl decides to break the promises he has made to Rod and denies his love for Rod. And the rats eat my face. I will always love you. I will never lie to you. I will never betray you. Accordingly, Kane gives the honor of loyalty and forgiveness to the realist, Rod. Sierz argues that Cleansed discusses the durability of love among the lovers. The sixteenth scene of the play affirms that claim as it shows Rod and Carl laying on the ground covered with mud. He is held Rod: The relationship between the siblings, Grace and Graham is the second love story in the play.
Graham appears in the first scene of the play begging Tinker to inject him with heroin. Tinker injects the needle into the corner of his eyes; eventually, he dies due to an overdose. Realizing that Graham is dead, Grace wants to retrieve his clothes; nevertheless, she cannot get them and fails to escape the institution.
Although Graham dies in the first scene of the play, yet, his ghostly spirit appears onstage throughout most of the scenes of the play. Her sexual yearnings dominate her passion and make her another victim of Tinker. Grace survives different types of torture and suffering due to her love for Graham. Yet, her affection results in self-destruction ibid.
She goes through many painful experiences; at the end of the play she decides to change her gender into a male.
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Her love for Graham makes her want to appear, behave, speak and act as him. Grace, gradually, loses her identity willingly as it appears in the following lines: Gradually, she takes on masculinity of his movement, his facial expression. When she speaks, her voice is more like his. Furthermore, Lucaciu asserts that the tortured bodies of Grace and Graham become a locus of confrontation against the normal relationships in the society. Robin is a nineteen years old teenager who seems childish in his demand for love.
Robin cannot write or read; consequently, Grace decides to teach him. During a tutorial in the seventh scene of the play, Robin confesses his love for her. The conversation shows the importance of love in his life. In the beginning he finds difficulty in identifying the English letters. He asks her if she has loved her boyfriend and insists on hearing the answer.
The time Grace gives a negative answer, Robin relieves and starts to write. No but do you? Cleansed The above extract shows the importance of love for Robin. Writing, the process which he considers challenging, appears as an easy task after realizing the nature of Graces love. She wants to stop him from being too demanding things like a child.
After learning reading, writing, and counting, he realizes the span of time that he still has to spend in the institution. For him, love is attached to Grace; therefore, Robin can be considered as a victim of love. The fourth love story in the play is that of Tinker with the nameless dancer at a peepshow. According to Saunders, the essential issue linked to love in the play is studying the ways Tinker uses in testing love The dominant figure of Tinker is a torturer who shows no mercy in tormenting others both emotionally and physically.
The relationship discloses the other side of Tinker which carries love and passion. It is strange to see a character, whose main mission is annihilating love, speaking in a romantic way Hitchings, n. Can we be friends? I will be anything you need. Cleansed 16 Despite the many acts of cruelty throughout the play, one can find tenderness in his conversation with the dancer. Tinker is a torturer for the other characters; nevertheless, he promises the woman that he will be anything she asks for.
Sarah Kane shows some of the possible conditions which encounter the people who are in love. Occasionally, love may lead to death as happens with Robin. Other times, it has the ability of revealing the deep hidden desires of a person as it is shown in the character of Tinker. All things considered, the durability of love and its sustainable nature is focused on in the play. Being an instinct, Eros strives to survive and continue its struggle against Thanatos.
It is common to see various and different types of death in her works. Specifically, Aleks Sierz believes that Cleansed is about facing death The play closes its first scene with the death of Graham. The reason of his death is syringe of heroin which Tinker injects into the corner of his eyes.
His destructive side, triggered by his destructive instincts, leads him as he decides to let Graham die due to his drugs. It is known that in spite of the existence of both Eros and Thanatos, human beings normally prefer life over death. They try hard to survive as long as possible. Before studying the motivation or the reason, the lines which show the moment after which Graham takes the heroin and he is about to reach his destiny is to be mentioned. He is suffering and living in adversity. Consequently, he seeks a way to escape that situation although he realizes that there is no way out of that building.
Accordingly, it can be stated that Graham finds death as the best way of ending the agony he suffers from. Being hopeless, he considers it better than his contemporary state. Hope makes life continuous in that treacherous institution. Robin is another character who dies in the play. From the beginning of the play till scene seventeen, he stays alive due to the hope of leaving that place very soon.
