Essay plans Flashcards
The ‘normal heart’ utilises a realistic portrayal of characters and situations. Reflecting the urgency and immediacy of the AIDS crisis
Naturalism
The use of this in ‘the normal heart’ creates a sense of chaos and urgency, mimicking the confusion and heightened emotions surrounding the disease
Overlapping dialogue
Angels in america blends reality with fantastical elements, such as angels and ghosts, to explore the characters’ inner struggles and anxieties
Magical realism
Angels in America weave together the stories of several characters. Offering a multifaceted perspective on the crisis
Multiple narrative lines
Angels in America uses an angel to represent humanity’s potential to be perfect, as well as symbolising the end of priors life as this was not achieved.
Symbolism
Angels In America uses split screens when building to a climactic moment throughout all of the relationships.
Split scene
when the audience knows something that the characters don’t.
Dramatic irony
The construction of a fictional character and how they impact a story.
Characterisation
Analyse the overall plot structure, including the introduction, rising, acting, climax, falling action and resolution.
Plot
Examine the central conflict(s) driving the story. This could be internal or external.
Conflict
Analyse the characters’ dialogue, paying attention to their language style. Word choice, rhythm, ect.
Dialogue
Example the use of monologues (single character speaking) and soliloquies (character speaking their thoughts aloud).
Monolouges and soliloquies
Analyse the stage directions. Which provide information about the setting, characters’ actions, movements, and tone of voice.
Stage Directions
identify how the playwright uses vivid language and imagery to create a sense of place.
Imagery
Analyse the use of symbols, objects, or actions that represent deeper meanings or ideas.
Symbolism
situation, dramatic, verbal. To create humour, suspense, or highlight a gap between expectations and reality.
Irony
Identify hints or clues that suggest future events in the play, building anticipation and suspense.
Foreshadowing
Analyse the use of flashbacks to provide backstory or explore the characters’ motivations and experiences.
Flashback
Identify moments where characters speak directly to the audience, breaking the forth wall.
Aside
what must appear in your opening
Keywords of the question,
Linking word/phrase so that your argument builds together,
The aspect of focus you’ll now look at,
Ensure that what you’ve chosen to look at is comparable between both texts.
Essay structure
Topic sentence
Point
Example
Technique + analysis
Reader reaction
Link to Q
Evaluation
Examining the WHY - why does the dramatist do this? What is he trying to highlight?
Impact - what is the impact on the audience? What do we think or feel?
You MUST explore these concepts in every section
Ned
“i hate how we play victim, when many of us, most of us, don’t have to”
“i’m sorry i’m still putting you in a position where you’re ashamed of me”
“i don’t think there are many gay relationships that work out anyway”
“mickey, more sex isn’t more liberating. And having so much sex makes finding love impossible”
“late Friday night he showed me this purple spot on the bottom of his foot”
“i’m afraid to be with him; i’m afraid to be without him; i’m afraid the cure wont come in time; i’m afraid of my anger; i’m a terrible leader and a useless lover”
Felix
“i have found myself pursuing men who hurt me”
“i fell trying to get from there to here”
“ he pulls off one of his socks and shoes and needs a purple spot on his foot. It keeps getting bigger and bigger, Neddie, and it doesn’t go away”
“i want my mother - she’s dead. We never got along anyway”
“my lover, my lover, i do”
Emma
“im frightened nobody is important is going to give a damn because it seems to be happening mostly to gay men. Who cares if a **** dies?”
“Doctors are extremely conservative, they try to stay out of anything that smells political, and this smells. Bad.”
“as soon as you start screaming you get treated like a nutcase”
“tell gay men to stop having sex”
“if sex can kill you, doesn’t anyone with half a brain stop **ing?”
Mickey
“well i’ll certainly write about it in the native, but i’m afraid to put it in the stuff i write at work”
“the city doesn’t exactly show a burning interest in gay health”
“it’s like some sort of plague”
“i’m worried this organisation might only attract white bread and middle-class. We need blacks…”
“sex is liberating”
“sir, it is not illegal to discriminate against homosexuals”
“and you’re telling me that all those years of what being gay stood for is wrong… and i’m a murderer”
Bruce
“not very much. I mean, they are…something else” (lesbians)
“you chose. I didn’t want “gay” in it”
“it’s not the city’s responsibility to take care of us”
“all these people are staring at us and moving away in droves”
“there’s a police van waiting for us and all the police are in complete protective rubber clothing”
Ben
“isn’t it a bit early to get so worked up?”
