"THE ROAD TO MECCA" (ATHOL FUGARD).   Term Paper ID:26756 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Uses character of Miss Helen to examine biopsychosocial issues which are part of the aging process in women & role of the social worker in that process.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Uses character of Miss Helen to examine biopsychosocial issues which are part of the aging process in women & role of the social worker in that process. Paper Introduction: This paper uses the character of Miss Helen in Athol Fugard's moving play, The Road to Mecca, to examine many of the biopsychosocial systems and issues that are part of the aging process in women. The individual grows, develops, and ages within the wider environment of the surrounding community. This extended system limits, influences, and affects the ways in which its members grow up and grow old, and Miss Helen provides an especially intriguing case study of this process at work. Many of the issues raised by her case are useful in understanding the social worker's role in analyzing and designing a plan for care for older, widowed women in the community. Her case also suggests some of the kinds of clues that the caring, perceptive social worker might look for in studying and serving older individuals. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. part of the aging process in women The individual study of this process at work Many of theissues of clues that thecaring perceptive social worker knew the woman only by her reputation story Miss Helen is still alive a much younger friend a teacher discovers that Miss Helen is about to in which the larger systems of the community and a few years before the Union of SouthAfrica was formally churchgoer Fifteen years before the play mourned his passing widowhood gave her personal satisfaction but separated her fromher She stopped going to church fearing thatshe would lose her long time She is also suffering fromarthritis letter to Elsa was a cry for withdrawn from most of those around her maintaining regular contact of the larger community of NewBethesda if only because p Although Miss Helenhas little direct contact people with whom she has not spokendirectly is typical of many older thetown For example the nearest doctor is in the much is physically isolated it is the restrictionsof apartheid that separate her from her black age difference between the two women isalso a factor but show the ethnic segregation that Miss Helen'scommunity heads the local church which is governed by important job as asystem is to maintain stability angels and plaster saints found inside the church grounds and mustwork to try to halt Miss Helen's disturbing challenge to alone in the dark B For her growing upand gaining control them lit as long as she liked she feltenormous power described her reaction as freezing what she was actually feeling She and grief they are less likely to consider the not explore the possibility that theymay also result experience may blind social workers to considered her case in more changes that beingleft suddenly alone might bring but she was herself seen her husband's death only as a widow at a relatively early age Helson points out research studies on the issues andeffects Erikson have argued that middle age is a period in the common culture Miss Helen herself sees it are her legacy to the community has found of assuring her immortality andpassing sufficient body of life experience from which they can drawtheir McQuaide observes midlife isfrequently a time of rethinking which can other women her age have sense of trust between the women that own world Fugard describes Elsa as perhaps because of her own difficulties is able to offer her andembattled and her fight to help the older course Elsa is Miss Helen's friend not her social For example she accepts Miss Helen'sexplanation about the new that Marius may be right about Miss Helen's Marius preventher from considering Miss Helen's case objectively She ownpreconceptions Wayne E Oates argues to Mecca is a dramaticcapsulization of this process as darkness As in many of Oates' case histories inspired them and most ofthe people play offers a microcosm of the bereavement her to begin to accept the loss of her and this struggle leads to a catharsis forthem both Miss within the wider community Because it Helen Martins' suicide andsuggest a important case for social work study set ofchallenges and problems Elsa as many as percent of all believeshe is in love with Miss Helen sees challenges pressures and complicationsof the aging process Her to behelped by glasses and Social Casework The Journal of Contemporary Social Work The community and the social worker pp J B James Multiple paths of midlife development Hanna Eds The aging family Newvisions in theory dreams at the endof life Mecca to examine many of waysin which its members grow up and grow old and designing a plan for care for older widowed women on an actual person Helen Martins who lived fantasticallandscape Martins eventually committed suicide by drinking lye whichcorroded have beensaved The play takes place arrived unexpectedly Elsa is upset by a dark despairing letter asenior care residence The play reveals the time of the play which is set in Miss She married a man named Stefanus the house a respectableincome and the realization that never before realized she had threw stones at her yard and her eyesight has begun to fail and personalhygiene and her sculpture which she needs Miss Helen is in many ways a typical drive away and Katrina a local girl Defining Communities observes that locality-based communities of the details of their lives as they are of the wider systemoutside her gates In ways self-imposed but she is alsorestricted by transportation limitations drive or even own acar welfare or governmental handouts but sheremains subject equals with Miss Helen an impossibility to restrict herdealings with Katrina and apparently enjoy one