He thinks about meeting again with his mother soon which can be noted in the following lines. Apparently, his life instincts are more powerful than the death instincts at that period. Despite the power of Eros, in a conversation with Grace, he reveals that the idea of committing suicide has occurred to him; nevertheless, he does not want to die, for he can meet his mom soon. Voice told me to kill myself. Nobody kills themselves here. Nobody wants to die. Could be pretty soon, me leaving. Could be in thirty, Tinker said. Cleansed 9 Apparently, Robin states that he could leave in thirty.
Accordingly, Grace realizes that Robin cannot read or write because leaving after eleven years is not a short period of time. She decides to teach him reading and writing. Nevertheless, Robin wishes for two things in the play. First, he loves Grace and wants her to love him in return. His passion for her is revealed more than one time.
Later and whenever they speak together, Robin begs her to love him. Grace cannot love him as she betrays Graham by doing so. Subsequently, Robin realizes that the relationship is impossible. Grace spends a lot of time with Robin teaching him; consequently, Robin learns how to count, and starts to count his days left in that place with an abacus. After calculating, he becomes aware of the length of the time that he should wait till he is thirty. Subsequently, he loses the hope that keeps him alive and decides to commit suicide.
Accordingly, Thanatos overcomes Eros and leads Robin towards his downfall. Arguably, losing hope is not the only reason for Robin to commit suicide. It is obvious that the victims are not free and they do not have control over anything in that place. Tinker decides the way they should live or whether they stay in life or not.
The only thing that Robin can do, before his natural death, is how to end his life. The beating continues methodically until Carl is unconscious. Cleansed 10 Thus, it is Tinker who has full authority over them; by taking his own life, Robin does not let Tinker to control his death as he is controlling his life. He also realizes that Grace does not love him. In the case of Robin, Thanatos wins its everlasting battle against Eros. Yet, audiences witness the existence of a similar case. The characters are suffering due to their passion. Besides, they should endure the hardest type of torture and cruelty in order to continue loving.
Accordingly, love is their biggest problem working as a trap while death is the only release. The characters of the play do not look upon death as the cruelest thing. Likewise, Robin commits suicide as he is convinced that there is no hope for him in that place. Rod, similarly, expresses his thoughts towards death and states that he welcomes it wholeheartedly: It is obvious that Tinker, the torturer, does not want to kill his victims in a normal way. He wants to prevent them from having a normal death. In the fourth scene of the play, a group of men beat Carl violently while Tinker is watching.
In addition to that, Tinker tells both Rod and Carl that he is not going to kill them as he states: This sadistic behavior of Tinker could be understood by investigating his goals. It is perceived that torturing is his aim, so he wants them to live as long as possible. Death due to suffering is his best choice.
He threatens Carl by telling him how he is going to feel after entering a long pole into his body. Can take a pole, push it up here, avoiding all major organs, until it emerges here. Die eventually of course. From starvation if nothing else gets you first. It means that he does not want to kill him instantly. Freud believes that the death drive may cause the person destroy himself or others around him.
Hence, Tinker is a palpable example of such an individual. The relationship between Carl and Rod is a kind of relationship that allows them to die for each other. In the second scene, Carl confesses his love for Rod and demands an exchange of passion from him. Being realistic, Rod knows that love is impossible in their present life. Yet, Carl is an idealistic person and promises a perpetual loyalty towards Rod.
Cleansed Though the idealist Carl does not keep his promise and betrays Rod, Rod makes the same promise later in scene sixteen of the play. There is a significant point in his death. According to Robert I. Therefore, he seeks a new love in order to continue living. In the final scene of the play Kane presents both Carl and Grace together staring at the sky. Thus, in this case Eros overcomes Thanatos. It was discussed previously that some characters prefer death over their endless torment of love; the case is similar with Grace to some extent.
She wants to be loved by Graham unconditionally. According to her, death is the only substitution of love. The statement may express two different meanings. The first one is that Grace obviously prefers death over a life without love. The second one is that she wants to die in order to be able to love. The play implies the idea that love does not end after death. Although Graham dies in the first scene of the play, he remains onstage as a ghost throughout the performance.
Graham starts to love Grace after his death. Obviously, it is the power of love that makes her think that he is not dead. Accordingly, seeing Graham expressing love after his death, Grace may want to do the same and die in order to express her love. Thus, it is clear that one of the major aspects of the play is the interrelated relationship between love and death. Most of the death cases in the play have a link with love directly or indirectly. Graham starts loving Grace after his death. Rod dies as he sacrifices himself for his lover, Carl.
