Amazing house of a retired captain
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was considered the writer's teacher. All the works of Bernard Shaw were not perceived by anyone as being similar to the works of the great innovator of that century - Chekhov. Bernard had his own ideas, in which irony and humor were clearly visible. He said that everything written by him turns out to be incredibly funny because of the reality that is displayed truthfully.
In the work “Heartbreak House,” the characters meet in an amazing house that resembles a ship. Such a strange encounter tears away the masks that people wear in their daily lives. In the end, it turned out that all the heroes, except the owner of this house, are characterized by duality. People hide hypocrisy and lies under masks, and most importantly, complete indifference to loved ones.
An amazing house, similar to a ship in which all events take place, has a unique ability to lead people to the truth. The British are used to keeping all their secrets, but suddenly they begin to turn their whole souls out. They are accustomed to cautious phrases and occasionally throw out sincere characterizations to others and themselves. The author tries to convince readers that the whole point lies in the special aura of the amazing mansion. This is where hearts and dreams are broken.
Critics are confident that the play is a kind of creative verdict on the people of Britain, which took shape on the eve of the First World War. Bernard was able to subtly point out how the life of high society was saturated with lies. The play is considered an outstanding work in English literature. A brief summary of the drama is enough to recognize the full talent of the author.
Brief retelling of the work
At the beginning of the work, Hesion's eldest daughter, also known as Mrs. Hashebye, invited guests to her father's house. Among them:
- Ellie's single friend Dan;
- Mazzini's friend's father Dan;
- millionaire Mangan.
Out of boredom, she came up with an interesting idea to break off the engagement of a couple - young Elia to a millionaire who was old enough to be her father, but saved her ancestor from complete ruin. Hesione is confident that she intends to do the right thing. Also living in the mansion is her husband Hector Heshebay, a handsome man of forty-five years old. At the same time, Ariadne’s younger sister comes to visit the mansion, who, without her father’s permission, married Hastings Hesterode. A father is annoyed by his youngest daughter's wedding and reacts to her as if she were an uninvited guest.
Hesione and her naive desire
Hesiona, before putting her plan into action, agreed on everything with her father. First, she calls her friend Ellie for a frank conversation in order to persuade her to refuse marriage. At the same time, her father talks with the millionaire, urging him to abandon the wedding.
Every guest of the amazing house turns out to be a snob and a liar. Each character is fraught with a plan that is unsafe for others. Captain Chateauvert's mansion forces the characters to confess all their sins, but not through sincere repentance.
Cunning vs. Cunning
Miss Ellie, in a private conversation with her friend, unexpectedly admits that she loves Mark Darili after recently meeting. He made her fall in love with conversations about adventures. While the friends are talking, Hesiona’s husband comes to see them, after which Ellie becomes lost and withdraws into herself, because he is her beloved. Unfaithful Hector, under false names, made acquaintances with young girls and tried to impress with lies. Marriage turned Hector from a charismatic man into a deceitful henpecked man.
Then Hesione's husband begins to flirt with her sister, who is in no way inferior to him in this. Ellie, having learned about the betrayal of her loved one, tries to play a treacherous game. She convinces herself that money is worth getting married for. The girl immediately starts a conversation with the rich man, admiring his generosity towards her family, lulling Mangan’s vigilance. He, under the influence of the strange house and carried away by the conversation, makes a confession and talks about his guilt in her father’s bankruptcy.
Ellie's dad was never a rich man, but he had some talent for running a business. He now has a great chance of becoming a rich man. But his friend Mangan, of course, did not want this and did not allow it.
Mangan and Ellie
The word is not a sparrow; if it flies out, you won’t catch it. The millionaire realized it too late. All his desire to marry a young girl evaporates after showing his cards . Ellie does not miss her point and begins to blackmail him , bringing the rich man to hysterics and using her trump card, hypnotizes the old man, leaving him alone in the chair.
After Elia leaves, Mangan looks very much like a sleeping person, but in reality he is conscious and hears everything. Mazzini, the father of Ellie and Hesion, enters the room where he is, and she convinces him not to give his daughter in marriage out of gratitude to her partner. But Mazzini is not a simple person; in his views, he builds everything against his friend Mangan.
Ellie's father, when communicating with the rich man, pretends to respect him. But he shares with Hesion that he despises the millionaire. Mazzini looks at his daughter's future marriage as an option to gain great wealth. The cynical story of the bride's father is heard by Mangan, who is in a trance of hypnosis.
