Literature Research Paper
Topics:
1. Romeo and Juliet Drama & Play by William Shakespeare and a Film by Franco Zeffirelli
2. Village in the Jungle Novel by Leonard Wolf and Film by Dr. Lester James Peiris.
3. Disclosure a Novel by Michael Crichton movie by Barry Levinson.
Romeo and Juliet (1968) is a movie adaptation of the most well known love story in the English language, William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet. In 1596, William Shakespeare published the tragic tale of two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. The origins of this story are uncertain but Shakespeare’s chief source for his adoption of the story was from The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, a poem by Arthur Brooke (1562). He also knew the story from Palace of Pleasure, by William Painter, which appeared in several editions prior to 1580. Shakespeare’s classic tale is about two young lovers caught in the crossfire of a senseless family feud. This feud between the two families ultimately is the cause of the two lovers untimely demise. Often times people say that William Shakespeare was and still is a legend. The film's tagline is "No ordinary love story…" Italian director Franco Zeffirelli stunned the screen world when he cast two young unknowns to portray the star-crossed lovers in Romeo & Juliet, but it seems to be a gamble that resulted in one of the most popular motion pictures of all time. The film had a long run and was still playing the summer of 1969.I may say it was a more
romantic and realistic rendition of the nature of love, I have never seen. Although the play "Romeo and Juliet" has been made into movies many times before and would be made again, I think no one has ever captured young love as Zeffirelli did. First, the casting of two photogenic, talented, but unknown actors of the right age was the foundation upon which he created a masterpiece. With Olivia Hussey as Juliet and Leonard Whiting as Romeo he had the basic ingredients, but just having the right cast does not a masterpiece make. Other than that the only major actor was Laurence Olivier who was the narrator. All of the supporting cast were excellent, but Pat Heywood, York's Tybalt was excellent as a character not seeking a fight, but more than confident of his ability if forced by circumstances. When Romeo feels the rush of love swell up in his
veins during a party, the audience vicariously experiences that same rapture. When he presses Juliet's hand at the dance, it is more erotic than many a scene today where the actors are all bucks naked. Finally, the balcony scene, which every student knows and probably thinks is trite, is made fresh in Zeffirelli's capable hands.The morning after Romeo and Juliet's love making, there is the briefest of scene where they are both naked. I liked the way Zeffirelli handled this. He included it to show the reality of the situation, but editor trimmed it down to just flash the scene on the screen before moving on. Although it is clear from the beginning that this is a love affair that is destined for tragedy, when the tragedy does strike, the audience is crushed anyway. The ending is sad, but effective. This is the richest and most moving of any Shakespeare play I have ever seen made for the screen, and a few of the outstanding technical aspects of this absolute motion picture is the lush and hazy cinematography by Pasqualino De Santis deservedly. From the very first image, the audience is alerted that something special is about to unfold.
Even though brief sections of the play were removed to get the play down to the right length and pacing for a movie, the love scenes stay with the character perfectly, but apparently Shakespeare's poetic language was not tampered with. The action sequences are full of energy and the costumes are gorgeous. They are naturally lovely without being showy. The music is so memorable it leaves you with music and songs forever in your subconscious. I love the theme song there is no sex or bad language in the movie. There is a little violence of sword fighting and poisoning. The picture would be fine for any kid old enough to be interested which is probably eight and up. After all
it is amazing how Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet written centuries ago can be better than Franco Zefferelli's movie production of Romeo and Juliet, which had much better technology to work with only decades ago. While based on the original play, numerous changes were made to the film's storyline. Some of them are; when Juliet's arranged marriage to Count Paris is scheduled for a Thursday, but after Juliet's "repentance", an overjoyed Lord Capulet moves the wedding day up to Wednesday, but in the movie The wedding remains scheduled for Thursday. And in the play it ends in Capulet's Tomb where as in the film the final scene (the double funeral) unfolds at the steps to Verona's Temple. The end credits roll as processions from both houses make their way side by side into the temple. Also in the original play the final line ("...for never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo") is recited by the Prince and on the other hand in the silver screen the unseen narrator who performed the introduction ("Two households, both alike in dignity...") also gives the