1972. In retrospect, the reader often discovers that the first chapter of a novel or the opening scene of a drama introduces some of the major themes of the work. Write an essay about the opening scene of a drama or the first chapter of a novel in which you explain how it functions in this way.
A lot of stories start out with a character doing something very drastic, or very extreme, and it usually sets the tone of the story. Like Curtains, the Broadway musical written by Rupert Holmes. All the audience set their attention on Jessica Cranshaw at the beginning of the musical, then a sudden death happened at the very beginning, a mysterious murderous case beginnings. Althouh when Holmes wrote the story he was careful not to show too much details as to what will happen, but he gave the audience enough information that the audience can know this will be a comedy-tragedy musical.
Although Jessica wasn’t the main character, and her death really meant nothing to the audience, but her death is the setting of the musical, it is because of her death, that all the crew are stuck inside the little theater, and it is because of her death that a lot of problems are solved in the musical, and also the beginning of a love story between the main characters. The first scene of Curtains set out the plot for the rest of the musical.
In the second half of the first scene, viewers learn that no one likes Jessica, and everyone hoped she either leave or die. So at that point everyone was considered suspect. Lieutenant Frank Cioffi, local Boston detective, showed up and locked up everyone from the show in the theater. Immediately viewers would see that Cioffi is now in charge of the scene. Everyone is under his control. Viewers might not know what would happen next, but comprehend that the rest of the musical would occur inside the theater. At this point viewers would understand that there is a killer on the loose, a detective trying to catch the killer, and everyone inside the theater is a suspect.
A lot of writers would show a dim detail of the plot which provides the basic background of the story at the first scene. This writing style prevents readers/ viewers from knowing too much about the detail of the story, yet understand what is going on and would guess around for answers. It creates a mood for the audience causing them to predict what would happen later on in the story. Holmes’ Curtains is one of the stories that provides enough information for audience to predict but not enough for audience to know the detail.
Curtains is a shallow stereotypical play and is not of significant literature merit.
ReplyDeleteThesis
Is there any deeper meaning to this play? Maybe you should mention it. What are the major themes of the work?
First Paragraph
All plot summary.
Second Paragraph
All plot summary.
OVERALL
Change your play. There is no greater meaning behind Curtains. You just do plot summary the entire time. You don't mention any themes that are introduced in the beginning that show up later in the play. Its all cause and effect or basic plot.
Before mentioning anything else, I think you may wish to assess the grammatical consistency of your essay. While I've taken no grammar class, I sometimes trip on your sentences; this is fine and does not necessarily detract from your argument, but it may cause a negative effect on the AP examiner's comprehension of your message, so you may wish to double check your work before submitting it. For example, in your second paragraph your use of conjunctions like "and" and "but" do not seem right. Again, I am going off intuition, and it is possible that it is perfectly grammatically sound, but it does not sound right.
ReplyDeleteWhile your thesis in this case does seem to answer the goals of the prompt, it does not go into detail in either meaning or specifics. You do specify that we are able to gain the information that the play is going to be a tragedy-comedy, but the type of the play is not necessarily the kind of answer I think the prompt was looking for. Also, your following paragraphs do not seem to offer evidence and support for this claim, but I'm not sure how that could be possible if the claim itself is that the opening scene tells us what type of play it is.
So far, I think your essays do include a lot of plot and textual evidence but not enough supporting arguments that attempt to explain the connection between these textual occurrences and the author's message, theme or overall meaning of the work. This will be essential come the AP exam.