Tartuffe and Trifles Plays

There are three discussion posts from fellow classmates below. I need thoughtful and intellectual replies to each post. Each reply should be a short paragraph of 4-6 sentences and can include insightful questions posed to the student being replied to. Sources are not necessary but if used do cite.

The document returned to me should identify Post: XX XX with the respective response.

Original Question:

Identify and post, the character (one from each play, “Tartuffe” and “Trifles”), the character who undergoes the biggest change/transformation from the beginning of the play to the end. Identify the character and explain why.

Post #1: DO CO

The character who undergoes the biggest change/transformation in “Tartuffe” from the beginning of the play to the end is Orgon. Orgon is the husband of Elmire and the father of Damis and Mariane. Orgon has been completely duped by the religious hypocrite Tartuffe and taken in by Tartuffe’s overt displays of religious piety. He takes pity on the apparently destitute man and allows him to live in his household. Tartuffe even goes so far as to break a pledge to give his daughter in marriage to her sweetheart Valère and instead determines she will be wed to Tartuffe. Tartuffe meanwhile is attempting to seduce Orgon’s wife Elmire. Tartuffe even manages to manipulate Orgon into disowning his son Damis and signing over everything he owns. Everyone else in the play see through the deception of Tartuffe and recognizes him for the hypocrite and scoundrel that he is. Only Orgon and Madame Pernelle, his mother, are blinded to the obvious. Orgon finally comes to his senses and realizes his grave mistake when his wife hides him under a table and he is privy to a conversation between Elmire and Tartuffe where it is obvious that Tartuffe is putting the moves on his wife. Clearly feeling foolish Orgon tries to save face, “I’ve long suspected you, and had a feeling that soon I’d catch you at your double-dealing. Just now you’ve given me evidence galore; It’s quite enough; I have no wish for more” (“Tartuffe”, 2008, p. 210). Orgon’s character goes from the extreme of being oblivious to the hypocrisy of Tartuffe to claiming he saw it all along to stating: “Enough, by God! I’m through with pious men: Henceforth I’ll hate the whole false brotherhood, and persecute them worse than Satan could” (“Tartuffe”, 2008, p. 211). Orgon’s brother-in-law, Cléante, even asks why he can’t be rational rather than going to extremes?

The character who undergoes the biggest change/transformation in “Trifles” from the beginning of the one act play to the end is the Sheriff’s wife Mrs. Peters. At the beginning of the play, Mrs. Peters defends the men and upholds the law with comments like: “Of course it’s no more than their duty” (Glaspell, 2014, p. 242) and “But, Mrs. Hale, the law is the law” (Glaspell, 2014, p. 244). As she comes to the realization that Mrs. Wright was leading a miserable existence and apparently hung her husband, we see her identifying with the woman and wavering in her conviction. “We don’t know who killed him. We don’t know” (Glaspell, 2014, p. 248). “I know what stillness is. [Pulling herself back.] The law has got to punish crime, Mrs. Hale” (Glaspell, 2014, p. 248). In the final moments of the play, she defies the law and conspires with Mrs. Hale to hide the evidence of the canary with the wrung neck. “…A moment Mrs. Hales holds her, then her own eyes point the way to where the box is concealed. Suddenly Mrs. Peters throws back quilt pieces and tries to put the box in the bag she is wearing. It is too big. She opens box, starts to take the bird out, cannot touch it, goes to pieces, stands there helpless. …Mrs. Hale snatches the box and puts it in the pocket of her big coat” (Glaspell, 2014, p. 250). She goes from defending the actions of the men and upholding the law to defying the men and thwarting the law.

Post: #2 AS RE

I enjoyed reading both of these plays. I feel that the character that went through the most change in “Tartuffe” was Orgon as he was blindsided by Tartuffe along with his mother, Madame Pernelle. Orgon believed Tartuffe was a holy man and wanted his daughter (Mariane) to marry him so that he would be the sole heir. After Orgon was begged by his wife to hide so that she could expose Tartuffe, he overheard Tartuffe professing his love to his wife and him shaming him. Orgon then was infuriated and then understood why everyone else thought Tartuffe was a hypocrite and had a change of heart. He then demanded Tartuffe to leave but Tartuffe reminded him that he now was the owner of Orgon’s property and they must leave instead. Thankfully the king seen the game Tartuffe was trying to play and restored all of the property back to Orgon.

The character in the play “Trifles” that went through the most change was Mrs. Peters as she was the Sherriff’s wife and must follow the legal system that her husband is upheld and employed by. She went into the Wrights house with the direction from her husband with the intention of bringing some items back Mrs. Wright who was being held in jail. But, after reminiscing with Mrs. Hale on the Wright’s rocky marriage and finding the bird strangled just as Mr. Wright was, in Mrs. Wrights sewing basket, Mrs. Peters decided to not tell her husband and keep it a secret to protect Mrs. Wright and allow her the life she deserved without punishment as she felt her marriage was punishment enough.

Post: #3 VE SC

The Character that changed the most from the beginning of Tartuffe to the end was Orgon. Orgon believes that Tartuffe is leading them on the pathway to heaven. Orgon turned on his own son, because he believed in Tartuffe. Once he was shown the truth about Tartuffe his attitude changed, because he realized the truth about Tartuffe.