The only love story in the play which is not connected to death is between Tinker and the dancer woman. There are some images in this play which are contradictions. The main images in the play that represent the forces are to be studied. A sunflower appears in the play close to Grace and Graham. In contradiction, rats come onstage more than one time usually to eat from remaining body parts on the floor. Thus, the play represents a real picture of life which is a combination of all those forces and feelings.
As it is apparent, it suggests that the conflict between them is constant. If the sun represents life and the rats represent death, then it could be stated that Cleansed is a vivid example of the everlasting struggle between Eros and Thanatos. Each one of these words is derived from the names of two authors, Marquis de Sade, the well-known French writer, and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the Dutch author, who wrote about their sexual imaginations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Khan The first person using the names of the two novelists in categorizing the syndromes of sadism and masochism is the Austro-German psychiatrist and sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing ibid 7.
Reading the mentioned definitions, one notices the link that exists between sadomasochism and the sexual desires. According to most of the cited descriptions, sadomasochism is the presence of aggressiveness and cruelty in the sexual acts. It is an action which results in pleasure due to pain or suffering. However, the question arises as to whether this behavior is only related to sexual acts or not. That is, the process of gaining pleasure from the suffering of the others or self is also considered sadomasochism.
There are other acts, rather than sex, that people perform and that can cause pain and pleasure. What is noticeable in Cleansed is the existence of most of those acts in the events of the play which are to be discussed later. There are several psychologists and psychiatrists who have written about sadomasochism. Freud traces back sadomasochism to the early childhood. In some occasions, the child gets pleasure from beating other children or from being beaten by them.
Freud thinks that Oedipus complex plays a major role in originating such a perversion Person It is worth mentioning that Freud and the first person who coined the terms sadism and masochism, Krafft-Ebing, lived during the same period. His views on sadism are similar to those of Krafft-Ebing, yet, he presents several different thoughts regarding masochism.
Both Freud and Krafft-Ebing consider sadism a masculine trend; besides, they believe that masochism exists as a feminine tendency. They intended to elaborate the reasons that make sadism appear as a primary instinct within males Lowrey 2. Ordinarily, Freud is one of the many critics who directly associates sadomasochism with sex.
In determining whether masochism developed as an opposite to the primary instinct, sadism, or it stands as a primary instinct by its own, he investigates the case in several different occasions. In his later works, Freud began to consider masochism as a distinct primary drive, and referred to it as the death instinct, Thanatos, directed toward the self. He finally reached a conclusion that masochism developed due to the vitality of the life instincts and the death instincts.
Erotogenic, feminine and moral were three forms of masochism named by Freud. Basically, attaining pleasure from pain is the meaning of the first one. Concerning feminine masochism, he thought that it occurs while the person, a female usually, has the fantasy of being beaten by the father or to have passive sexual affairs with him. The fantasy of copulating with the father causes an unconscious sense of guilt within the person and it produces the third form, moral masochism.
Sadomasochism is one of the recurring themes in the plays which fall under the category of In-yer-face theatre. Violence and cruelty are the main trends of that theatre; nevertheless, they are not always devastating. There are moments in which characters tend to be confronted with different degrees of violence. There are characters who like to punish others alongside with characters that try to be hurt for a reason. The first character who is studied here is Graham due to his early death in the first scene of the play.
It is mentioned previously that he dies because of an overdose. Although he realizes the consequences, he asks Tinker to inject him with a lot of heroin, and Tinker does so. Accordingly, his death is considered a suicide. The aim of the death drives is to end the agitation of life and replace it with the steadiness of death. Then puts on another lump. He adds lemon juice and heats the smack. He fills the syringe Graham: It is true that he may not find a physical pleasure in his action, but he is capable of escaping the restlessness of his life through death.
This definition can be related to both Graham and Grace. Graham is aware of himself and anticipates his future in that dreadful place. Despair makes him hate his condition and make a very hard decision. Accordingly, he becomes a masochist character who counts on his death drives to rescue him from the humiliated self. Grace, on the other hand, is another character who wants to escape from herself. She tries to change her sex from female to male. Her conversation with Tinker in the third scene of the play reveals that Grace does not want to leave the place despite the risks.
I look like him. Say you thought I was a man. Obviously, Grace does not want a man to protect her because she considers herself strong enough to avoid any external threat. She acts against her female nature and tries to be looked at as a man. Changing the identity is one of her major aims throughout the play. So it looked like it feels.