closing lines. The play had better mood and plot details which made it much more dramatic and by far a better presentation. One major difference between the play and the movie occurs in mood. An example of this is the marriage scene. In the marriage scene of the play, Romeo and Juliet act very serious. The reader can tell this easily by the way the two speak. Romeo says that the Holy Words the Friar speaks can make something without an equal which is a very intelligent thing to say; whereas, in the movie they kiss and giggle the entire time. According to the sources the movie set in a !5-th Century Renaissance period, Romeo & Juliet was filmed entirely in Italy in several cities of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. Walking along the play, themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Forcefulness of Love is one of the themes in the story. Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. At times love is described in the terms of religion, as in the fourteen lines sonnet when Romeo and Juliet first meet. At others it is described as a sort of magic. Juliet, perhaps, most perfectly describes her love for Romeo by refusing to describe it: "But my true love is grown to such excess / I cannot sum up some of half my wealth" .Love, in other words, resists any single metaphor because it is too powerful to be so easily contained or understood. It also symbolizes the Love as a Cause of Violence. The connection between hate, violence, and death seems obvious. Love, in Romeo and Juliet, is a grand passion, and as such it is blinding. Finally, each imagines that the other looks dead the morning after their first, and only, sexual experience ("Methinks I see thee," Juliet says, ". . . as one dead in the bottom of a tomb". This theme continues until its inevitable conclusion: double suicide. It is only through death that they can preserve their love, and their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense. In the play, love emerges as an amoral thing, leading as much to destruction as to happiness. Much of Romeo and Juliet involve the lovers' struggles against public and social institutions that either explicitly or implicitly oppose the existence of their love. Further, the patriarchal power structure inherent in Renaissance families, wherein the father controls the action of all other family members, particularly women, places Juliet in an extremely vulnerable position. Her heart, in her family's mind, is not hers to give. The maintenance of masculine honor forces Romeo to commit actions he would prefer to avoid. Romeo and Juliet's appreciation of night, with its darkness and privacy, and their renunciation of their names, with its attendant loss of obligation, make sense in the context of individuals who wish to escape the public world. But the lovers cannot stop the night from becoming day. And Romeo cannot cease being a Montague simply because he wants to; the rest of the world will not let him. The lovers' suicides can be understood as the ultimate night, the ultimate privacy. The horrible series of accidents that ruin Friar Lawrence's seemingly well-intentioned plans at the end of the play; and the tragic timing of Romeo's suicide and Juliet's awakening. These events are not mere coincidences, but rather manifestations of fate that help bring about the unavoidable outcome of the young lovers' deaths.
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's major themes. One of the play's most consistent visual motifs is the contrast between light and dark, often in terms of night/day imagery. This contrast is not given a particular metaphoric meaning—light is not always good, and dark is not always evil. One of the more important instances of this motif is Romeo's lengthy meditation on the sun and the moon during the balcony scene, in which Juliet, metaphorically described as the sun, is seen as banishing the "envious moon" and transforming the night into day .A similar blurring of night and day occurs in the early morning hours after the lovers' only night together. Romeo, forced to leave for exile in the morning, and Juliet, not wanting him to leave her room, both try to pretend that it is still night, and that the light is actually darkness. Shakespeare includes numerous speeches and scenes in Romeo and Juliet that hint at alternative ways to evaluate the play. Shakespeare uses two main devices in this regard: Mercutio and servants. Mercutio consistently skewers the viewpoints of all the other characters in play: he sees Romeo's devotion to love as a sort of blindness that robs Romeo from himself; similarly, he sees Tybalt's devotion to honor as blind and stupid.
