#102bonet2016

Captain Miller: Mike? What's the pool on me up to right now? What's it up to? What is it, three hundred dollars -- is that it? Three hundred? I'm a school teacher. I teach English Composition in this little town called Adley, Pennsylvania. The last eleven years, I've been at Thomas Alva Edison High School. I was coach of the baseball team in the spring time. Back home when I tell people what I do for a living, they think, well, that, that figures. But over here it's a big, a big mystery. So I guess I've changed some. Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much my wife is even gonna recognize me whenever it is I get back to her -- and how I'll ever be able to tell her about days like today. Ryan -- I don't know anything about Ryan. I don't care. Man means nothin' to me. It's just a name. But if -- you know -- if going to Remeal and finding him so he can go home, if that earns me the right to get back to my wife -- well, then, then that's my mission. You wanna leave? You wanna go off and fight the war? Alright. Alright, I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.

VALENTINE: If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each time there’d be a dot somewhere on the screen. You’d never know where to expect the next dot. But gradually you’d start to see this shape, because every dot will be a mathematical object. But yes. The unpredictable and the predictable unfold together to make everything the way it is. it’s how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. it makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sizes stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about – clouds – daffodils – waterfalls- and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in – these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We’re better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it’ll rain on auntie’s garden party three Sundays from now. Because the problem turns out to be different. We can’t even predict the net drip from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable the same way, will always be unpredictable. When you push the numbers through the computer you can see it on the screen. The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

When Torvald realizes his reputation is no longer at risk, he takes back every cruel thing he said to his wife, but the nature of their relationship had already dawned on her. Nora decides to leave her family to discover herself. I think this was a noble decision, and certainly not an easy one to make. She couldn’t raise her children the way she was raised. 

After reading the play, “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen, one major literary element that can be depicted is the metaphor of an actual doll house that represents how protagonist Nora lives her life. Nora is a wife and a mother who seems to live her life carefree like a child and makes decisions based off of what the people around her tell her to do. She allows people such as her husband Torvald, and Mr. Krogstad to treat her like a toy doll controlling every movement she makes. For instance, her husband calls her many names other than her own such as a squirrel, a lark, little goose, and song bird. Just by Mr. Helmer giving Nora many different names demonstrates the possessiveness that he has over her. Other examples that show how Mr. Helmer treats her like a doll and is possessive is how Nora cannot eat macaroons around him, she always has to sneak them and how he told her what costumes she could wear to their neighbor’s party. Aside from Nora’s husband, Mr. Krogstad has threatened Nora saying if she does not tell her husband he is worthy enough to have a secure job at his bank, he will tell her husband about the secret contract Nora had signed to save Torvald’s life. Krogstad ended up delivering a letter to Torvald revealing the truth. Knowing that Krogstad went through with his threat shows how much power he has over Nora. Ironically, once Torvald had read the letter, Nora states relating to her dad, “He used to call me his doll-child, and he played with me the way I played with my dolls. Then I came into your house-“(Ibsen 3). Nora clearly realizes how her life is being controlled and admired how a doll is in a doll house and decides to move on with her life from both of her husband and her kids.

In Ibsen's "A Dolls House", the final act ends with Nora finally learning the truth behind her marriage, and leaving her husband and family behind. Nora makes many attempts to try and see some leniency or love from her husband but he continually lets her down saying a mans honor is more important than his love for a woman. Nora eventually gets fed up with her husbands actions and words (treating her more as a possession and offering unattainable goals to save the marriage) Nora finally gains a feeling of independence and leaves her husband, slamming the door behind her. This reminded me of the "Take me or Leave me" scene from rent, where Maureen and Joanne get into an argument about Joanne's jealousy problem, and Maureen's flirting problem. It's obvious that Joanne is more serious about the relationship than Maureen, and when they end things at the end of the scene, it's concluded that Joanne needs to find out how to be independent of Maureen, and Maureen needs to learn how to be satisfied with one serious relationship, and stop using her lovers as playthings. Also, at the end of the song both of them storm off, much like Nora stormed off in a fit of independence, after her argument with her husband. What I find interesting about both stories of breakup is that in neither of them no one cries at the end. In personal experiences breakups are typically saddening, and these were even more serious relationships ended, suddenly (an 8 year marriage and an engagement). This shows how the breakups will have a positive impact on those involved.