another'scompany Even her relationship but who are helping to influence her fate to the church So many in a foreign and therefore subversive religion The churchcouncil acting funeral Candles have a specialsignificance for her reminding her of owninterpretation of the event p For Miss Helen having the light at night Once she realized that she she accidentally set fire to her that moment instead was a thrill ofpower that temporarily overrode sad and stressful was also liberating in acompletely unexpected instance argues that all losses of any kind the conventional expectation that the death that grief unhinged Miss Helen rather than freeing indication that she would soon need institutionalization She resolve reformulate and transform her loss Conway p interpreted by the individual client not simply howthey ought has entered what mostsociologists agree to be the chronological period theories about this period of surrounding culture Helson p While MissHelen's Her sculpture is all about light and by leaving something of herself behind Erikson's term is generativity artists are able to create theirmost important enduring works only contemplation and self-examination that often p Miss Helen has dealt with this identity was thefirst person who truly understood and her willingness to look at the sculpture as art along in her personal development restrictions of apartheid that she sees as limiting herabilities she broke off eventually and which resulted inan abortion She and investigate her own feelings what is best for Miss Helen harmless accident When she finds outthat they are instead proof the lossof independence they represent not heareverything that the older woman is to reconcile what they were actually able to accomplishwith so long and the inspirations that eventuallyallowed into reality The sculptural confections she hasproduced do lasting legacy she has created doesnot completely mirror actas though nothing has happened world that the elderly artist has created at the end of the play she isbeginning to place over a year or more He dramatizing this casewas the opportunity to explore an important men they represent a greaterproportion of represent thepredominant caregiver As Nancy L Kriseman and vulnerable to the pressures ofher Fugard has created a complex and while following some patterns is alsounique statistic References Conway P Losses pp Itasca IL F E Peacock Fellin P Group Helson R The self in Lexington Kriseman N L Claes J A Gender issues and in working toward women's well-being Families in Society The Journal and reality pp New York Brunner This paper uses the character of Miss grows develops and ages within the wider environment of the raised by her case are useful in understanding might look for in studying and servingolder individuals Fugard in the town as aneccentric artist who had turned at the end of the with radical ideas and a closerelationship with give in to pressurefrom Marius Byleveld the local pastor thechurch are attempting to influence and change her to meet established in and she grew up when Miss Helen was in her early s the chance to discover herself She began to create community Most of her neighbors were puzzled inspiration if she did not begin each new which makes trying to sculpt or in fact do other help but MissHelen is unsure of the only with Marius Elsa who she still lives within the town limits andremains within with most of the others living near in years Marius and Katrina serve as a two-way line womenliving alone as Fellin Defining Communities points out pp larger town of Graaff-Reinet an hour nevertheless part of larger systems Miss Helen is well off neighbors Katrina is black which Miss Helen has not let age be a barrier imposes preventing a true friendship to develop an areacouncil and answers to a much bigger organization and equilibrium p and Miss Helen'saberrant artistic expressions she calls the whole project her the status quo Miss Helen's original artistic inspiration came James notes thattraumatic events disrupting the all-important attachment relationship of her life came to Lighting candles helped her begin to regain a bodilyresponse to fear connected with her childhood trauma p is clearer on her feelings the night of her ways in which deathand loss can also free in feelings of relief freedom and self-revelation asStefanus' the potential forpositive side effects as well Marius depth they might have recognized her sudden also exploring and delightingin the freedom that her solitude negative event As withattachment the social worker must attempt She was by mostdefinitions middle aged and at of middle age have not been sufficient which theindividual becomes especially interested in playing as her way ofilluminating possibilities and communicating Her sculptures are her children They on what she has learned about life to inspiration Miss Helen's burst of creativity sometimes result in feelings ofpanic as the individual attempts to also tried by exploring her artisticimpulses and learning neither had beenable to find with other people Elsa's understanding being in her late s in life Elsa has been incontinual battle blackstudents She has also been involved in an unhappy woman becomes a personal battle She becomes the kind worker whichis fortunate as she commits curtains the burned wall and the scars on physical decline andneed for supervision In tries to get MissHelen to tell her that late middle age and old age oftenprovide Miss Helen looks back at the fear Miss Helen has spent many around her find them to be process that Oates outlines p When dreams and theisolation that Miss Helen has brought on Helen begins to face the pain and memories is a drama the playwright can simplify much more hopeful ending to in partbecause of her gender and Elsa's relationship to her can stand for the younger social worker whois caregiversfor aging adults are women p Miss her as a helpless woman in need oflooking after and case serves as a dramatic reminder to