Aristotle and Rivera's Lessons in An Indiscretion and Shift

There are a few ways An Indiscretion and Shift go along with the lesson's of Aristotle and Rivera, and other ways they may go against what Aristotle believes. In An Indiscreation, the beginning line is "We should make a list." This fits Aristotle's form because we are expecting something to follow after that. The middle of the play, on the other hand, is a little harder to pinpoint. It seems that there is just mounting frustration that builds up between the man and woman, and we see the woman trying to help the man when she really doesn't even believe in him. The play ends with "Yes. Well, well all make mistakes." I think this also fits Aristotle's view of an ending, because this line can't stand alone or we'd be left with many questions. We would be left wondering what mistakes the woman is talking about. We know then, that dialogue has to come before to build up to this line. Even though this seems to follow Aristotle's rule in that way, it is not the most satisfying and complete ending. I think Dohrn could have continued the play as well. I don't think the play had to stop where it did, but it didn't have to continue either. It left us in a weird position; it ended, but we are left wondering, as Chandler said, what the man's response would be. I guess the point is that it is up to us to decide, but I wouldn't mind the playwright taking it a little further and allowing us to see if a fight would develop between the two and what would happen. In this way, I think Aristotle might not think the plot was complete. But that's the point. What An Indiscretion provides us with, is a snapshot into the lives of this man and woman. We are looking through a window into their lives, and all we see is part of a conversation between them. Even though the play doesn't come full circle, it leaves us with many interpretations of what came before the first line, and what came after the last. It may be more telling that we are only given their words to each other.

What also follows Aristotle's rule is the idea of recognition. I think throughout the play and then at the end, the woman realizes she actually does not believe her husband, and maybe she didn't realize that at the very beginning. Also, there is an element of surprise. We don't really know what the man actually did until the end, allowing the story to reveal itself and not stay on the same back and forth bantering of the man saying "What about..." and the woman saying "No, it can't be that person..." over and over again. It was a nice change of pace when we were finally given that other piece of information, and the play kept us interested because the further we read, the more we learned, not only through the man and woman's words, but through how they were dealing with each other.

In Shift, we find out that Dane started out being very excited to be in the city, a place for possibilties. As the shifts in the city continue and move out of place, we see Dane and Kelly's relationship also shifting. There's a parallel between the city around them and their relationship with each other which I think is important. This deals with Rivera's rule of showing something. Tracz shows us how the outside world relates to people's relationships, how they affect one another, and how to deal with it. There is also a build up in Shift, like in An Indiscretion, that we see. As we read more and more, we see Dane end up wanting to leave and Kelly pleading with him to stay. I think there is also a sense of recognition on Kelly's part. She has been unable to accept that Dane doesn't want to live in the city. Because their views are so completely off and they are not on the same level, we see her ignore his words and tell him to stay. It is only at the end that, while I don't know if she has accepted it, she realizes what is happening between them.

Also, this is according to Rivera's lessons, I think Shift allows us to "lose [ourselves] in [their] fictive world". This also goes by what my manifesto said which is that I want to be transported to another place and that's what Shift did. Even with Kelly turning to the audience to speak, we get an inside look into their world, relationship, feelings, thoughts and words after a fight. I thought what we spoke about in class - take the play to the story - is interesting and definitely applies here. Tracz didn't give us even the ending of Kelly and Dane's fight. Whether that would have been interesting or not, we learned so much from what happened after their fight that we didn't even need to see the fight play out to understand them. While the play started with Dane saying to Kelly, "You want to tell me what you're thinking..." I don't think it had to. I also thought it was interesting that Tracz decided to end the play with a flashback. I think because of this, Shift ended in a completely different way. We could have finished the play feeling something completely different if it ended with Dane telling Kelly to go with him, instead of the memory that we are left with.