Gertrude Stein: Operas and Plays Literary Elements

"Four Saints in Three Acts’’ is an opera.

Every play and opera was written in English.

The action in "Christian Bérard’’ takes place inside the house where the major character lives. The time when the action takes place remains unnamed but the general impression is that the action described took place over the course of a long period of time.

Because ‘’Four Saints in Three Acts’’ is an opera, there is no narrator and no point of view. Instead, the opera is constructed as a series of dialogues.

The tone and mood used in ‘’Matisse’’ is an uncertain one, created by the lack of certainty and the refusal from the narrator’s part to name the people involved and the situation which took place.

In most of the plays and operas, it is hard to determine the protagonist and antagonist as the narrator does not present any of the characters as being positive or negative.

In most of the plays and operas, it is hard to determine the protagonist and antagonist as the narrator does not present any of the characters as being positive or negative.

The plot of "Christian Bérard’’ reaches its climax when the major female character opens her home to others and starts inviting people over to share a meal with her. From that point on, the course of the story changes and the narrator is no longer a lonely woman but rather someone who looks at the future with great faith and hope.

In ‘’Matisse’’ the narrator presents a story about an unnamed character who did something which he was not sure it was good of bad. The uncertainty of the main character is described in the first part of the story and this part is also important because it foreshadows the later debates which will appear in the story between other character who try to figure out if the action of the main character was good or bad.

In the beginning of "How She Bowed to her Brother’’, the narrator claims that the woman always bowed to her brother when he was around. This however is proven to be an understatement when the narrator later admits that the woman decided to stand up to her brother and fight for her rights.

An allusion made in ‘’Idem the Same: A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson’’ is the idea that every man and woman shares a common set of characteristics with other people who have the same sex. Men for example are described as being providers and violent at the same time while women are presented as being nurtures and as having a natural inclination towards gossiping. Thus, when one character claims to be different, the narrator claims this is not possible since every person on this planet is almost the same as the next person sitting next to her or him.

In "If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso’’, the narrator mentions Napoleon a couples of times in the story and calls him as being the ‘’first’’. Later, he is compared and imagined as being just like any other king who came before him and who will come after him. This image, presenting all the kings as a whole is used to transmit the idea that all kings share the same qualities and the same characteristics. Thus, the narrator imagines in this context a series of kings which even though they look different from the outside, they are all the same and have the same core values.

One paradoxical idea appears in "Christian Bérard’’ where the narrator talks at one point about love. In this context, the narrator also mentions language and the power language has when it comes to love. The narrator presents how love can fuel love and how it can make it an integral part in someone’s life. At the same time, almost paradoxically, love is also presented as being the main reason why love dies an why many people are unhappy and miserable.

No parallelism can be found in any of the operas and plays.

We find a personification in the sentence "The difference is spreading’’ in ‘’A Carafe that is a Blind Glass’’.

The plays and the operas are written in a very modernist style, the author refusing to comply to the traditional way of writing plays and operas. Because of this, there are not dramatic devices used in the plays and operas analyzed here.