Ellie returns after a while and brings the old man out of his trance. A range of feelings burst out from him under the influence of the house:
- resentment;
- disappointment;
- anger.
He was completely broken and even cried, which is why Hesiona began to console him. This scene is interrupted by a sudden shot.
Leitmotif of the work
Mazzini leads out the thief he caught in the house at gunpoint. He is Bil Dan, the ex-husband of Hesiona's nanny and also the captain's former boatswain. At the same time, all the characters who are present begin to behave strangely for such a situation. This is another secret of the mysterious house.
Everyone is trying to act and speak out correctly. The thief is not trying to escape and is confident that he wants to surrender to law enforcement after breaking into the mansion. And all the assembled guests, on the contrary, discover their soulfulness and want to let the criminal go, giving him money to learn another job. But the captain, having learned about the criminal who had robbed him before, locks him in the room.
The captain and Ellie are left alone after everyone has left. He tells her about his difficult life, about forgotten dreams and unexpectedly instructs the girl to agree to a wedding in order to get rid of poverty.
A little later, all the visitors gather near the mansion. To their surprise, they are in an upbeat and positive mood. Unexpectedly, Mangan admits that he is not the owner of the money he spends, but only works as a manager for richer people.
Ellie immediately declares that she is not going to marry him, since she is more attracted to Captain Chateauvert. Hesione supports her friend.
Apocalyptic motif
The phone rings in the house. Law enforcement agencies warned about a possible bombing and asked to extinguish everything in the house. But the captain does the opposite and turns on even more light, removing the curtains from the windows. No one leaves the house except Mangan and the thief, who hide in a hole filled with sand. They don't know that the captain has dynamite hidden in it.
A German fighter plane dives into the house and drops a bomb, which falls into the very pit, detonating the dynamite. The plane flies away, Mangan and the thief die, and sadness is visible on the faces of Hesione and her husband. They themselves wanted to be killed by this bomb. Hesiona discovers inspiration in herself and wishes that the bombing would take place tomorrow, destroying her father’s house, her father and husband, and herself.
When analyzing the drama "Heartbreak House", the reader understands that the people of Britain before the war had no hope. All the characters gathered in the estate have thoughts of suicide. The play is distinguished by its philosophical vision of the world and reflects the complex inner world of the characters in the face of the impending catastrophe - the First World War.
The house where hearts break
The action takes place on a September evening in an English provincial house, shaped like a ship, for its owner, the gray-haired old man Captain Chateauvert, sailed the seas all his life. In addition to the captain, his daughter Hesiona, a very beautiful forty-five-year-old woman, and her husband Hector Heshebay live in the house. Ellie, a young attractive girl, her father Mazzini Dan and Mangan, an elderly industrialist whom Ellie is going to marry, also come there, invited by Hesiona. Lady Utherward also arrives, Hesiona's younger sister, who has been absent from her home for the last twenty-five years, since she lived with her husband in all the colonies of the British crown, where he was governor. Captain Chateauvert at first does not recognize or pretends that he does not recognize his daughter in Lady Utherward, which greatly upsets her.
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Hesiona invited Ellie, her father and Mangan to her place in order to upset her marriage, because she does not want the girl to marry an unloved person because of money and the gratitude that she feels for him for the fact that Mangan once helped her father to avoid complete ruin. In a conversation with Ellie, Hesiona finds out that the girl is in love with a certain Mark Darili, whom she met recently and who told her about his extraordinary adventures, which won her over. During their conversation, Hector, Hesione's husband, a handsome, well-preserved fifty-year-old man, enters the room. Ellie suddenly falls silent, turns pale and staggers. This is the one who introduced himself to her as Mark Darnley. Hesiona kicks her husband out of the room to bring Ellie to her senses. Having come to her senses, Ellie feels that in an instant all her girlish illusions burst, and along with them, her heart broke.
—At Hesiona’s request, Ellie tells her everything about Mangan, about how he once gave her father a large sum to prevent the bankruptcy of his enterprise. When the company did go bankrupt, Mangan helped her father get out of such a difficult situation by purchasing the entire production and giving him the position of manager. Enter Captain Chateauvert and Mangan. At first glance, the captain understands the nature of the relationship between Ellie and Mangan. He dissuades the latter from getting married because of the large age difference and adds that his daughter decided to ruin their wedding at all costs.
