August osage county analysis PDF

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Professor Chelsea Hickman...

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Shill 1 Hannah Shill Script and Text Analysis 1 Professor Hickman Due 4/6/2020 Like Mother, Like Daughter August: Osage County i s full of many characters all with very different backgrounds, personalities, wants, goals, etc. Because the majority of them interact closely with one another due to being family and therefore having a vast history, several of the characters’ attributes are made clear through the duration of the play. The two characters with perhaps the most visible attributes are family matriarch Violet Weston and her oldest daughter, Barbara Fondham. Because of her addiction to her many prescription drugs and how they affect her behavior, Violet’s objective seems unclear throughout much of the play. Her words and actions make it seem like her objective is to make herself appear as strong as possible to her whole family, though deep down she craves her daughters’ attention and care. Barbara has more of an ordinary objective. Much of what she does and says shows that she has a goal to combat her mother’s addiction, whether it be confiscating the pills from Violet or calling out her doctor for prescribing excessive amounts of meds. Most of Violet’s actions can be considered “false actions”, as she questions her family members constantly. Barbara, on the other hand, exhibits more “genuine actions” because of how direct she is in what she does and says towards others. Even without seeing the characters performing their actions, it’s easy to gather the adaptations of Violet and Barbara’s actions, due to the detailed stage directions written in the script. How they do what they do becomes even more apparent as the play goes on, especially when it comes to Barbara. She grows more and more aggressive in her actions as more and more tensions rise.

Shill 2 Conflict is almost constant with this mother-daughter duo. They are almost always at odds with each other. They also experience conflict with other characters. Arguably the most notable is Barbara with her husband Bill. Their strained marriage is apparent in the first line Barbara speaks and it remains prominent all throughout the play, resulting in Bill leaving Barbara presumably for good after she slaps their teenage daughter, Jean. Violet exhibits conflict with herself. She has oral cancer, has lost her husband, and doesn’t have the best relationships with her three daughters. She is unable to cope with any of these things healthily, as she is a drug addict, but she tries to handle it all on her own. Both these characters possess a very strong and forceful will power that causes them to clash with each other. Violet is unapologetic in what she says and demands to be heard. She imposes her will strongly at her husband Beverly’s funeral dinner, making sure her points get across and not backing down. Barbara’s will is imposed at the dinner as well, as she physically goes after her mother and makes it clear that she is now in charge. This leads to her actions towards her intention to end Violet’s addictions. Though their relationships with them are problematic to say the very least, both Violet and Barbara show that something they value very much are their families, especially their daughters. They value what happens to them and they value them being part of their lives. After she loses her father, it becomes very important to Barbara that Jean dies after she does. Though it ultimately results in Jean’s removal from her life because of her aggression, Barbara cares about what Steve did to Jean and due to how much she values her, she wants to know exactly what happened. Violet values Ivy living close by and wishes her other two daughters were around more. She exhibits sentiment when she sees her three daughters all together. When they’re all

Shill 3 gone, she shows she needs that daughter role fulfilled and leans on her housekeeper Johnna in order to fill the void. Barbara and Violet are both very complex characters and to me, they are the most three dimensional out of all the others. So much about them is revealed to the reader. Their present situations, as well as much of their pasts, are shared with us. For the most part, they are aware of everything going on and they both show they are self-aware as the play concludes. Because they are so complex, their personality traits are especially evident. The way they interact with each other shows a lot of who they are as well. Though they act like they differ drastically from each other and they try to make that as clear as possible to one another, their interactions show that they are more similar to each other than they’d probably like to think. They both have aggressive and abrasive tendencies, they are sarcastic, and they struggle to cope properly with the many tragic things that happen to them. Violet and Barbara seem to be the main relationship in this play. The interactions between these two show the highest amounts of tension in the play. Their relationship is nothing short of conflict. They butt heads with each other more than any other pair in their family, due to how similar their mentalities and personalities are. Because they are such aggressive people and because they’re both so headstrong, Violet and Barbara are very spontaneous in their actions. They have outbursts constantly when communicating with each other and with other characters, both verbal and physical. Though the entire family has several heavy issues among several members, no one else approaches any of them the same way Violet and Barbara do. Because most of the attributes of these two characters are similar, spontaneity in both of them is completely highlighted.

Shill 4...