Contrast as a Means of Expression in David Hare’s The Secret Rapture
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25098/8.1.41Keywords:
contrast, function, theatre, characters, policesAbstract
This article is to expose how David Hare’s drama evolves within the social and political contexts of the 1980s, in addition to showing the different trends the writer follows to deal with British contemporary politics. This is mainly done through the depiction of the characteristics of the Leftist Party only within the boundaries of the characters’ private lives as illustrated in The Secret Rapture (1988). By dwelling on the characters, Hare shows how families suffer from collapse, and people have abandoned such good characteristics as goodness, virtue, and decency in favor of greediness, selfishness, and ingratitude. The Secret Rapture deals with the playwright’s disillusionment of governmental policies and the moral decline characterizing this decade. In this article, the main approach is to analyze the main contrasting characters through what they say and do to reveal how their action and attitudes are shaped under the effect of the turbulent decade of the nineteen-eighties. The author thus seems to have intentionally created contrasting figures so as to comment on the evils that come out of following one own whims and selfish ends.
References
Billington. M. 2001. Welcome Hare Revival on the Thatcherite psyche, the guardian.Availableat:https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2001/jan/29/theatre.artsfeatures1(Accessed: November 21, 2022).
Bloom, M., 1989. “A Kinder, Gentler David Hare”. American Theatre Nov, pp. 30-34.
Dean, J.F. 1990. David Hare. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Donesky, F., 1996. David Hare: Moral and Historical Perspectives. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press
Gaston, G., 1993. “Interview: David Hare”. Theatre Journal, 45 (2), pp. 213-225.
Gindin, J., 1993. "Freedom and Form in David Hare’s Drama". In British and Irish Drama Since 1960 (pp. 162-175). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Golomb, L.A., 1990. "Saint Isobel: David Hare's The Secret Rapture as Christian Allegory". Modern Drama, 33 (4), pp .563-574.
Hare. D. 1997. David Hare: Plays Two. 2nd. Faber &Faber.
Homden, C., 1995. The Plays of David Hare. Cambridge University Press. London.
Kathleen, T, 2015. “New Again: David Hare”, Interview Magazine. Available at: https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/new-again-david-hare(Accessed: November 1, 2022).
Nothof, A. 1994. “Virtuous Women: Portraits of Goodness in The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon, and Strapless,” in Hersh Zeifman (ed). David Hare: a Casebook. 1st Edition. New York: Garland Pub., pp. 169–185.
Oliva, J.L. (1990) “David Hare: Theatricalizing Politics.,” Ann Arbor: UMI.
Su, J., 1997. “Nostalgic Rapture: Interpreting Moral Commitments in David Hare's Drama.” Modern Drama, 40 (1), pp. 23-37.
Taylor, L. 2007. “In Opposition: Hare’s Response to Thatcherism,” in Richard Boon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to David Hare. Cambridge University Press, pp. 49–64.
Wade, L. 2007. “I Hare’s trilogy at the National: Private Moralities and the Common Good,” in Richard Boon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to David Hare. Cambridge University Press, pp.64-79
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
SJCUS's open access articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.