Imprisonmenet And Escape

Marsha Norman is regarded as one of the greatest American female playwrights after the World War II. She took playwriting as her career in the 1970s. In her most plays, she often writes about modern women's social experience and most of her heroines are those frustrated and marginalized in the society.Being a keen observer of life, Norman is good at describing the alienation and loneliness, freedom and death, living conditions, identity and the relationship between men and men as well as men and the society,'night, Mother, as her master piece, successfully premiered in Broadway in 1979. Because of this play, Norman won the Pulitzer Prize in literature in 1983. If this play is analyzed from the perspective of Sartre's existentialism, Jessie can be seen as more an existentialist than a desperate patient with epilepsy who commits suicide in the end.In this play, Norman delicately depicts Jessie's existing conditions, emptiness of life, alienation and her interpersonal relationship of human beings; after suffering the bitterness and miseries of her life, Jessie wants to justify her existence through love, which also ends in failure. In the end, Jessie decides to pursue the eternal freedom and the meaning of existence in her own way. The stunning gunshot declares Jessie's success in her pursuit of freedom and meaning of life. Some existentialist elements, such as alienation, emptiness of life, absurdity of the world, are manifested in this play profoundly and comprehensively. However, owing to the limited studies on this play both at home and abroad, these existentialist ideas embodied in this play haven't been analyzed and interpreted. Therefore, excavating its profound meaning through the perspective of existentialism becomes the impetus of my job. This thesis aims at analyzing the play of 'night, Mother with major existentialist beliefs, and exploring the nothingness and emptiness, absurdity, men's alienation in the absurd world and self-justification.Based on the above studies the thesis finally concludes that Norman's revelation of existential ideas in 'night, Mother is in accordance with Sartre's existentialism. Although Jessie lives in an absurd world, she does have the freedom to choose. Having experienced a series of things in her life, she decides to commit suicide so as to get the ultimate freedom. Therefore, Jessie's suicide cannot be regarded as a tragedy, for she badly wants to get both mental and physical freedom just like the rebirth of the phoenix from the fire.