What are the element of determinism in the play 'night, Mother by Masha Norman?
There's an element of determinism in all tragedies; a sense in which the events unfold naturally according to some inner logic, and about which human action can do nothing. To some extent, the actions of Jessie in 'night, Mother represent an attack on that very notion. Her self-inflicted death stands as a bold assertion of free will, the conscious making of an existential decision that defies the inheritance of her past. As part of her valiant but ultimately doomed attempts to dissuade her daughter from killing herself, Thelma reveals that Jessie's epileptic seizures are a genetic inheritance from her father and not as a result of falling from a horse as she'd always believed.
Yet Jessie remains unpersuaded. Her mother's confession about the origin of her seizures merely serves to confirm her overriding conviction that the contours of her empty, miserable life have been established since birth and simply cannot be changed. Her conscious decision to end her own life is a way of fighting back against the dictates of a life seemingly fated to drag on without hope or opportunity. In taking responsibility for her own demise, Jessie challenges the very idea of determinism and, with her last act on earth, attempts to refute it thus.
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