Her response reveals that she has already been changed into a boy from inside and the only thing remaining is changing her physical shape.
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So, what are her motivations and what is the relation of that act with sadomasochism? According to Freud, the phallic stage of development in children may cause a fixation which, in turn, leads to some further dissimilar kinds of personality. Any fixation at that stage affects the personality of an adult. When they [girls] turn away from their incestuous love for their father, with its genital significance, they easily abandon their feminine role.
Freud insists that the drive of destruction can respond positively to the Ego and supply its needs. Accordingly, the drive of destruction provides that requirement and makes her Ego control her nature.
Thus, Grace is a masochist character who successfully and wholeheartedly changes her nature both internally and externally. Tinker is a sadist character in the play. He enjoys humiliating others and playing with their identity. Most of the times, he appears onstage torturing the other characters and imposing his wishes on them. Tinker performs both sexual and non-sexual sadistic acts. He drops his arm. Cleansed 10 In these lines, a group of unseen men beat Carl savagely while Tinker watches and gives orders. The repeated act of holding and dropping his arm implies that Tinker enjoys his authority and finds self-gratification in that action.
He likes the fact that he has control over both the action of the men and the life of Carl. At the same time, Tinker acts as a sadist fan while watching Carl being beaten by the men. In the first scene, he agrees on injecting Graham with a lot of heroin. After injecting the heroin, he starts to count until Graham dies due to toxication.
Cleansed 3 The counting proves that Tinker does not care even if Graham dies. According to Freud, sadism is a death drive which is externalized. It is acted upon people from outside. He considers aggression a demonstration of that death drive Carel While doing so, Tinker remains Calm and acts normally.
The line conveys that Tinker has enjoyed the action. Tinker usually changes the identity of the others. Carl and Rod are two other characters who contribute in some sexual sadomasochistic acts. They love each other in spite of their dissimilar perspective towards love. In scene sixteen they meet and express love. That act is a clear example of the widespread description of sadomasochism, which is being aggressive in sexual relationships. Thus, Cleansed contains different forms of sadomasochistic acts and most of the characters own a form of that perversion.
Chapter Three Crave 3. It is different from her earlier plays in some aspects; the language is a fragmented poetic one that adopts allusions from the Bible, T. Eliot and Shakespeare Saunders, In fact, Kane does not give any name to the characters, but letters instead. The characters are A, B, C, and M. The gender of the characters is not mentioned in the text. Dan Rebellato held an interview with Kane and asked a question regarding the same issue.
In response, Kane explained that according to her A is an older man; B is a younger man; C is a young woman while M is an older woman. She also states that A may stand for an abuser or an author. B stands for a boy. C stands for a child and M denotes a mother. The play is a one-act play which does not have a well developed plot. There is not a rational development of the events of the play. There are not any sensible dialogues between the characters and their language is broken down into pieces. Lack of a proper communication among the characters has made the play difficult to understand.
This account can be illustrated by the following example. C He who comes after. M There is something in the way. C Three summers ago I was bereaved. No one died but I lost my mother. A She had him back.
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C I believe in anniversaries. That a mood can be repeated even if the event that caused it is trivial or forgotten.
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In this case it's neither. Crave 4 The lines demonstrate the absence of natural interaction among the characters. M seems unaware of what C says; A and M live in their own world without paying attention to their surroundings. Even most of the consecutive accounts by the same character are not related to each other.
Freud claims that the unconscious directs the behaviors of the human beings. The role of the unconscious in determining the way human lives is vital as human beings do not perform their actions rationally Freud, Being so, neither are the speakers in complete control of what they say, nor are the hearers in control of their responses.
The mixed emotions of the characters make their sentences unconnected. Discussing the issues that Kane tackles in Crave, Moshy believes that the play focuses on the personal distress within the anxiety of a larger group. The effect of the internal conflict on the external world is dealt with. Kane demonstrates the diversity of perceptions that exist within an individual Each two characters among the four appear to be in a relationship.
A is related to C while M is related to B. In both connections, love is not exchanged. A, the older man, wants to be closer to C, the young girl. The major problem is that A is an abuser whom C does not want to be with. M, the older woman, craves for a child and believes that B, a younger man, is appropriate of being the father.