The servants' world, in contrast, is characterized by simple needs, and early deaths brought about by disease and poverty rather than dueling and grand passions. Where the nobility almost seem to revel in their capacity for drama, the servants' lives are such that they cannot afford tragedy of the epic kind. Some of the symbols used by the play are poison, thumb biting and Queen Mab. Defining further about the symbols in the play In his first appearance, in Act II, scene ii, Friar Lawrence remarks that every plant, herb, and stone has its own special properties, and that nothing exists in nature that cannot be put to both good and bad uses. Thus, poison is not intrinsically evil, but is instead a natural substance made lethal by human hands. Friar Lawrence's words prove true over the course of the play. The sleeping potion he gives Juliet is concocted to cause the appearance of death, not death itself, but through circumstances beyond the Friar's control, the potion does bring about a fatal result: Romeo's suicide. As this example shows, human beings tend to cause death even without intending to. Poison symbolizes human society's tendency to poison good things and make them fatal, just as the pointless Capulet-Montague feud turns Romeo and Juliet's love to poison. After all, unlike many of the other tragedies, this play does not have an evil villain, but rather people whose good qualities are turned to poison by the world in which they live.
Finally, In Act I, scene iv, Mercutio delivers a dazzling speech about the fairy Queen Mab, who rides through the night on her tiny wagon bringing dreams to sleepers. Another important aspect of Mercutio's description of Queen Mab is that it is complete nonsense, albeit vivid and highly colorful. Queen Mab and her carriage do not merely symbolize the dreams of sleepers, they also symbolize the power of waking fantasies, daydreams, and desires. Through the Queen Mab imagery, Mercutio suggests that all desires and fantasies are as nonsensical and fragile as Mab, and that they are basically corrupting. This point of view contrasts starkly with that of Romeo and Juliet, who see their love as real and ennobling. Going back to the film, Even origins of the story are romantic, wandering minstrels in Medieval Europe sang about the star-crossed lovers two centuries before Shakespeare wrote it down. With all the movie versions, this is the truest to Shakespeare's play. This was the first time the doomed teenagers were played by teenagers. The film is notable for being one of the first filmed versions of the play in which the main actors are near the ages of the characters in the play; Leonardo Whiting was seventeen during filming, and Olivia Hussey was fifteen. Usually, most older actors played the parts in Latest movie versions and earlier versions. The play is about the volatile pressures of youth. Zefferelli deftly turned Shakespeare's prose into the poetry of love. This is the first version to show Romeo and Juliet naked on their wedding night. Exploring into the deep roots of movie its director Zefferelli’s architecture studies in college had been used to add Italy's renaissance masterworks as supporting players. The famed balcony scene was shot at the palace built by Cardinal Bourges (or Borgasie) in the 16th century. Zeffirelli creates a stunning adaptation with more action, humor and sexiness than has ever been seen in the tale throughout the 152 minutes long movie. This movie could be suggested as one of the more realistic interpretations of William Shakespeare's Tragedy. The play
Romeo and Juliet does not make a specific moral statement about the relationships between love and society, religion, and family; rather, it portrays the chaos and passion of being in love, combining images of love, violence, death, religion, and family in an impressionistic rush leading to the play's tragic conclusion. A significant scene of the film could be described which symbolizes the above qualities; the final scene:
“At daybreak, a double Funeral as the bodies of the two lovers side by side (dressed in the same clothes they wore when they were married) with both Lords,Ladies and their Houses right behind, are carried up the steps of Verona's Temple, where the Prince awaits the twin processions. Prince Escalus implores the two Lords to see the results of their rank hatred and, after making mention of his own loss (meaning Mercutio), declares that everyone has been punished - there is no place for any more fighting or resentment. At this sobering point the two warring families finally make their long-overdue peace.”
Village in the Jungle discover the deep roots of colonial Ceylon during the British Era. The novel and the film is concentrated on Punchi Manike, Babun, Silindu, Fernando and Babehami. The main theme is about how a man’s lust and hunger will lead him to use his will power and control to posses the woman he is obsessed with. In the story Fernando (the character) resembles it and on the other hand it exposes the true governance of the British that was running with corruption and bribery. Village in the Jungle creates the real perception of the village and city and the people in Sri Lanka to the audience. The book seems to be having a clear vision and a theme and the movie is a total flop compared to book and also I think since there were no leading or pioneer film directors in Sri Lanka in that era (1980) it gave a chance to Lester James Peiris to earn a credit for the movie. The movie goes on with disconnected scenarios at different instants and the sound editing was not perfect compared to the flow of scenes because the background sounds were affecting the dialogue. There were some important symbols which enhanced the social status and several socio-economic aspects throughout the movie. The book could be recommended as a total satisfaction for audience the movie is a just another visual presentation of the story.And it seems to be that the film does not drive the audience into an emotional status compared to the book.