Another important statement that she made was “ When I lived at home with Papa, he told me all his opinions, so I had the same ones too; or if they were different I hid them, since he wouldn’t have cared for that. He used to call me his doll-child, and he played with me the way I played with my dolls... I went from Papa’s hands into yours. You arranged everything to your own taste, and so I got the same taste as you -- or I pretended to; I can’t remember. I guess a little of both, first one, then the other. Now when I look back, it seems as if I’d lived here like a beggar -- just from hand to mouth. I’ve lived by doing tricks for you, Torvald. But that’s the way you wanted it. It’s a great sin what you and Papa did to me. You’re to blame that nothing’s become of me.”  Nora says this because she is noticing just how oppressed that she has always been. Her father had the mentality that he was always right and she should agree with him. She didn't realize at the time that all “her” opinions were planted in her mind by her father. He even called her a doll, because he liked to “play” with her by controlling her whole life including her thoughts. Nora then was given a husband that was just like her father. He would control what she did and thought and treated her like a pretty princess that did not have the intelligence to be her own person. She also felt some confusion as to if she actually agreed with Torvald on many things or if she simply pretended to.  As she recollected, she realized that she simply received money and that was it. She never received love. She never really meant anything to her husband. She simply was entertainment for him, because that is how he wanted their marriage to be. She finishes with mentioning that how she has been treated was wrong and that she has not been a more productive member of society because of it. 

Growing up I had a dollhouse that I loved to play with. I had a whole family and would react a ‘typical day’ with the husband, wife, and kids. Growing up, it was always seen for the wife to stay home and take care of everything while the husband went off to work. I liked playing dollhouse because I felt in control. Many similar qualities with my doll house and A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen writes about a woman who seems to be controlled by her husband's actions. Her husband was the one telling her what to do. Her husband is me, a young version of myself playing dollhouse and controlling the situation. Except he is in no right to be controlling her because this isn't actually a doll house. He mistreats his wife in many ways. An example was when Nora (wife) said she forgot the dance. So the husband dropped everything to teach her, but was rude about it, “it’s a promise. Tonight I'm totally at your service- you helpless little thing.” The husband is acting like her puppet master by controlling her. The wife is trapped in the dollhouse because she loved the husband so much, she doesn't want to leave. She makes this clear when Dr. Rank tries to hit on her. She immediately shuts him down because of her love for her husband. This problem Nora faces, is a big issue many women and people face today. People get taken advantage off way too often, and in the end getting hurt.

In the play “A Doll’s House,” by Henrik Ibsen, there are numerous occasions and numerous characters that exemplify the theme that women play sacrificial roles.  First, the play explains how Mrs. Linde and the nanny gave up their family and loves in order to support themselves.  Mrs. Linde had to abandon her true love Krogstad, to marry a richer man in order to support her mother and two brother financially.  The nanny had to take the job of caring for Nora and Nora’s children and abandon her own children so she would have enough money to support herself.  Nora herself also shows how women play a sacrificial role because she takes a back seat in the relationship with her husband Torvald.  Torvald control their relationship and controls Nora herself. Torvald tells Nora how to live her life and what to do and yells and her when she messes up.  Nora also has to hide the truth of a loan from her husband because she knows he is a typical male that will follow the idea that women aren’t allowed a loan without the permission of their husbands.  She hides the truth from her husband in order to avoid him reprimanding her.  Nora also shows the sacrificial role women play when she has to abandon her children. She loves her children so much, but she must leave them.  She leaves them because she feels it is in their best interest if the nanny is their mother.  Nora feels as though the nanny will do a much better job raising and preparing the children for their future and puts her children, who she loves dearly, what she feels is the best position.