Night, Mother by Marsha Norman

Fellysia:

In Marsha Norman’s Night Mother, I learn about the danger that a feeling of alienation, abandonment, and estrangement can bring to an individual. Jesse chooses to kill herself because of the aforementioned reasons as she feels the need to take control of her life after being in the shadow of her mom for so long. Her epileptic self constraints her from leading a normal life that she feels entrapped at a house with a nagging mother; a mother who wants her daughter to mirror her in order to salvage her. However, her notion of saving her daughter’s seemingly troubled life (she’s a widower with a criminal son) does not go hand in hand with Jesse’s perception that she becomes more burdened instead of liberated. Thus, Jesse turns inward for solace that solitude becomes her best friend. When running away for the real world is not enough anymore to give her peacefulness, she decides suicide is the best solution for the feeling of emptiness and hollowness that she constantly feels. In this regard, Jesse wants to exert her power by taking her own life at a time she considers best so that for once, she has a say over her life. Her mother, who has been pretending to be dependent on Jesse, by making Jesse do so many things on her behalf, thinks that keeping her daughter preoccupied will make her feel better that there is an inverse role of mother/daughter relationship being portrayed in the play. The conventional belief of mother as the nurturer is shattered by the fact that Jesse is the one who takes care of her mother and even before her suicide, she still tries to make sure her mother daily necessities are fully prepared or taken care of. The mother here becomes more like the child instead. Unfortunately, these efforts to make Jesse turn into more like her mother precipitates Jesse’s plunging into the pit of depression. From this, I see that sometimes what one deems best for another is not necessarily good for that person. We are sometimes too vain to think that our approach in life is superior than others that applying it or expecting it to be done by others is also reasonable. Oftentimes, we forget that each individual is unique in their ways of thinking and views of life that such generalisation will bring about a lot of damages, in this case, the escalating severity of Jesse’s depression which leads to her suicide.

Veronica:

I really enjoyed reading the script of Night, Mother because the language is quite easy to understand. Compare to many other scripts that had been discussed at class from the first meeting, this script is the most enjoyable for me.. Also, the story is interesting because it is so uncommon to have a relaxing feeling for people who had decided to do a suicide. From the very beginning of the story, the author really attracts the reader's attention to find out what actually happen to jessie as the one who decided to do a suicide.
From this story, i can learn some important points. First of all, what i learnt from Thelma's side is that we cannot push someone to become like what we want. Sometimes, our wish or wishes do not always be the best for the other people. So, we cannot push the person. Thelma did not have a certain bad purposes about what she did to Jessie. I believe that she did it for the goods of Jessie. She did not want Jessie to have the same condition as her. Unfortunately, Thelma did not realize it that actually what she did to Jessie affects Jessie's condition. I can say that Jessie is like being prisoned by her mother. She cannot express her own feelings. She became someone who just accept everything, for example when Thelma arranged the marriage of Jessie and Cecil. Thelma should stop doing everything that she does to Jessie before Jessie decided to end her own life. I think by stopping her attitudes, it can save Jessie's life. In this case, Thelma failed to realize the bad effects or the danger of her chosen path for Jessie's life.
what i learnt from Jessie's side is that we have to be optimistic about our life. I know that it is not easy to overcome the problems that Jessie's have. But what i can give my suggestion is that although she has a miserable life, she still need to fight for her life. As we know that we cannot just give up with our life because of the problems that happen in our life. It is because, in fact, problems always come into our life. Actually this is the interesting part in our life. Without problems, i believe that our life becomes so boring because nothing special happen. Therefore, we cannot end our life because of problems. We have to fight them and have the optimistic feeling that we will be the winner over the problems itself.

kharis :

the story presented by night mother is easy to comprehend, yet complex. the story of a girl and her mother, and how the girl wanted to die badly is an interesting story. in the end, the girl dies because she wanted to, even from the beginning of the story, her intention to die is stated clearly by strong claim about she will die by morning. from this point, perhaps we can say that, "it's not right, how can you kill yourself while your mother need you? or who gives you the right to kill yourself jessie? or you don't have to do this jessie, i don't like the tragic ending, bla bla bla. but, from the story, we can draw a conclusion that, jessie's decision to kill herself is a complex dilemma. the decision made by jessie to die and leave her miserable life is controversial. from this play, i learn to be more careful in giving my opinion about justifying a suicidal act. i always thought that people who kill themselves for any reasons can't be justified as a righteous act. for any reasons, whether you are lonely, your life is miserable, your family is dysfunctional, and it seems that you have the right to freed yourself from the pains you are having now by killing yourself, it's always a wrong thing to do. from this deep and complex story of a daughter and a mother, i learn that the decision to kill oneself is not as easy as that. from the sorrowful story, i shaken to think that sometimes, suicide can be considered as one out of many effective solutions. an example given by marsha norman about how suicide can be sometimes the right thing to do has giving a new insight to me. it's really a complex thing, although i strongly believe that still, killing yourself is a wrong thing to do. perhaps, i sound like contradict myself with my previous statments, what i'm trying to say is, suicide is not right, and in the case of jessie, it's always not right. but, the reasons that trigger someone to perform a suicidal act can be very complex and making it difficult to justify whether it's the BEST CHOICE (although it's wrong) or a blunder..