Explore How Writers Expose Human Flaws in the Texts You Have Studied

Explore how writers expose human flaws in the texts you have studied.  

Both Sean O’Casey and William Shakespeare dramatically expose human flaws through the settings of their respective texts.  The opening setting for O’Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars describes the tenements as having “savage assaults’.   This highpoints – at the beginning of the play – the violent past of the tenement dwellers through continual uprisings; it also exposes the tensions within the lives of the characters, tensions that are driven by scuffles and in O’Casey’s view pub patriotism; ‘under the left eye is a scar, and his nose is bent from a smashing blow received in a fistic battle long ago.’   An additional flaw exposed in the presentation of Fluther – Irish dialect for being drunk – ‘fond of his ‘oil’’.  O’ Casey here delivers an sharp blow to the quality of the ‘militants’  fight further reinforced by the introduction of Peter ‘ as if everyone was at war with him, and he at war with everybody.’

Likewise in the text Macbeth it opens the play on a heath, this is where the witches are firstly introduced, and who initially spark Macbeth’s- ‘’vaulting ambition’’. This exposes Macbeth’s flaw as it is his vaulting ambition which leads him to kill Duncan. The heath also represents the battles and uproars within the play shown through the barren wasteland. The bareness of the heath also relates to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s barren relationship, as lady Macbeth cannot have children therefore making Macbeth’s crown –‘’fruitless’’ as he has no heir, again emphasizing the notion of the bareness in their relationship-‘’I have given suck, and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me ‘’ this is saying there was a child but it must have died, this therefore creates a flaw in Macbeth and Lady Macbeths relationship.

Similarly in The Plough and The Stars the clitheroes also have a barrenness in their relationship , like lady Macbeth, Nora has barrenness’ in their fertility and both lost their babies this later contributed to both women’s insanity.- ‘’where is it? Where’s my baby? Tell me where you’ve put it, where have you hidden it? Give me my baby, my baby, my baby I want my baby! ’This reinforces Nora and Jack’s barren relationship and Nora’s madness exposing a flaw.

In act 2 of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars we are introduced to Rosie (a prostitute) in the pub she is described as wearing a ‘black shawl’; in the pub the Pearsean voice can be heard who talks or an uprising, a revolution-‘bloodshed is a sanctifying thing’-the Pearsean voice forebodes death, and as he can be heard from the pub were Rosie is, she is vulnerable to this voice, she is a prostitute and wearing a black shawl this reinforces death. This exposes a flaw in Rosie as she is a vulnerable woman open to prostitution and death and wearing a –‘black shawl’- condemns it.