the arthritis medication but she must be Fellin P Defining communities and community competence Itasca IL F E Peacock Fugard A The road pp Chicago University of Chicago James B practice and reality pp New York Brunner Mazel In T D Hargrave S M Hanna Eds the biopsychosocial systems andissues that are Miss Helen provides anespecially intriguing case inthe community Her case also suggests some of the kinds in the remote town of New Bethesda in SouthAfrica Fugard her intestines and killed her In Fugard's fictionalization ofher one night in Miss Helen's house as Elsa Barlow Miss Helen sent her On herarrival Elsa much about Miss Helen's isolatedstate and the ways Helen is in herlate sixties She was probably born andsettled into the conventional life of housewife and ardent she had never loved her husband Althoughshe Her artwork gave her deep whisperedstories about her being a witch and she has not had anartistic inspiration for a illuminates by candlelight has madeher home a fire hazard Her older client needing assistancefrom her community She has who helps with thehousekeeping Nevertheless she is part are definedas much by geography as by social interaction hers She is able to give Elsa gossip about her physical isolation Miss Helen and the limited resources of Although the community New Bethesda to the laws of her government including inSouth Africa in the s The What Fellin Systems Perspective callssocial mapping p would with Marius is part of a larger structuralsystem Marius As Fellin Systems Perspectives notes the community's most of her sculptures look like mockeriesof the cherubic on its unspoken mandate to maintain public harmony her relationship with her mother andher fear of being left the candletaken away at bedtime left her terrified and helpless could light as manycandles as she wanted and keep curtains onenight James would have her instinct for self preservation MissHelen may not herself know way While many sociologists have studied the impactof loss result in someform of grieving p yet does of a spouse is anentirely negative her todiscover her artistic side Had they was indeed grieving for her husband's death and the much more quickly than might have been possible hadshe to be defined Miss Helen became a defined as old age AsRavenna life p Both C G Jung and Erik neighbors believe that her sculpture is actually an attempt toundermine seeing and these fanciful figures Helson p and Miss Helen'ssculptures are the method she in middle age after they haveaccumulated a occursduring middle age As Sharon panic in a waythat many the beauty of Miss Helen's sculpture This engendered a not asa symbol that threatened her than many other womenher age as a teacher and the possibilities she sees in Miss Helen an older version of herself alone in the course ofhelping her client Of that she fails touncover all the relevant facts of a near-tragedy she is reluctant toconclude as well as her dislike of actually saying because of her what they hoped to achieve The Road her to try to escape from the not always match the visions that the dreams that inspired it The Elsa helps her through the anestheticperiod forcing andthe reality that she must face consider the future and her place isalso able to take the true facts of the case relationship between two strongwomen Miss Helen is an the senior population as well as a different Jacalyn A Claes point out research suggests that community Marius whatever his true feelings about her Elsa realistic picture ofan older woman facing many of the and must be evaluated separately Miss Helen may be able and grief in old age Systems perspectives for understandingcommunities In P Fellin Ed middle age In M E Lachman eldercare In T D Hargrave S M of Contemporary Human Services Oates W E Reconciling with unfulfilled Mazel Helen in Athol Fugard's movingplay The Road to surroundingcommunity This extended system limits influences and affects the the social worker'srole in analyzing and based his play The Road to Mecca her house and grounds into a play suggesting theplaywright's hope that with caring intervention she might the reclusive older woman has to leave her home and move into the needs of thesystem At as part of thewhite Afrikaner ruling class Stefanus died unexpectedly She was left with her sculptures drawing on an artistic inspiration shehad frightened or angeredby her strange sculptures Children work as soonas she envisioned it in her mind However householdchores painful and difficult She is neglecting her health kind of help that she now lives in CapeTown a hour the consciousness of her neighbors P Fellin her she isnonetheless as aware ofcommunication maintaining Miss Helen's membership in Her separation is in some or so away and Miss Helen does not enoughfinancially not to need state makes a true friendship of in herrelationship with the much-younger Elsa while it continues between twowomen who see each other regularly one whose members havenever met Miss Helen are a threat to the community's balance and particularly Mecca pointing the way to the mostsacred city from a candle Mariuslit the night of her husband's canhave lifelong consequences and are triggered by the child's be symbolized by her ability tocontrol the power shehad lost as a child When However what she may have been experiencing at husband's funeral The experience while the individual from significant burdens Pat Conway for death does for Miss Helen In fact and others within the communityappear to believe sculptural activity as a good sign rather than an allowed her In some respects thisfreedom allowed her to to understand how significantevents are seen and the time of the play to confirm or deny many ofthe most prominent a role in thecontinuity of the the artistic light she hasdiscovered within herself are her way of assuring hermemory among future generations subsequent generations AsHelson points out pp many was released by her husband's deathand by the kind of understand the person he or she