In the play Trifles, I wouldn’t say the County Attorney was the most changed in this play. He did make a very important statement in the play. Because women were only thought of as housekeepers or someone to clean the house in this period. It was stated that women are used to worrying over trifles. Meaning women worry over petty things.

Mr. Henderson stated for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies? I didn’t see much of a change in his character from the beginning of the play to the end. He realized the women were important and no matter how petty they may be they are needed.

 

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Introduction

Critical thinking, as with decision making, relies on a rational, well thought out assessment of the problem, objectives, and alternatives (Norris, 1985). In effective decision making, tradeoffs must be valued when a decision has too many alternatives (Hammond, Keeney, & Raiffa, 1998). The tradeoff method, as discussed by Hammond, Kenney and Raiffa (1998), is the easy swap method. The easy swap method increases the value of one consequence while decreasing the value of another in separate alternatives, which can lead to dominance of alternatives (Luo & Bor-Wen, 2006). Dominance of alternatives can lead to elimination of one or several alternatives (Hammond et al., 1998). This post will evaluate and apply critical thinking concepts as it can and should be used in the easy swap method to support effective decision making.

Determining Dominance

Before the easy swap method is applied to evaluate tradeoffs, a decision maker can use a consequence table, a simplified rating scale, to evaluate if some alternatives may be eliminated (Hammond et al., 1998). In the elimination of alternatives, the decision maker has determined dominance of different alternatives using a scoring system of different criteria or objectives (Hammond et al., 1998). Determining dominance in this process could possibly leave one alternative remaining (Hammond et al., 1998). If the result of determining dominance still leaves more than one alternative, tradeoffs will be required using the easy swap method (Hammond et al., 1998).

Even Swap Method

According to Mustajoki and Raimo (2005), the even swap method exchanges values between consequences until only one alternative remains. A consequence table can be used in the even swap method to level the playing field between different objectives within different alternatives (Hammond et al., 1998). This process consists of compensating for changes to an objective, making an equal exchange or swap of value of the consequence (Hammond et al., 1998). This may cancel out the objective for any alternatives being evaluated and then allow the decision maker to identify dominance within the range of alternatives until the there is one remaining alternative (Hammond et al., 1998).

Application of Critical Thinking to Even Swap Method

In decision making, as in critical thinking, there are certain factors such as uncertainty and factual claims that can bolster decisions or derail them. In the example of choosing the right office, that Hammond et al. (1998) discussed in the chapter titled “Tradeoffs”, there were uncertainties in the decision making process. The world is constantly changing and it is nearly impossible to know what the future holds for a set of consequences (Rieke, Sillars, & Peterson, 2005). In the even swap method example, the character, Alan, is making assumptions about what a consequence could become if the values are adjusted. In the objective of Alan’s commute time, how does he know that the route he would take every day would not be altered at some point, in some way? In reality, he doesn’t. Not only are critical thinker’s and decision maker’s dealing with the uncertainty of things to come but they must also be concerned with the validity of the data supporting the value adjustments so they are not merely guessing at the uncertainty of the consequence. The decision maker is making changes to values based on as much fact as he understands on the subject matter. According to Norris (1985), a critical thinker must have knowledge of the subject matter being evaluated. In the example, by Hammond et al. (1998), are we to assume that Alan is an expert in all objectives (commuting, traffic patterns, ratio of price to office space)? In order for Alan to be thinking critically and to make a smart decision, this would require knowledge in all of the values being swapped. Alan or anyone using the easy swap method would want to ensure that changes to consequence values were factual claims. As Rieke, Sillars, and Peterson (2005) address, factual claims are supported by data and are reliable claims.

Conclusion

In this post, critical thinking was used almost synonymously with decision making. According to Norris (1985), part of critical thinking is using rational decision making to identify solutions with a firm understanding of the subject matter. The even swap method, while seemingly constructed to eliminate as much indecisiveness as possible, should rely on knowledge and factual claims regarding the objectives and consequences subject matter. However, the method is subject to value claims that may only be interpretable, at least in the example by Hammond et al., by the decision maker. According to Reike et al. (2005), value claims depend on the what the decision maker defines for themselves to be of greater or lesser value and cannot be backed up by factual data. In conclusion, if critical thinking skills are honed, have a strong basis in knowledge of the subject matter, a smart decision can be assured.

Reference

Hammond, S., Keeney, R., & Raiffa, H. (1998). Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Luo, C., & Bor-Wen, C. (2006). Applying even-swap method to structurally enhance the process of intuition decision-making. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 19(1), 45-59. doi:http://dx.doi.org.prx-keiser.lirn.net/10.1007/s112…

Mustajoki, J., & Raimo, P. H. (2005). A preference programming approach to make the even swaps method even easier. Decision Analysis, 2(2), 110-123. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.prx-keiser.lirn.net/do…

Norris, S. P. (1985). Synthesis of Research on Critical Thinking. Educational Leadership, 42(8), 40.

Rieke, R.D. & Sillars, M.O., 1928- & Peterson, T.R. (2005). Argumentation and critical decision making (6th ed). Pearson/Allyn & Bacon, Boston

 

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