Regardless to that, she does not love him Saunders, The effect of love on the individuals and its role in shaping the nature of their life is dealt with in the play. Kane emphasizes the inner struggle of someone who suffers from lack of an exchanged passion. Hitherto, the characters seem vulnerable and broken emotionally while they are not able to attain the wishes they crave for. They discover the nature of their desire and identify it as love; nevertheless, they cannot compromise to complete their passion together Ranc 1.
In Crave, the characters are psychologically damaged. Their past is lost and the uncertain future which awaits them harms their psychology, making them unable to communicate their thoughts properly. Greig argues that the feelings of abusive love exist in the play xiv. Abuse is one of the reasons of the absence of love in the life of some characters. Kane suggests that A may stand for an abuser and C for a child. C is considered a child due to her young age compared to A who is a middle aged man. The words of C in the play reveal that she is suffering continuously due to her memory of an abusive childhood.
There are recurring accounts by her proving that her past is affecting her future. In the beginning she only gives hints about the abuse while later she talks more clearly about it. C I'm evil, I'm damaged, and no one can save me. Besides, her sentences in the play are seen as a confession of her past. Going through all those cruel moments, she despises her current situation in not being capable of loving or trusting men in general. Human beings tend to forget the bad events of their life, yet those memories do not die as they stay in the unconscious affecting the personality of their owner.
Freud uses the word repression to refer to the process of forgetting. Accordingly, it is a defense mechanism. There are forces that maintain that repression in order to avoid the hostile feelings. In order to cure the psychology of the patient, those forces should be removed and the memories would come back to the conscious again. Discussing them or revealing them to someone, the patient relaxes and eradicates the burden ibid. C obviously wants to eliminate some of her memories and forget them forever.
The case of C is the same issue that Freud discusses as she is haunted by the memories of her painful past making her unable to love ordinarily again. The traumas of the childhood can affect the decisions of an adult. It is only experiences in childhood that explain susceptibility to later traumas and it is only by uncovering these almost invariably forgotten memory-traces and by making them conscious that we acquire the power to get rid of the symptoms.
In order to avoid that, she avoids love. The absence of love in the life of C is disturbing. The play begins with C talking about how she is no more talking to her mother. Simultaneously, her father is one of her childhood abusers, and has deprived her of his true paternal love. Again, love and death, Eros and Thanatos, are interrelated as she finds death as the only substitution of the lack of love. A is another character who craves for love. He suffers from his inner struggle as he is in love with C. The reason of his pain is that C does not love him. Being an abuser, A neither compromises with himself, nor with his surrounding in the beginning of the play.
He confesses his love for C in many occasions but she refuses to love him in return due to the reasons discussed earlier. By studying some of his words in the play, one senses the existence of a feeling of guilt within A. The mentioned lines uncover a conflict within this character as he tries to justify his actions. He refuses to call himself an abuser although he confesses that he is a pedophile. Freud argues that human beings use denial as a defense mechanism to avoid feeling guilty McLeod, n. It is worth mentioning that A binds his past abusive acts with love.
Meanwhile, C can save him and find a new meaning for his life through loving him. It is ironical that A, an abuser, loves C, an abused. It is very hard for C to love another man again, especially if that man is a pedophile. Yet, they cannot meet at a point in order to be together.
The relationship between M, an older woman, and B, a younger man, goes through the same problem, absence of love. Although M craves for a child and wants B to be the father, she does not show any fondness towards him. In return, the insensitivity of B destroys any possibility of unity with her. That is to say, M does not want to be in love with B and it is not he whom she wants but his child. Freud believes that Eros maintains life due to its productive nature. In the case of M, the preserving nature of Eros is taken into consideration while neglecting the feelings bound to that drive.
Attaining a baby through Eros, is her only demand. M I keep telling people I'm pregnant. The lines indicate that she is afraid of becoming older and losing the ability of being a mother. She is obsessed with the idea of maternity. These statements are directed toward B revealing that she simply wants him to be the father of her child not her lover. B, on the other hand, seeks a real passion and endeavors for a real love in his life. His statements in the play regarding love prove this argument. B If it could be an act of love.
Crave 10 B Love me. Unlike M, he wants to find the emotion which is the essence of life. To him, love is not merely maintenance of human beings and an instinct of self-preservation. The researcher believes that the reason is the existence of an incomplete desire by the characters. To be united, feelings ought to exist alongside with the tangible acts. Yet, M lacks passion and demands for physical acts while B seeks the former and rejects the latter. Thus, love is absent. The aspect of escaping from love is apparent in Crave. They crave it, yet whenever it approaches them they refuse it.