In the movie Disclosure it's Michael Douglas under siege again, battling to save his job, his marriage, his sexual honor. The story is about Tom Sanders is an executive at Digi-Com in Seattle, a high-tech firm whose vice president he thinks he is about to become, He has accumulated plenty of stock in years of faithful service; his wife, Susan, is a successful lawyer, and they have two motion-picture-perfect children. They live in a model house across Puget Sound, are rich, and, after DigiCom's impending merger with an even grander corporation, will be richer yet. Then everything collapses. Bob Garvin, the company's founder, a vain and shifty fellow and whose sole goal in life was to become a billionaire, has taken a fancy to Meredith Johnson, a young woman recently transferred from the Silicon Valley office, and appoints her to the job Tom hoped for, thus making her his boss. Ten years ago, Tom and Meredith had a hot-and-heady affair, which she, a ruthless predator not likely to let Tom's marriage stand in her way, plans to resume. Tom's seductive ex-girlfriend now the future Vice President summons him into her office, well stocked with their favorite rare wine, locks him in with her, and proceeds to seduce him in a scene of extraordinary animal sexuality. He resists, just barely; making Meredith completely frustrated. the next day Meredith accuses him of sexual harassment. Next Tom’s only choice is to sue back and This is the last thing the company needs. When the woman immediately makes an aggressive sexual overture toward him, the man sues for sexual harassment, which uncovers a series of revelations about his own past and the future of his company.The movie makes no effort to understand the character Meredith Johnson as a single, sexually aggressive career woman who is not only dangerously sexy but equally dangerously ambitious where as the book clearly defines it to the reader. Tom's not going down without a fight. He has only four days to confess his innocence, save his marriage, and his job.Film historians had grouped Michael Douglas' star vehicles, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and Disclosure, into a trilogy that can be labeled "Sexual Anxieties of the White Male in Contemporary Society."The movie moves with the speed of a freight train that is accelerating toward the big merger in 4 days. The movie has the days of the week printed in stark white sans serif letters on a totally black background as the days switch making you feel like you are reading one of those exciting books that you just can not put down as it races to its conclusion. There’s much debate over whether Meredith abused her power -- she, being his boss, put him in that awkward situation -- and whether Tom should have had the immediate wherewithal to defuse the festivities before they went too far. That was Crichton's thesis; he turned personal accountability into a bland abstract issue. The movie breathes less heavily about ethics, preferring instead to explore this office misadventure as a metaphor for the rapist mentality of corporate America. Big-business power plays have always seemed like expressions of impacted sexuality -- think of terms like "acquisition," "hostile takeover," "merger" -- but few films besides Disclosure have approached the Freudian corporate subtext as a vehicle for satire. Tom almost gets taken over by the hostile Meredith, who would like to acquire him and definitely merge with him; and because he's Michael Douglas and not a woman, we feel freer to laugh. In his shrewd-earnest way, Michael Crichton was (maybe unconsciously) on to something. Disclosure told its male readers what too many women already knew: how it feels to be screwed, in all senses of the word, by someone vicious and more powerful. What happens next can be interpreted any number of ways. Meredith invites Tom up to her office and aggressively jumps him. He repeatedly says no, but to what extent does no mean yes in this situation? She gets him so worked up that he throws himself upon her, then snaps out of it and withdraws. Frustrated and enraged, she shrieks at him and storms out; the next day, she slaps him with a harassment claim. Given the lousy option of demotion and relocation, Tom threatens to countercharge Meredith. Disclosure is explicitly about power in all its corrosive aspects. The issue now is not whether it's plausible for a woman to subject a man to sexual harassment. Apart of all about sexual harassment in corporate America, Disclosure portrays the Internet in a fashion that is not unlike the Internet we see today, though at the time the internet was barely more than a bulletin board system, it had been almost stagnant from 1985 to 1993. Disclosures business world is controlled by e-mail, again something that nobody except those at the top of the ladder had back then. Then there was online video conferencing, and levels of virtual reality worlds again all futuristic at the time. In the end, the true subject of Disclosure isn't sexual harassment at all but the way the familiar sins of big business — greed, duplicity, depersonalization — acquire new force in an era of advanced technology, an era that fetish-izes control.

