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Collapse Subdiscussion Jacob Grisaffi
Jacob Grisaffi
MondayJul 20 at 9:57am
The play Trifles by Susan Glaspell was incredible! I would not have wanted to experience this play on any other night than opening night! I thought that the characters were very witty, especially using only 5 cast members. Each character played a unique roll to develop the plot. I will begin with Mrs. Hale; she is the Sheriff’s wife that feels guilty because she did not visit Mrs. Wright enough. She felt that it was partially her fault for her arrest because she thought she could have potentially prevented it by checking in on her. Some business in the story explains that, “Suddenly MRS PETERS throws back quilt pieces and tries to put the box in the bag she is wearing. It is too big. She opens box, starts to take bird out, cannot touch it, goes to pieces, stands there helpless. Sound of a knob turning in the other room. MRS HALE snatches the box and puts it in the pocket of her big coat” (Glaspell) This is a crucial piece of information because they were actions done by the characters. These were not lines spoken by any character but the actions that were done spoke volume for each of the characters. Mrs. Peters is the next woman I will talk about. She was a sleuth with Mrs. Peters, sneaking behind the back of the Sheriff and the Lawyer. She was able to find evidence that basically pointed to Mrs. Write committing the crime. She defends Mrs. Wright until the end of the story and was telling Mrs. Hale, “No, it's strange. It must have been done awful crafty and still. They say it was such a—funny way to kill a man, rigging it all up like that”. (Glaspell). The consensus was that it was a very strange way for someone to kill another person especially when they found that there was a gun in the house. Both women in this play were dynamic characters. They both were unsure whether Mrs. Wright committed the crime, and in the end, both took different stances on the issue. Mrs. Hale defended her while Mrs. Peters wanted the law to be upheld. Sheriff Hale is a static character that is not very thorough with his work. He does not pay much attention to crime scenes when he said, “It's just the same. When it dropped below zero last night I thought I'd better send Frank out this morning to make a fire for us—no use getting pneumonia with a big case on, but I told him not to touch anything except the stove—and you know Frank” (Glaspell). The attorney is a fairly flat character because he is the character that does all the questioning. He sets up the other characters to help us learn about them and the situation at hand. He also created the irony in the story along with Hale. The attorney is prejudice towards women and says sexist remarks like, “No, Peters, it's all perfectly clear except a reason for doing it. But you know juries when it comes to women. If there was some definite thing” (Glaspell). Hale is the last character in the story that really allows for foreshadowing and the irony within the story. He is a flat character that says, “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles” (Glaspell). This foreshadowed that the women would be using their “trifles” to eventually solve the case and evidence from the men. The irony within the story is that the ladies were solving the case while the men were making sexist comments about how the women needed to finish Mrs. Wrights quilt. The culmination of the characters, the foreshadowing, and the irony that unfolded within the play made it such a great watch to see on opening night.
Collapse Subdiscussion Anthony Kuzmenkov
Anthony Kuzmenkov
1:18pm
Character
Glaspell did an amazing job in creating the short play "Trifles" and impressed in how it turned out. I am most surprised about the round character Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife. She is necessary to the play not just because most of the play involved a discussion between her and Mrs. Hale but because of how much she changed through the text and how much she changed the plot at the end. "...Mrs. Peters doesn't need supervising. For that matter, a sheriffs sheriff's wife is married to the law." Mrs. Peters wife starts out as a loyal wife who believe that the law is supposed to be followed. even in her conversation with Mrs. Hale "But Mrs. Hale, the law is the law." and continue to mention it a phew times throughout the discussion. but at the end she has this twist of mind and suddenly wants hides evidence of that points to Mrs. Wright of being guilty of the murder. The next character that who was a flat character and didn't appear much throughout the discussion of the play but had an important part to play was the sheriff. Sheriff said "do you want to see what what Mrs. Peters is going to take in?" To me it felt like his main purpose was to keep everything running smooth and in check. Also he was important to set up the roll of Mrs. Peters because Glaspell knew that if he sets Mrs. Peters as the sheriffs wife that it would be very difficult to predict that she would be the one hiding evidence since the a sheriff is loyal to the law. In a way Glaspell tricked the audience like that, which make the play even more interesting because of the character sheriff. The next crucial character, a dynamic character was Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Hale was also a very necessary character who underwent through change. She was important because she didn't think that Mrs. Wright would be able to do something like that but after spending sometime in her house she began finding evidence with Mrs. Peters. You can see the change Mrs. Hale is going through and even Mrs. Peters saw it telling her "...you mustn't reproach yourself, Mrs. Hale." Mrs. Hale starts out by saying "I wish they are going to find any evidence they'd be about it." but soon she starts to blame herself for not helping Mrs. Wright out. She points out that she hasn't been at Mrs. Wrights house for over a year and blames it feels like she blames herself inside by not coming there for I think she is a dynamic character. She says "I wish I had come over sometimes when she [Mrs. Wright] was her." She blames herself to the point she starts to tamper with evidence resewing what Mrs. Wrights sewed which showed that Mrs. Wright was worried about something. then she went on to helping Mrs. Peters to hide the evidence of the bird. "Mrs. Hales snatches the box and puts it in the pocket of her big coat." Another flat character was Hale. I believe that he was important in setting the roll up for Mrs. Hale as the sheriff did to Mrs. Peters. The county attorney said "Well, Mrs. Hale, tell just what happened to when you came here yesterday." This set up Mrs. Hales roll because Hale was trying to help with the case not altar it. This was exactly what Glaspell wanted the audience to think about the two women, that they were not able to do such a thing as to hide evidence. The last character was the county attorney. Although the character sounded very professional at points but at others he sounded to be a foil to Mrs. Wright. I believe that this characters main point was to prove Mrs. Wright guilty and have the old fashion mentality of bread winner husbands. You can see this when he says. "Dirty towels!... Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?" from this we can see that he sees woman as stay home, because he expected everything to be cleaned in the house by Mrs. Wright. Also you can see from that sentence that he said in how he is a foil to Mrs. Wright.