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Parents are children's first role models and heroes. They look to their parents for love, guidance and approval. Parents try to shelter and comfort their young from any and every danger. Immediate family ties are supposed to be the strongest bonds of all. Expressions such as, "Like father, like son", and "Momma's boy" are frequently used to describe members of the American family. Yet when vital information is withheld from the family by a parent or child, the communication lines within the family can become limited and lead to tragedy. The secrets can lead to lies and over time become skeletons in the closet. Once overfilled, the contents of the closet are spilled onto innocent lives that can either break or make a person stronger. In Marsha Norman's 'Night, Mother, we are thrown right into the misfortunate Cates family, where Mama, Thelma, now must face the conflict of lying to herself and her daughter, Jessie, while trying to save her daughter from suicide.
Mama has a problem of a being a selfish person. Her demeanor is overtaken need to have all her needs fulfilled by the expense of Jessie's time. She constantly tells Jessie that she needs items for the house, when the items are actually only for herself, such as Snowballs and Hershey bars. She also has an elderly state of mind, which all things belong to her until she dies. When Jessie took the gun out of the attic, her mother comes to her get the gun away from her. As Jessie pulls the gun towards her, Mama tries to use reverse psychology to get the gun out of her daughter's possession, "…Well, you can have it if you want" (Jacobus, 001, p. 14). When Mama finds out the Jessie is going to kill herself, she tell her daughter that the house is in her name and that she can not kill do it in her house. Every Saturday night, Mama pesters Jessie about giving her weekly manicures, "You haven't forgot what night it is, have you…" (Jacobus, 001, p.141).
Jessie is in the state of mind that it is her time to die. She has had experienced hardships in her life and feels as if that her life is not going to change in a better direction. Her husband, Cecil, was introduced to her by her mother. Mama pretty much shoved Jessie and Cecil into marriage, "…I married you off to the wrong man, I admit that" (Jacobus, 001, p.1501). She wanted to be a better person for Cecil but Jessie and Cecil knew that she was always trying. Also Cecil never loved Jessie, he loved Agnes' girl, Carlene. Yet the path he took to get out of their marriage was to make Jessie choose between cigarettes and him. Their son, Ricky, has many problems going on with him. Jessie tells her mother, "Oh, he'll have plenty of that. Five years for forgery, ten years for armed assault…" (Jacobus, 001, p.150). She left her home and moved into the house with her mother. She has epilepsy. She didn't have much of an alternate seeing how she couldn't get a job. She worked at the phone company and didn't make enough money to pay the phone bill and she when she worked at the gift shop in the hospital was fired because she made the customers uncomfortable. (Jacobus, 001, p. 147). Also, she had never lived alone throughout her entire life. She was raised at the barn with her parents and brother. Then, she was married off to Cecil. Jessie never had the chance to establish a sense of independence.
These two characters have uninterrupted conversation through the entire play. They are forced to indulge into every word that is spoken. Each of them is strongly opinionated in the way the world works and what their presence stands for. Thelma feels that it is her job to grow old and allow herself to enjoy all of the little pleasures that she can. She talks to her friends on the phone and eats nothing but sugary treats throughout the day such as, honey, sugar, caramel apples, soft mints, chocolate, red hots, sourballs etc. Jessie feels as if her role within her family's life has a sense of purpose but time is passing moment by moment, without her having a chance of being more. She doesn't like the way the world is and knows that it isn't going to get any better. She states, "…I'm just not having a good time and I don't have any reason to think that it'll get anything but worse" (Jacobus, 001, p.146).Order custom research paper on Night, Mother
On the surface, Jessie and Mama are too used to the routine of being around each other day after day. It is not required for them to speak to each other much due to; week after week things have the same pattern. She has found that people don't like sense of humor so she has learned to keep to herself. Things run out of the household and Jessie takes care of calling whomever to provide services to the house. Her mother spends day after day examining the TV Guide to see what daily shows she plans on watching. Jessie takes care of her mother's manicure every Saturday night. Her brother, Dawson, wonders what Jessie does throughout her day and Jessie feels as if her days are nothing for him to be concerned about.
Underneath Mama struggled with inner conflict of dealing with Jessie's father. She was never in love with her father when they got married. She felt as if her father wanted surprises from his plain country woman. Thelma never felt as if she was worth more to him. He would leave a sign on the garage door stating that he was "Gone Fishing" but he only drove to the lake and made pipe cleaner figures of people and animals. She was jealous that Jessie and he would have conversations after supper after every night. While Jessie's father would rarely say anything to Thelma. She never knew what the conversations were about and it plagued her for years. The night that he died, he didn't say one word to her and it hurt her because it was his last opportunity to say something to her and he was silent.
Thelma also had to deal with an epileptic daughter and husband. She has to rush over to them to prevent them from swallowing their tongue and choking on their saliva. She cleaned them up when they urinated on themselves and made sure they were safe. Thelma had to deal with more than 0 years of taking care of the both of them and hiding the secrets away from her husband, daughter and everyone else. She didn't tell her daughter because she didn't want for Jessie to think that she had to have a limited life due to having epilepsy. Even though Jessie inherited epilepsy through her father, her mother blamed herself all of the time. She tells Jessie, "Maybe it's a punishment…Because of who I felt about your father…I didn't want any more children, etc..." (Jacobus, 001, p. 1504).
Since Christmas, Jessie has felt as if she has had control of her body and thoughts. Her memory was in perfect health and things didn't look as if she was going to get any worse. She can to the understanding that the world can function without being alive. By planning this day out, she felt great knowing that there were no more factors in her life controlling her but herself. She told her mother that she was going to kill herself in order to have the power to obtain the truth about her parent's relationship and Agnes. She uses her decision as the key to gain access to knowledge that has been withheld from her. It came as a bit of a shock to her when she heard more that she would realize. It gave her more clarity and inner peace knowing that she didn't get epilepsy from falling off of a horse. This new breakthrough allowed to have more confidence that she was making the right decision for herself. She feels that death is inevitable and that she has no reason to fear death. She tells her mother, "Mama I know you used to ride the bus…I've had enough", (Jacobus, 001, p.147).
Thelma has the inner conflict of being a true mother to Jessie. She has hidden the truth about her epilepsy her entire life. She never allowed her daughter to live a life of her own. Every person has the right to make individual choice on what they become in life. Jessie was stripped of that privilege due to the secret that Thelma kept from her. Thelma had no intentions of telling her daughter, her history of epilepsy. It took for Jessie to tell her mother that she was going to commit suicide, in order for the truth to come out. Jessie killed herself thinking that she had lived her life to her fullest potential. Thelma has to live the rest of her life; thinking of the other possibilities of Jessie's life could have turned into. She will now be plagued with thoughts of guilt that if she had talked and communicated her family about the hereditary epilepsy, her feelings of concern and help she might have been able to save Jessie's life. She might have been able to have a better relationship with her husband. Her daughter could have been married to someone who is compatible with her and understand her, with a grandchild with promising future.
Communication between loved ones is vital for healthy relationships throughout the course one's life. It affects more than just parents and children but neighbors, friends and even future generations of a family. Without this communication, families can be broken down with trust, mental, and social problems. Without proper handling of the truth, the consequences of your decisions can become the matter of life and death.
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