LUST N SONG OF SONGS

Compare and contrast “Song of songs” and “Lust”.


“Song of Songs”


The “Song of Songs” uses metaphors and imagery to convey the meaning of perfect love between a man and a woman. The opening verse of the fourth song shows the love being so great that the woman dreamt of the man while she slept and her heart laid awake thinking of him and missing his presence. This perfect love sees a more sexual face of love. The sexual entity in both stories is the only concept that is similar when measuring up the two.

The women of Jerusalem are called upon as a third party and are the only source of distraction to the love that is expressed in the poem. There is absolutely no disruption from an external cause in “Lust” with the breaking up of relationships occurring due to the main character being unable to be committed. Allegory, an interaction to explain the unknown by the presentation of the known, is a key feature.

There is a context for reality. The writer calls upon fig trees and alabaster and these examples could be balanced with Sri-Lankan poetry where coconut trees are employed as symbols. The reader has to move into that particular era to understand how it is real because archetypal images are brought into play. On the other hand, “Lust” is a relatively modern work and can be easily comprehended by the readers of these times.

At the same time, there is a nagging feeling that there is something unreal about the love displayed in the “Song of Songs”. There is a show of perfect love in it and it is ironic as ideal love cannot be defined. Faultless love is that of God’s love for man or Christ’s affection for man and it is hard to put into the context of the feeling that exists between man and woman. There is no such thing in “Lust”. The “Song of Songs” has a soft and flowing sensation and it gives the impression that there is no conflict whatsoever.


“Lust”


In the “Song of Songs”, there was a sense of yielding that flowed well without a clash, but “Lust” is a totally dissimilar take. Here is a case about a young woman trying to find emotional love and it explains the range of circumstances she put herself through to achieve it. After many instances with sex, the lass seemed to become disgusted with the whole thing and wish to end her life.

A style of minimalist writing is observed here where the author presents images but does not tell you what to think. This form of writing, started by Ernest Hemingway, is possible when the reader and the writer share a common society. The writer is writing to an American audience and assumes the reader to be aware. However, the “Song of Songs” is rather old and it doesn’t click as well now as it did at that time. The minimalist style can be evidenced in the sentence “You begin to feel diluted, like watered down stew” in “Lust”.

When comparing the two sections of writing, one can see the minimalist style being matched against text that utilizes extended metaphors. That is, in the minimalist style we do get it when sharing a familiar background, but with extensive metaphors there needs to be long accounts pass on meaning to the reader. “Lust” is a story where the reader is left to deduce the gist of the script without any help from the story teller. The “Song of Songs” differs in that it provides nothing for the reader to infer.

The woman in “Lust” gets no intimacy from her various flings. This is hinted when she asks one of the men she is with who he is and he is taken aback. She is unable to come to terms with what he is thinking and this bothers her. This is a case of the self and the other. She could not fathom her unique identity and link herself completely with a man. In the “Song of Songs”, the idea of love where a man and a woman tend to find each other and understand is shown well and differs from “Lust” in that regard as well.

The girl is unable to value the fullness of love and marriage. This is pointed out when she talks to Mrs.Gunther. She receives an answer by way of a double-edged joke that babies form a common entity linking a male to a female. In other words, Mrs.Gunther’s long and full relationship with her husband is in opposition to the female lead in “Lust” who rejects love. As a result, she gets sadder and sadder. The futility of short term sexual affairs in “Lust” is very much in contrast to the perfect and accepted love pictured in the “Song of Songs”.

A SLICE OF LIFE

“A slice of life” – is this what “Cadjan Fence” and “On Broken Wings” are?


Yes, “Cadjan Fence” and “On Broken Wings” are a slice of life. A slice of life can be compared to a slice of bread. The slice is not the whole pound of bread, but it is representative and of it. It is the pound of bread in miniature. We will now take a look at each story in turn and see how each one is not giving the full detail but displaying just a part of life.


