Free Essays on A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Lessons of the Darkness :: Midsummer Nights Dream

Lessons of the Darkness in A Midsummer Nights Dream The physical darkness impairs normal vision the dark is intense enough for characters to fear being alone. Helena cries out to Demetrius not to abandon her darkling, or in the dark (2.2 l. 93). Hermia seems certain that her abandonment in the dark by Lysander could lead to her death Speak, of all loves. I swoon almost with fear. / No? and then I well perceive you are not nigh. / Either death or you Ill find immediately (2.2. ll. 160-2). The dark forest is far from hospitable to Hermias imagination, scarce Shakespeares night actually protects and instructs the lovers. Hermias line give a clue to how they must learn to cope without their eyes she does not see that Lysander is not near, but kind of perceives-her auditory modality is the sense on which she comes to depend. Hearing and sight operate quite differently while sight can be controlling (consider Foucaults panopticon, and the use of ceremonial occasion as power), listeni ng requires openness. The temporal element of listening necessitates patience (Tu Wei-ming, 2/11/99). Hermia is able to find her lover eventually by using her hearing to its full potential Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,The ear more quick of apprehension makes.Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,It pays the hearing double recompense.Thou finesse not by mine eye, Lysander, foundMine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound. (3.2 ll. 178-183) Here is the power of night to transform the gaze. The eyes power is taken, but the ears is augmented. This Hermia seems far more confident than the Hermia of only a few scenes ago, who was certain she would perish without her lover. She speaks with a kind of triumph about her own ability to improvise her ear remunerative double recompense has been more than adequate to the task. The night pays, rewards, gives gifts in place of what it takes away. Hermia, thrilled to see her lover and to discover her own ability to impro vise, goes so far as to thank her own ear. Relying on different kinds of perception leads Hermia to Lysander, just as the night world brings all quatern lovers to a truer understanding of themselves and their loves, do possible a happy ending for everyone by the end of the play. In A Midsummer Nights Dream, the nighttime forest, by disrupting and transforming vision, forces introspection and improvisation that help the four lovers on their way to self-understanding.