‘Dancing at Lughnasa’, dramatic techniques and devices Essay

* bode through the use of devices (see below) or narrative Friel often hints at what comes later on in the contribute, some clippings sneaky in the first dialogue for example, Chris says When ar we going to get a decent mirror to see ourselves in? this could be interpreted as Friel showing that the women are blind to the worldly concern around them, to their own inner trouble, and just how close their family is to the blink of collapse. It is a good line for Friel to highlight that at this moment in time, everything is as it should be and nothing has crumbled yet, but it will, and the sisters dealnot foretell it.* Use of symbolic devices such as the radio (the music foreshadows events in the play, hints at backstory, usually provides a sense of what the women feel inside but cigaretnot express on the outside, use to reference context and ultimately link the women from their microcosm in Ballybeg to the wider world) or the kites (representing outflow as a pair, possibly Jack and Gerry, or, when one considers the tortured faces, a foreshadowing of Rose and Agness doomed leave.)* Stage Directions Friels pointedness directions are highly detailed and this shows that to Friel, every little character and head detail is important, (takes the opening tableau for example. ) Each aunt has their own, very token on stage personality, but these are certainly not 2D characters when Friel still leaves some questions unanswered to the audience e. g What is going on between Gerry and Agnes?Why is it that Friel wants Agnes to fly up in a passion, on the point of tears when Kate is badmouthing Gerry, but the situation between them is never explored in more detail? It makes the false recollection concept all the more interesting, as the audience can forget that this is what Michael is supposed to suppose as more real than incident and both actual and illusory. * The unobserved Boy In Dancing at Lughnasa, the narrator is the adult Michael, and Friel chooses excessively to have the adult Michael reading the boys lines, and the aunts must never address the boy.This is a surreal concept, but both helps the audience remember that the whole play is Michaels memory When I cast my oral sex back and also foreshadows Michaels absence and escape later on in the play, or as a boy, his lack of understanding of the situation. Alternatively, it over again highlights the surreal concept that Michael can remember things that may or may not have happened as he is not present in those scenes.* The False Memory But there is one memory of that Lughnasa time that visits me most often and what fascinates me about that memory is that it owes nothing to fact The play is largely focused on Michaels relationship with the memories of his past, as his interspersed blocks of narrative illustrate, but there is the question raised that, in fact, did most of the play, where Michael isnt present, even happen?It is all supposed to be from his memory, so how can h e remember something which isnt confessedly? The ending sets this question only in the audiences minds when Michael talks about a memory that truly does have no factual ground at all, and you can see elements of this seeping in throughout the play itself, (such as blasts of mid-thirties music or referencing to historical context) and you can see it played out as if peppered with bits of memory that didnt inescapably happen at those measure or in that order.It does have a dream-like quality for these reasons, and only when we call forth up do we realise something was strange I believe this is the raise Friel intended to create for the audience. With memory, we often remember what stands out to us, not necessarily in the right order, but what Michael makes plain at the end is that his version of events is both real and imagined at the same time, and his memories become more true to feelings as they go further from the actual order of events.