“Cadjan Fence”


There is no great detail offered in this story. It is a snapshot of life. That is, it gives enough information to understand the whole thing. The whole thing is the situation in olden day Jaffna. There are many things symbolic to Jaffna and its culture that are mentioned. The story was written in Tamil and the theme can be easily understood by the Tamil audience for which it is targeted. The tale starts with the mother answering the daughter’s question of where the brother is. She explains that she has let him go see a film as the father is out. There was a high state of culture and natural desires were suppressed. The father is very strict and was in Colombo. Most of the families in Jaffna saw the head of the household staying away from home working in Colombo. Jaffna was known as a money order economy.

The mother wants the daughter to study, but at the same time knows that her children must also experience life once in a while. This is why she lets her son go for the film. She talks of thosais and letting the ulundu soak and this connects the reader effectively. The second scene pictures the daughter and her lover. Again the authoritarian nature of the father is hinted at when the daughter tells her lover that her father will give him the ekel-broom treatment for asking to marry her.

There is some humour in the narrative when the daughter tells her lover that his habit of tooting the horn while driving makes him want to toot and fondle hers. This conversation is unbeknownst to the mother and brings the cadjan fence to play. This love scene is in opposition to Jaffna being portrayed as a society with good morals and arranged marriages. This depiction of romance laughs at this idea. The fence is an actor and is representing Jaffna. It is described in the last paragraph as doing the traditional duty of guarding Jaffna’s honour and dignity from generation to generation. The fence has seen the daughter’s secret and then it sees what the mother has to hide in the third scene.

The mother who has seen to it that her children are asleep goes out to meet her lover. The lover has been getting the lease to the father’s land and this happens to be the mother’s dowry property. The lover is a toddy dealer and promises to supply her with some when the father comes back. The mother seems to be performing her role as a wife by making sure that she cooks thosais and sees to it that the father is well taken care of. At the same time, she is meeting with another man.

The account is somewhat a type of satire. The writer is laughing at the hypocrisy of the Jaffna people. The mother in the final scene is telling her husband that the fence should be made higher because the daughter is getting big. This is a case of look who is talking as the mother seems to be indulging in the father’s absence almost as much as the daughter.


“On Broken Wings”


Unlike the “Cadjan Fence”, this account is for the Colombo audience. The scene is set in the heart of Colombo which is very different from traditional and old Jaffna. Again, it is a slice of life as it is a short and quick version. These stories are very effective as people do not have time to be reading long tales like “Romeo and Juliet”. The passage of time is the main theme of this story.

The story mentions popular buildings such as Liberty Plaza and the national carrier Air Ceylon. Freda, one of the main characters, is seen descending from the ramp wearing a blue saree giving readers the chance to imagine the sight with its description of an air hostess in Sri-Lanka. The Glucorasa jujubes are another mark and so are Nuwara-Eliya and Adam’s Peak that are stated here.

Fifteen years had passed between the time Dilan and Freda had last met. This in an important as it is matter that is repeated throughout the story. There is always a comparison between past and present. Either how Freda had aged or how now she had troubles of her own. Earlier she was very adventurous as a young university woman from Peradeniya. The sight of her had carried Dilan from his world weariness to the memory of his youth. So there is always an underlying element in the tale where times now are being matched with times of old.

The war situation that is now imminent is stressed at. There is frequent talk about bombs and how dangerous it was to stand on the road and to travel in Colombo. The Army Commander being targeted further points this out and so does the sentence that the tension in the city was reaching boiling point.

Dilan’s constant admiration of Freda’s looks and figure seems to hint that they had a close relationship and may have been lovers. When the story began, he says how Freda was decked out so fine and she had appeared ready to kill him with the fire in her eye. His heart was beating wildly too at this. Dilan then goes on to think about the time when she used to serve jujubes as an air hostess and then he laughs at the thought that she herself was a jujube. The part that relates how she would rub her haunches against him seems to suggest that they had had a close relationship.

Basically, it is a meeting of two old friends and how life goes on. Some important elements of life in Sri-Lanka are shown. Dilan’s trip to England to study is something symbolic to this island. We often see students going abroad to study. The other thing is that as time goes by each person gets caught up with their life and career. Freda who had been in the luscious atmosphere of the fifties was now minding her business and that was to look after her husband and kids and to also work. Dilan, meanwhile had gotten involved with politics and did not have time to spare as well