Drowning While Laughing
Portia Coughlan : Drowning While Laughing The humour in Mariana Carr's 1996 play, Portia Coughlan , richly emphasises the poignant story of harrowing tragedy because it is humour that humans rely on when the depth of tragedy runs overbearingly deep, " Comedy and tragedy , however, confront man with the most extreme situations that he can experience."(Guthke.166.)It is through these extremes in emotions that the audience can truly experience second-hand what the characters must be feeling , their loss, grief , and the sudden break from those emotions by a seemingly inapproiate comic interlude. In Portia Coughlan , we meet Portia while she is alone suffering in the misery of her thirtieth birthday, she is terribly unhappy with the choices she and life itself have chosen for her, she is wallowing, " Ud's me birtha taday...Thirty half me life's over."(Carr.2.). We see that Portia is very unhappy about her birthday, and she feels that she has already lived half of her life and has very little living left, but there is humour in this exchange between Portia and her husband, Raphael, because after all she is only turning 30 and is been behaving as though the world has completely fallen apart, as apparent in Raphael's reaction
Her capacity for pain has cause her much uncertainty and is at the root of her promiscuity. What could one expect of siblings that reproduce, they are going to have severely abnormal children, and that is what Portia and Gabriel were, " Chem ouha tha womb howldin' hands. Boston:1996;faber and faberGuthke, Karl. )Although, she is being serious you can't help being amused at the notion of the apparently very serious and forlorn Portia , thrashing and sweating with anyone, from this point we haven't seen Portia as a very passionate character. whim God war handin' ouh souls , he musta goh mine an' Gabriels mixed up, aither thah or he gev us jus' tha wan atwane us an' ud wint inta tha Belmont River wud him. We learn that Blaize Scully knew of the parentage of Marianne , she knew that her son and his future wife were related ,yet, she refused to acknowledge publicly that her husband had an affair that resulted in fathering another child and let the two marry. Yet , it is not comic, it is the very extreme opposite of comedy , when emotions run so deep that often times laughter is the only audible emotion. How else though does Portia know how to attract a man, she has always been given the notion that her only quality was her beauty and sexuality.
Common topics in this essay:
Portia Coughlan,
Portia Gabriel,
Carr2 Raphael,
Halion Damus,
Aunt Maggie,
Blaize Scully,
God Ahmighty,
Gabriel Chem,
Oh Gabriel,
Belmont River,
portia coughlan,
portia gabriel,
belmont river,
ta ud,
tragicomedynew york1966random house,
exchange portia,
bibliography carr,
fill void,
carr marianaportia,
seen portia,
an' ah,
york1966random house hirst,
karlsmodern tragicomedynew york1966random,
guthke karlsmodern tragicomedynew,
faber guthke karlsmodern,
|
Acceptance Essays