Despite his many attempts to persuade C, A refuses to proceed when he feels that she is reconsidering her decisions and wants to be in love. Due to that, characters of the play prefer its absence. Different aspects of violence are adapted by Kane in her plays. Yet, the type and degree of violence are different among those plays.
She presents all the dimensions of violence and makes the audiences confront a sense of brutality while they attend the performance. Presenting physical violence onstage finds an end in Crave. Kane changes the way through which violence is represented. Crave is written in a poetic language in which the characters use verbal dimensions of violence with intonation. Unlike the previous plays, this play does not contain an explicit physical or sexual violence.
The characters of the play remember some moments of their life in which they have been treated in a violent way. A mentions some of those stories as he states, A A small boy had an imaginary friend. He took her to the beach and they played in the sea. A man came from the water and took her away. The following morning the body of a girl was found washed up on the beach. Crave 8 A A small girl became increasingly paralysed by her parents' frequently violent rows. Sometimes she would spend hours standing completely still in the toilet, simply because that was where she happened to be when the fight began.
Finally, in moments of calm, she would take bottles of milk from the fridge or doorstep and leave them in places where she may later become trapped. Her parents were unable to understand why they found bottles of sour milk in every room in the house. The characters B and M appear violent in some moments of the play. Attempting to persuade M to love him, B loses his temper after a long time of asking and starts to repeat his words.
Id comprises the instincts which, according to Freud, strain to govern their owner. The aim of these instincts is attaining their need without considering the consequences. Super-ego, on the contrary, is the external factors which stand against the wills of Id through criticizing. Amid this enduring struggle between Id and Super-ego, Ego attempts to play the role of a mediator who strives in persuading both sides. Regarding principles, a total non-morality is the nature of Id while Super-ego is characterized by being thoroughly moral.
It is significant that almost all the processes which normally occur in Id, Ego and Super-ego are apparent within the characters of Crave. The inner struggle of some human beings occupies an ample space in the play. Being an abuser, A finds himself in a dilemma whether he should follow his instincts or preserve his fame. By now, the destructive nature of Thanatos engrains itself in the Super-ego against the Ego.
As a response and to maintain itself, Ego manifests a sense of guilt within the person. Accordingly, A is suffering due to shame and guilt. Discussing the effect of the Super-ego on the Ego, the thesis refers back to three succeeding statements by B, C and A. C no no no no no no no no no A A wish under pressure.
B mentions bed in his speech and it reminds C of her past memories which she wants to forget. Accordingly, she is intimidated by his speech and reacts in an outrageous way. It is important here to focus on the opinion of A regarding the subject. There are moments in which the characters wish death as they do not feel their existence in this world. The mentioned account is an evidence of his internal struggle and conveys that his Ego is severely damaged due to the sense of guilt.
The same process goes on in the psyche of C. She no longer considers herself alive due to the effect of the Super-ego on her Ego. It is peculiar that both A and C want to find an end to their agony but they are not ready to stop the generator of their suffering. Discussing the inability of A in abandoning his old habit, abuse, the focus is on a conversation takes place between A and C in the beginning of the play. A What do you want? A Sometimes that's not possible. Although C is a victim of exploitation and manipulation, she cannot escape her reality and live a new life.
While she wants to be free from her seducers, she does not wish to lose them permanently. At the same time, A blames himself due to his abusive desires and wants to have a normal love affair but he cannot fulfill that wish. From the beginning of the play till its concluding parts, A attempts to persuade C and respond to his demands but she refuses. Being hopeless, A starts to lose his feelings for her. As Freud believes, it is possible for the love instinct to alter itself with aggressive impulses against the object.
Obviously, the object is the person whom one loves. At this point, Thanatos appears to be attempting to destroy the object, while the Ego strives to avoid the destructive instincts from performing such an action. As a result, the instincts stay in the Id. The Super-ego considers the Ego to be responsible for that destructive wish and reproves it. Thus, it is possible for A to go through the same condition and start to change his perspective towards C.
The endless self-torment which Freud suggests is apparent within the character C. Despairing words uttered by C indicate the amount of aggression and violence she holds against herself. C hates herself to an extent that she wishes she was not born essentially. Hence, Thanatos is in control of the mentality and the feelings of C. Through reading the text, one grasps that C has been abused by both her father and grandfather.
