Two Classic Plays that Address Modern Societal Issues: Essay Sample

The Doll’s House, written by Henrik Ibsen and “My Oedipus Complex”, written by Frank O’Connor are plays that address very pertinent issues in the society to date. The problems solved to continue to affect contemporary societies to date. Such ills have affected socio-political and economic developments in the modern world. The playwrights that are Henrik Ibsen and Frank O’Connor were able to look at the world and the societies that reflected the realities of the world even after centuries after their works. These ills and the human filth addressed will affect the organizations, even millions of years to come. These issues form the thematic concerns that they wanted to bring to the fore to their audience and the readers. They include; love and marriage, parental obligations, the role of women in the society and gender, materialism and corruption, upbringing of children and finally respect and reputation.

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First and foremost, the role of women in society and the questions of gender equity have spurred debates across the world. Women have been despised, violated against and have faced discrimination. Doll House shows the significance, and the fate married women face in society. Women face problems in any male-dominated organization, and they end up lacking opportunities for their self-fulfillment (Meza, 2017). It is even though Ibsen has denied that it is not his intension to write on a purely feminist play. It has ended up arousing great sensational thoughts over time and has caused controversies all over the world. The role that women play in society at all economic levels has decorated in the “Doll’s House.” The assertion of Nora that in as much as men refuse to sacrifice their integrity. Hundreds of thousands of women have done so. In her support for her two brothers and mother, Mr. Linder marries a rich man and abandons her true but penniless lover, Krogstad.

In ‘‘My Oedipus Complex,’’ Frank O’Connor also addresses the same concern in a different way. Women portrayed as people who should stay with their children in the House as their husbands go to work (Delaney, 2019). They should instil good morals to the kids, teach them how to pray. Every day Larry accompanies the mother to town after being given food. They also attend mass together. Larry gets taught how to pray for the father, who is a soldier serving in the war. Larry then begs for the safe return of the father, and he reports that he did not know what he was praying. Larry’s mother plays a critical role in the upbringing of the child on religious principles and also instils discipline in him.

Also, love and marriage is an institution that the two playwrights present to their audience and readers. Inside the Doll’s House, there is a marriage partnership between Torvald and Nora. The relationship reveals that the interaction that exists between a woman and a man in marriage. It serves an essential purpose which is illustrating the banality of the discourse in them. Torvald brands the wife with pet names, and Nora is expected just to obey the husband despite his petty rules. Her husband betrays Nora because she does not know much on worldly matters. The husband is self-centered to the extent that he sees his wife based on how he wants her to be; he does not see the actual woman that is in her.

In ‘‘My Oedipus Complex,’’ there is a marriage relationship that exists between Larry’s father and mother. Disagreements continually erupt between them, and this has made Larry distance himself with the father (King, 2017). It has spurred conflict between Larry and the father. O’Connor brings the importance of father-son relationships and genuinely refers to Freud’s theory which shows that boys are always attracted to their mothers and consider fathers as competitors. Larry wants to have the mother’s full attention, and when the father returns from the war, he despises the father for taking his mother’s care, affection and time. There is love in the relationship between Larry’s mother and father. This is explained where Larry’s mother continually prays for her husband to return safely from the war. The father’s absence in Larry’s life always affects him. He desires to have his father with them in the family, and his lack in his life psychologically affects the young boy. Despite Larry loving his mother and hating his father, his narration and life experiences make him be obsessed by both of them and perhaps even more with the father. When his father takes him to town and ignores him, Larry feels so frustrated that he feels like crying. The emotional reaction becomes more severe compared to the anger he shows whenever he is neglected or abandoned by the mother. At the end of the play, Sonny ends up occupying Larry’s bed and moulds the alliance, and this shows the father and the son coming to terms with one another. This, therefore, indicates that Larry loves the father and has wanted his attention all along.

Moreover, individuals and society is another thematic concern that both playwrights bring to the fore in the two plays. In My Oedipus Complex, the family of Larry’s parents represents the society and what society goes through in the development process. Larry symbolically represents the young people and what they go through in their development cycle. As a child, he shows a childish perspective, and he is immature, egocentric, silly and very naïve. These traits define children in the society at that age bracket. The features put them at loggerheads with their parents and parenting such kids such as Larry is dependent on the ability to understand them and their terms. Larry’s mother, on the other hand, represents women in the society who struggle to consolidate their families together and to raise their kids in the best ways possible. The father symbolically represents the married men and the responsibilities they do to provide for their families. He is a soldier who serves in the First World War and dedicates his life to provide for the family. He does not understand the young Larry just like the most parents do. As Larry grows up, recalls the affection he had for the mother. For an adult to understand a child, it takes intension and effort.

