A Streetcar Named Desire

The play we read in class this year was A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tenessee Williams. There were a lot of interesting things about this play. The music was used to outline the mood of the scenes, using themes like the blue piano, or many of the songs Blanche sings to herself, as well as the Varsouvianna for when she remembers the day her husband died. The music is used to help the audience understand what is going in Blanche's mind. The lights help too: the last several scenes, Blanche's flashbacks and memories intensify, so whenever the Varsouvianna plays, there are ominous moving shadows through the set that only Blanche sees.
The play also comments on the role of women in that time. Blanche firmly believes the only way she can survive and live comfortably in this world is by marrying someone rich, or getting help from someone rich for herself and her sister. Despite the 'love' between Blanche's sister Stella and her husband, Blanche doesn't like Stanley and does what she can to make Stella see her way and leave the Kowalsky household.
Stanley controls the household's money, and therefore he controls Stella. But Blanche has no money of her own, no connections, and no friends, and therefore she is trapped in New Orleans until she marries so that she is 'no longer a burden to anyone'.

Oedipus Complex

The Oedipus complex originates in Sigmund Freud's interpretation of dreams. It is a stage of life all children go through from three to five years old, and any trauma or stress during this stage can affect the person through their adult life.
This complex is defined by the child wishing for a relationship with their parent of the opposite sex (sometimes sexual, other times not) and viewing the parent of the same sex as competition.
It is named after the Greek tragic hero Oedipus, who murdered his father and married is mother (albeit unknowingly), and then had four children to whom he 'was both sibling and parent'. The complex's female version is called the Elektra complex, after a woman who helped kill her own mother.
I think that the Oedipus complex isn't that far fetched of an idea - it is real, but the British Encyclopedia Britanica clasifies it as a solely sexual desire with the parent of the opposite sex, while, at the same times, it states that it ends when the child and parent of the same sex can identify with each other.
I think that the complex is not solely sexual, and can occur out of desire to have a closer relationship with ether parent, and being jealous of the other parent because of divided attention or simply how the parent treats the child. I also think that when children are classified as wanting to have a 'sexual relationship' with the parent of the opposite gender, it is a misunderstood term used by adults. It should be physiclly impossible for a child of three years old to want a sexual relationship with a parent, much less generally understand what a sexual relationship would imply. Also, a sexual relationship was originally (and primaly) for reproduction, and I think it's impossible for a child to want this considering their bodies aren't ready for the reproduction stage of life and therefore not understand such a primal desire. I think that a child (say, a daughter) wants a 'relationship' with her father: this could simply be because she wants a closer relationship with her father and is generally jealous of how her mother is treated by her father, and vice versa for a son.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In English class, we have to choose a book to read independently for a compare and contrast essay with The Book of Negroes. I chose Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a Sci-fi novel about a Swiss Doctor who studies old chemists and philosophers who promise that science can create anything, and becomes enamored with the idea of creating perfection. He spends long hours studying the human body, and compile various bits of corpses to create to perfect being, before bringing it to life. It is only until his monster opens it's eyes that Frankenstein realizes that it is not perfection, that he created a monster and he can't face it. The story follows him as his creation becomes enraged at the world for not loving him, for ostracizing him because he was created by Frankenstein without choice, forced to live in a society where he isn't even considered human enough to be loved. He gets revenge on his creator for existing by destroying everything that Frankenstein loves, so the creator can learn what it is like for his creation.
I want to compare Frankenstein's monster and how society reacts to him with Aminata, and various people's treatment of her. They are both considered 'the other' in society, even if Aminata is only one of hundreds, and Frankenstein's monster is unique. I also want to compare Doctor Frankenstein himself to various people in Aminata's life, such as both sides of Solomon Lindo, among others.