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Hector meets Lady Utherword for the first time, whom he has never seen before. Both make a huge impression on each other, and each tries to lure the other into their networks. Lady Utherward, as Hector admits to his wife, has the family devilish charm of the Chateaures. However, he is not capable of falling in love with her, or indeed with any other woman. According to Hesiona, the same can be said about her sister. Throughout the evening, Hector and Lady Utterward play cat and mouse with each other.
Mangan wants to discuss his relationship with Ellie. Ellie tells him that she agrees to marry him, citing his kind heart in the conversation. Mangan has a fit of frankness, and he tells the girl how he ruined her father. Ellie doesn't care anymore. Mangan tries to back down. He is no longer eager to take Ellie as his wife. However, Ellie threatens that if he decides to break off the engagement, it will only get worse for him. She blackmails him.
He collapses into a chair, exclaiming that his brain can't handle it. Ellie strokes him from his forehead to his ears and hypnotizes him. During the next scene, Mangan, seemingly asleep, actually hears everything, but cannot move, no matter how hard those around him try to rouse him.
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Hesiona convinces Mazzini Dan not to marry his daughter to Mangan. Mazzini expresses everything he thinks about him: that he knows nothing about machines, is afraid of workers, and cannot manage them. He is such a baby that he doesn’t even know what to eat or drink. Ellie will create a regime for him. She will still make him dance. He is not sure that it is better to live with the person you love, but who has been at someone else’s beck and call all his life. Ellie enters and swears to her father that she will never do anything that she would not want and would not consider necessary to do for her own good.
Mangan wakes up when Ellie brings him out of his hypnosis. He is furious at everything he has heard about himself. Hesion, who all evening wanted to switch Mangan’s attention from Ellie to herself, seeing his tears and reproaches, understands that his heart also broke in this house. And she had no idea that Mangan even had it. She tries to console him. Suddenly a shot is heard in the house. Mazzini brings into the living room a thief whom he had just nearly shot. The thief wants to be reported to the police so that he can atone for his guilt and clear his conscience. However, no one wants to participate in a lawsuit. The thief is informed that he can go, and they give him money so that he can acquire a new profession. When he is already at the door, Captain Chateauvert enters and recognizes him as Bill Dan, his former boatswain, who once robbed him. He orders the maid to lock the thief in the back room.
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When everyone leaves, Ellie talks to the captain, who advises her not to marry Mangan and not to let her fear of poverty rule her life. He tells her about his destiny, about his cherished desire to achieve the seventh degree of contemplation. Ellie feels unusually good with him.
Everyone gathers in the garden in front of the house. It's a beautiful, quiet, moonless night. Everyone feels that Captain Chateauver's house is a strange house. In it, people behave differently than is customary. Hesiona, in front of everyone, begins to ask her sister her opinion about whether Ellie should marry Mangan just because of his money. Mangan is in terrible confusion. He doesn't understand how you can say such a thing. Then, angry, he loses his caution and reports that he does not have his own money and never had it, that he simply takes money from syndicates, shareholders and other useless capitalists and puts the factories into operation - for this he is paid a salary. Everyone begins to discuss Mangan in front of him, which is why he completely loses his head and wants to strip naked, because, in his opinion, morally everyone in this house has already been naked.
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Ellie reports that she will still not be able to marry Mangan, since half an hour ago her marriage to Captain Chatover took place in heaven. She gave her broken heart and her healthy soul to the captain, her spiritual husband and father. Hesiona finds that Ellie acted unusually smartly. As they continue their conversation, a dull explosion is heard in the distance. Then the police call and ask you to turn off the lights. The light goes out. However, Captain Chateauvert lights it again and tears off the curtains from all the windows so that the house can be better seen. Everyone is excited. The thief and Mangan do not want to follow to the shelter in the basement, but climb into the sand pit, where the captain stores dynamite, although they do not know about it. The rest remain in the house, not wanting to hide. Ellie even asks Hector to set the house on fire himself. However, there is no longer time for this.
A terrible explosion shakes the earth. Broken glass flies out of the windows with a clatter. The bomb hit the sand pit directly. Mangan and the thief die. The plane flies past. There is no more danger. The house-ship remains unharmed. Ellie is in despair about this. Hector, who spent his entire life there as Hesione’s husband or, more precisely, her lapdog, also regrets that the house is intact. Disgust is written all over his face. Hesione experienced wonderful sensations. She hopes that maybe tomorrow the planes will fly again.
