Free Essays on Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1906. She died at Martha’s Vineyard in 1984. Lillian’s work includes screenplays, plays, novels, short stories, and an autobiography/ memoir. Lillian’s personal life was reflected in most of her plays and sometimes even inspired the whole play. For example Lillian is described as an â€Å"independent child,† by Carol MacNichols in a â€Å"Dictionary of Literary Biography,† (Contemporary Authors) this trait of Lillian’s personality is portrayed in her story, â€Å" Run Away† which is in the book, â€Å" A writers reader†. Lillian was an independent person in many ways; this is reflected in her story, â€Å"Run Away†. The girl, whose name was never mentioned in the story, runs away from her home and lives on her own. The girl in the story leaves her home and stays in a dollhouse, takes care of herself, buys her own food, and even begs to rent a room. All of these are examples of this girl’s independence. Lillian is portraying her own sense of independence through this girl in her story. This girl reflects Lillian’s independence as a young girl. The const ant moving in Lillian’s life, a father that was hardly ever there, and life as an only child resulted in Lillian’s independence and rebellious ways. Lillian was led into an early marriage to press agent, Arthur Kober by the impulse of loving the publishers parties, and the adventurous life of the literary world of the nineteen twenties, which Arthur Kober was an active part in. In 1929 she accompanied her husband, Arthur, to Germany. Here Lillian was exposed for the first time to the Nazi movement, which was her first exposure to Anti-Semitism. Later this theme would come to play in her stage play, â€Å"Watch on the Rhine† and â€Å"The Searching Wind†. This is another example of how her personal life is sometimes reflected in her work. As time passed, Lillian’s marriage eventually came to an end o... Free Essays on Lillian Hellman Free Essays on Lillian Hellman Lillian Hellman Lillian Hellman was born in 1906 and was the only child of a shoe merchant and a woman from Alabama. Her father’s job required her to spend half of the year in New York and the other half in New Orleans. These two different locations gave her a taste of two different worlds throughout her childhood. These two worlds are very often merged in her plays. New York showed her a money conscious world of her grandmother whose Sunday dinners resembled corporation meetings and New Orleans represented the fluttery spinsters and black servants. (Dick, 1) She always knew she was going to be a writer ever since she was little and began to keep a journal. She realized â€Å"that an adolescent’s firsthand judgment was preferable to the tortured queries of old age.†(Dick, 1) Normally you would not expect Hellman to write for theater but she did not have skill for detail that fiction requires. In many of her plays the plot is based on an object such as a pen knife (Days to Come), a medicine bottle (The Little Foxes), a briefcase (Watch on the Rhine), and a bracelet (The Children’s Hour). Most of her plays have something to do with government and always have a problem that the characters have to solve using all of their ability and concentration. Elizabeth Hardwick talks about how Lillian Hellman’s plays are â€Å"triumphs of craftsmanship†(Hardwick, 4). Her plays usually consist of actors facing misfortunate problems and then using great energy and skill to try to figure them out. Hellman fills her plays with crisis and chaos from secret letters to grand theft. It seems that sometimes her characters are so busy coming up with clever ways to solve these problems that you might forget what the plot is about. Her plays are entertaining and useful in commercial theater but sometimes a little to confusing for a person who is trying to figure out the characters. David Hunt critiques Scoundrel Time which... Free Essays on Lillian Hellman Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1906. She died at Martha’s Vineyard in 1984. Lillian’s work includes screenplays, plays, novels, short stories, and an autobiography/ memoir. Lillian’s personal life was reflected in most of her plays and sometimes even inspired the whole play. For example Lillian is described as an â€Å"independent child,† by Carol MacNichols in a â€Å"Dictionary of Literary Biography,† (Contemporary Authors) this trait of Lillian’s personality is portrayed in her story, â€Å" Run Away† which is in the book, â€Å" A writers reader†. Lillian was an independent person in many ways; this is reflected in her story, â€Å"Run Away†. The girl, whose name was never mentioned in the story, runs away from her home and lives on her own. The girl in the story leaves her home and stays in a dollhouse, takes care of herself, buys her own food, and even begs to rent a room. All of these are examples of this girl’s independence. Lillian is portraying her own sense of independence through this girl in her story. This girl reflects Lillian’s independence as a young girl. The const ant moving in Lillian’s life, a father that was hardly ever there, and life as an only child resulted in Lillian’s independence and rebellious ways. Lillian was led into an early marriage to press agent, Arthur Kober by the impulse of loving the publishers parties, and the adventurous life of the literary world of the nineteen twenties, which Arthur Kober was an active part in. In 1929 she accompanied her husband, Arthur, to Germany. Here Lillian was exposed for the first time to the Nazi movement, which was her first exposure to Anti-Semitism. Later this theme would come to play in her stage play, â€Å"Watch on the Rhine† and â€Å"The Searching Wind†. This is another example of how her personal life is sometimes reflected in her work. As time passed, Lillian’s marriage eventually came to an end o...