“you’re not going to do that full time?”
“agreeing you were born just like i was born isn’t is not going to help save your dying friends”
General quotes (normal heart)
“i’m her twenty-eighth case and sixteen of them are dead”- David
“shoulder your own responsibility” - Hiram
“could you please reduce the level of your hysteria?” - Hiram
“transmitted by dogs and the reason so many gay men are contracting it is because they have so many dogs” - doctor
“Where’s Bruce? I want Bruce” - Craig
Prior
“lesion number one. Lookit. The wine-dark kiss of the angel of death”
“i usually say, ‘** the truth’ but mostly, the truth **s you”
“you get too upset. I wind up comforting you. Its easier”
“i have… to go to the bathroom. Wait. wait, just… oh. Oh god. (he shits himself).”
“i’m dying you stupid **!”
“he loves, but his love is worth nothing”
“somethings approaching and i…OH”
Louis
“what if i walked out on this? Would you hate me forever?”
“tell him, if he wakes up and you’re still on, tell him goodbye, tell him i had to go.”
“keep… keep going, infect me. I don’t care. I don’t care”
“there are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in america, there are no angels in america, no spiritual past, no racial past, there is only the political”
“real love isn’t ambivalent”
“in betraying what they love betray whats truest in themselves”
“i want you to ** me, hurt me, make me bleed”
Harper
“were happy here”
“oh big deal. You meet a Valium addict and you figure out shes unhappy”
“do homos take, like, lots of long walks?”
“i know. It just seemed like the kind of thing a mentally-deranged sex-starved pill-popping housewife would do.”
“even the weight of you in the bed at night, the way you breath in your sleep seems unfamiliar”
“i dream that you batter away at me till all my joins com apart, like wax, and i fall into pieces, its like a punishment”
“are you a homo?”
Roy
“homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, henry?”
“no henry, aids is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer” “sometimes a fathers love has to be very, very hard, unfair even, cold to make his son grow strong in a world like this” “i’m sick. They smell i’m weak. They want blood this time” “ and i will proceed, systematically, to destroy you and your practise in new york state which you know i can do, henry”
Joe
“can you please not take the lords name in vain, i’m sorry. But please. At least while i’m”
“how many pills today, buddy?”
“how many pills?”
“no i’m not. I don’t see what difference it makes”
“i’m a shell. There’s nothing left to kill”
“and i do love her”
“i try to learn to live dead, just numb, but then i see someone i want, and its like a nail, like a hot spike right through my chest”
Angel
“look up, look up, prepare the way, the infinite decent, a breath in sir, floating down, glory too…”
“greetings, prophet; the great work begins: the messenger has arrived”
General quotes (angels in america)
“you do not live in america, no such place exists” - Rabbi
“consequence of venery” - prior 2
“louis appears. He looks gorgeous. The music builds a little into a full-blooded waltz” - stage directions
Society
Ned + Ben (internalised homophobia), Roy + Henry (externalised homophobia), Mickey + Ned (views on what being gay means), Belize + Louis (views on what being gay means), Bruce + Mickey (educated on homosexuality), Joe + Harper (uneducated on homosexuality)
Relationships
Ned + Felix (stay together), Prior + Louis (do not), Mickey + Ned (views on what being gay means), Belize + Louis (views on what being gay means), Ned + Felix, (attached to each other), Harper + Joe (detached from each other)
Character focus
Ned + Louis (both experience partners contracting aids), Ned + Louis (how they cope with seeing their partners in pain), Ned + Louis (inevitable ending)
poem themes
living history, human experiences, love and relationships, the natural world, society, death, exploration of human nature, identity
when words contrast each other
juxtaposition
Belize
“my jaw aches at the memory”
“I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. “
“I’ve thought about it for a very long time, and I still don’t understand what love is. Justice is simple. Democracy is simple. Those things are unambivalent. But love is very hard. “