The account can be affirmed by studying words from the play as A states: Hence, what is the reason which makes someone participate in a cruel act as abuse? The sentence indicates that people are fully responsible for their acts because one does not blame a person for unintentional actions. Kane tackles an unfamiliar subject which is a male being abused by a female.
Normally, females are usually considered victims of exploitation by the males; nevertheless, in Crave B seems forced into having an unwilling relationship with M. Some specific examples from the play indicate the issue. M I want a child. B I can't help you. Accordingly, he considers himself being raped by the older woman, M, if he participates, unwillingly, in the birth of a child.
Ranc believes that Kane criticizes society through her use of violence in Crave. Nowadays, society is dehumanized and bared of its ethics which used to exist Ranc 4. The cause of the atrocities in the world is obviously man in the general sense. Considered as a member of In-yer-face theatre, Kane attempts to shock her audiences and make them aware of the violence and cruelty that exist around them.
She also thinks about her future and seems afraid of getting old as she states: I don't want to grow old and cold and be too poor to dye my hair. Shedding light on the lost good aspects of life and attempting to remind society of their corrupt condition are reasons of making Kane implement different aspects of cruelty and violence in her play, Crave. Nonetheless, the acts of abuse and aggression which cross the memories of some characters are remembrance of actual acts in their life. All the statements that have been mentioned and discussed here witness the existence of real violence and abuse, especially in the life of C and A.
Likewise, death exists as one of the most important themes in her plays, especially Crave. Crave presents four characters who embrace their downfall in the end of the play. Embracing denotes that they wholeheartedly accept their death and decide to abandon life. Discussing the issue, readers may consider the following lines. Crave 27 The lines demonstrate a moment in which the characters face their end and reveal their feeling regarding that end. Consecutively, embracing death means escaping from life and the livings. The characters in Crave convey their ideas regarding their life and they usually detest it.
The detestation is noted in the following lines by different characters. C I'm not ill, I just know that life is not worth living. Crave 21 M I want a real life, […] A I won't settle for a life in the dark. The characters reach their destiny at the end of the play after long periods of confession and mentioning their suffering.
Finding serenity is not an easy task for the characters if death could be considered as amity for them. C You killed my mother. A She was already dead. M If you want me to abuse you I will abuse you. He believes that death is the needed consequence of life and life would be meaningless without it; people appreciate their living due to their knowledge of the end of it. All in all, the characters in Crave make their decisions and accept them all together as they seek release through obliteration showing that Thanatos is more dominant than Eros.
Kane links both liberation and destruction together in the end of Crave. It is destructive as they die and redemptive as it frees them from their agony and discomfort. Thus, Kane associates liberation with destruction in her play as her characters find serenity in their demise. Relating it to the idea of masochism, Freud claims that individuals get sexual satisfaction and pleasure from pain In other words, self-destructive forces are related to Thanatos and they are directed inwards in some occasions in order to give pleasure.
Being so, the characters in Crave are capable of enjoyment only through death as they use their downfall as a means of liberation. Freud believes that the idea of martyrdom is used to reduce pain and melancholy Hence, by connecting these ideas from the different scholars, one grasps that the characters prefer their destructive instincts because they want to reduce their pain by considering themselves religious martyrs.
Although he believes in the presence of death instincts and their constant conflict with life instincts, Freud also suggests that the grown up individuals are unable to settle on certain ideas about death as it appears enigmatic to them Wong and Tomer believe the same as they advocate the existence of a dualistic outlook to death in a way that people are both overwhelmed by its fear and attracted by its ambiguity Studying Crave, one notices the actuality of that uncertainty regarding death and what comes after it. A No one survives life. Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
Seminar paper from the year in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: British Drama after , language: But it cannot be allowed, even in the name of freedom of speech, to do so without aim, purpose or meaning. It may come as a surprise that the above extracts are neither part of one single critique, nor do they refer to one single play. Not incidentally, both playwrights were accused by numerous irritated critics of committing the same unacceptable affront: They were reproached for depicting the most disgusting forms of violence on stage, merely for the sake of paying tribute to violence itself.
Nevertheless, she did provide equally comprehensible or even convincing reasons for putting violence on stage: Violence — both physical and emotional — is an important ingredient, and yet only a minor theme in the plays. It is dominated by the all-encompassing theme of love. Love and violence, however, are not examined as two separate individual experiences. On the contrary, it is their overlapping that is scrutinised. Read more Read less. Kindle Cloud Reader Read instantly in your browser. Product details File Size: August 16, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers.
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