In A Doll’s House by Ibsen, the same theme is developed very vividly in the following instances. Nora is a very dutiful mother and a wife at the same time, puts others before herself throughout the play (He, 2019). The act of forgery and the debt to Krogstad has affected her. She is worried about how her actions might impact on the husband’s life and the children. She tries to commit suicide at the end because of her thinking that Torvald might ruin himself in her protection and defence.

On the other hand, Mrs Linde does admit that having no family member or husband to care for; she has a feeling that her life is pointless. The two women find relevance in their lives when they serve others and perform the caring and obedient role that society expects from them. Nora realizes that serving as a mother and a wife does not lead to real happiness. Krogstad cares about his reputation than everything. She was having been punished by society for the acts of forgery. He is too desperate to bring respect in the eyes of others in the community. Talking with Mrs Linde has indicated that he can only get happiness by reforming himself and regaining the personal status and integrity that is lost as opposed to the outward respectability.

Lastly, the upbringing of children is in the two plays. In the Doll’s Eye, Ibsen has not given Nora’s and Helmer’s children any given role in the game. It shows a thematic concern and runs parallel to the pure love that exists in marriage (Setyawan et al., 2016). Emmy, Bobby and Ivar have shown how parents do bring them up and how they raise them. Nora does not have enough time with the kids and only brings toys, but their father seems to be so busy that spending time with his kids becomes a problem.

On the other hand, he has a lot of time calling his wife with a lot of random names. This, therefore, shows that both of them bring up their children just because they are theirs and not because they are human beings. In the play, parents bring up their children based on moral values. Nora gets accused of emulating her father by getting driven profligacy and money-making ways. Dr Rank inherits disease and moral filth from his father. Torvald argues that parents play a crucial role in determining the noble characters of their children. In My Oedipus Complex, Frank O’Connor shows how Larry’s parents play an essential role in his upbringing. He gets acquainted with the mother and tends to hate the father. This is because he spends most of his time with the mother who teaches good morals in him and even takes him to church and shows him how to pray. The mother corrects him by either slapping him or talking to him just to do the right thing. He does not feel secure with his father because he hates him out of ignorance. As he grows up and his younger brother is born, he realizes how important the father is and learns to feel secure in his presence. The relationship with the father grows, and he learns its importance. This shows that when male kids grow, their fathers should clearly understand them to avoid escalation of problems like a misunderstanding. Women should play more roles in morally tuning their children.

In a nutshell, Henrik Ibsen and his counterpart Frank O’Connor, in their works of art aimed at educating the society based on how to live good lives. They address fundamental institutions in people’s lives such as marriage, religion, the upbringing of children parental care, among other vital issues. The moral decadence comes as a result of the parent’s failure to properly teach their children on the best ways of living peaceful and morally accepted way of life that is geared by ethically accepted principles. Immoral actions that take place in the society such as corruption, self-centeredness, materialism are some of the ills that they have highlighted that stagnates the societal growth. They have addressed corruption, bad leadership in many of their works

References

Ahmad, M., & Akbar, H. (2019). Identity, Illusion and Reality: A Feministic Study of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Asian Journal of Management Sciences and Education.

Delaney, P. (2019). Rising Again”: Revision, Trauma, and Frank O’Connor’s “Guests of the Nation. New Hibernia Review, 23(3), 35-54.

He, C. (2019). “Before all else I’ma human being”: Ibsen and the rise of modern Chinese drama in the 1920s. Neohelicon, 46(1), 37-51.

King, W. (2017). Flannery O’Connor’s Symbolic Motif and the Psychoanalytic Objects of John Huston’s Wise Blood. John Huston as Adaptor, 271.

Mansfield, K. (1986). The Doll’s House. Creative Education.

Meza, S. V. (2017). THETR266: Intro to Theatre, Twentieth Century January 31, 2017, A Doll’s House Homework Questions 1. State two or more themes in A Doll’s House and explain them by referring to the text.

O’Connor, F. (1986). My Oedipus Complex. Creative Education.

Setyawan, D., Candraningrum, P. D., Setyabudi, T., & Hum, S. S. M. (2016). Personality of Nora Reflected In Henrik Ibsen a Doll’s House Play (1879): A Psychoanalytic Approach. Doctoral dissertation, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta.