How and to what extent have writers shown pervasive use of the past in 2-3 plays?

Authors Avatar

How and to what extent have writers shown pervasive use of the past in 2-3 plays?

In plays, use of the past is used by writers to show the importance of past events in order to get connection of present and what the pervasive past caused in different character’s life and how it influenced them. This use of the past is best shown in ‘Street Car Named Desire’ where Blanch past has affect her present life and I can go as much further as to say it consumed her. Also, the same situation and influence of the past is use in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ and in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. On those play I am going to answer above question.

Anton Chekhov in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ uses the pervasive use of the past throughout the whole play. The orchard in itself is a monolithic, beautiful relic of the past, and it thus comes to symbolise the past, where the past can be either Ranevsky’s individual past or Russia’s national history. It seems that the orchard does not exist in the presence. It is something that is perceived by the various characters and reacted to the ways that indicate how these characters feel about what the orchard represents. Audience learn that First remember a time, ’forty or fifty years ago’. When the orchard’s cherries where made into jam, but the recipe is now lost.  And where historical events such as the times where serfs were peaseants who were owned by their masters, and their liberation marked a turning point in Russian society. Through Firs’s memories the orchard and its beauty becomes indentified with a specific bygone historical era. Not only for Firs the past becomes something which he keeps thinking of throughout the play, but also for Ranevsky. She is the most influence person in the whole play of all the characters as she keeps reminding and coming back to her past and she cannot stop thinking of it. She is so influences that she becomes to have illusions; she sees her dead mother ‘in a white dress’ walking through the orchard. When she sees Trofimov, she cannot hep remembering that her son’s drowning and is in grief. She is drawn to the past and cannot forget, even though ‘If only I could take this heavy stone from my breast and shoulders, if I could forget my past’. All the characters think, talk and ponder about the past through the play, as if, on one hand they want to deal with the past, forgot and move on; but on the other hand they do not or cannot forget the valuable lesson they had in the past.

Join now!

Oscar Wild in ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’ uses the pervasive use of the past throughout the play. However, not that clear picture of it as in ‘The Cherry Orchard’, as Wild hides it and only at the end of the play we can see the pervasive use of the past and how the life’s of characters were influenced by it, and they did not even realise it. Also, the title shows the audience what they can expect what happens, as literally it is important to be Earnest at the end as well as it is a main conflict ...

This is a preview of the whole essay