hasbecome to express herself through her work Elsa came from her ownsearch for self but she appears to bea little further with representatives of her own community system fightingagainst the love affair with amarried man an affair which of advocate that McQuaide champions pp willing to share some professional blunders She has become soconvinced that she knows herhands as all being evidence of a fact Elsa's prejudice against senior care facilities and what she really wants to do but she does individuals with the opportunity to review their dreams andexpectations and of thedarkness that trapped her for years trying to turn herdreams for her world strange frightening monsters Sheis now confronting the fact that the Elsa arrives Miss Helen is trying to herself as a result The twostruggle between the fantasy of her pastthat brought her to this moment and and streamline agrieving process that would actually take the story One of the challenges that interested Fugard in is also significant Since women tend to live longer than faced with many similar cases but she can also Helen's gender also makes her more incapable of real independence In Miss Helen socialwork student that each such case considered asan individual not a In P Fellin Ed The community and the social worker to Mecca New York TheatreCommunications Handbook for treatment of attachment-traumaproblems in children New York McQuaide S Discontent at midlife Issues andconsiderations The aging family Newvisions in theory practice part of the aging process in women The individual study of this process at work Many of theissues of clues that thecaring perceptive social worker knew the woman only by her reputation story Miss Helen is still alive a much younger friend a teacher discovers that Miss Helen is about to in which the larger systems of the community and a few years before the Union of SouthAfrica was formally churchgoer Fifteen years before the play mourned his passing widowhood gave her personal satisfaction but separated her fromher She stopped going to church fearing thatshe would lose her long time She is also suffering fromarthritis letter to Elsa was a cry for withdrawn from most of those around her maintaining regular contact of the larger community of NewBethesda if only because p Although Miss Helenhas little direct contact people with whom she has not spokendirectly is typical of many older thetown For example the nearest doctor is in the much is physically isolated it is the restrictionsof apartheid that separate her from her black age difference between the two women isalso a factor but show the ethnic segregation that Miss Helen'scommunity heads the local church which is governed by important job as asystem is to maintain stability angels and plaster saints found inside the church grounds and mustwork to try to halt Miss Helen's disturbing challenge to alone in the dark B For her growing upand gaining control them lit as long as she liked she feltenormous power described her reaction as freezing what she was actually feeling She and grief they are less likely to consider the not explore the possibility that theymay also result experience may blind social workers to considered her case in more changes that beingleft suddenly alone might bring but she was herself seen her husband's death only as a widow at a relatively early age Helson points out research studies on the issues andeffects Erikson have argued that middle age is a period in the common culture Miss Helen herself sees it are her legacy to the community has found of assuring her immortality andpassing sufficient body of life experience from which they can drawtheir McQuaide observes midlife isfrequently a time of rethinking which can other women her age have sense of trust between the women that own world Fugard describes Elsa as perhaps because of her own difficulties is able to offer her andembattled and her fight to help the older course Elsa is Miss Helen's friend not her social For example she accepts Miss Helen'sexplanation about the new that Marius may be right about Miss Helen's Marius preventher from considering Miss Helen's case objectively She ownpreconceptions Wayne E Oates argues to Mecca is a dramaticcapsulization of this process as darkness As in many of Oates' case histories inspired them and most ofthe people play offers a microcosm of the bereavement her to begin to accept the loss of her and this struggle leads to a catharsis forthem both Miss within the wider community Because it Helen Martins' suicide andsuggest a important case for social work study set ofchallenges and problems Elsa as many as percent of all believeshe is in love with Miss Helen sees challenges pressures and complicationsof the aging process Her to behelped by glasses and Social Casework The Journal of Contemporary Social Work The community and the social worker pp J B James Multiple paths of midlife development Hanna Eds The aging family Newvisions in theory dreams at the endof life Mecca to examine many of waysin which its members grow up and grow old and designing a plan for care for older widowed women on an actual person Helen Martins who lived fantasticallandscape Martins eventually committed suicide by drinking lye whichcorroded have beensaved The play takes place arrived unexpectedly Elsa is upset by a dark despairing letter asenior care residence The play reveals the time of the play which is set in Miss She married a man named Stefanus the house a respectableincome and the realization that never before realized she had threw stones at her yard and her eyesight has begun to fail and personalhygiene and her sculpture which she needs Miss Helen is in many ways a typical drive away and Katrina a local girl Defining Communities observes that locality-based communities of the details of their lives as they are of the wider systemoutside her gates In ways self-imposed but she is alsorestricted by transportation limitations drive or even own acar welfare or governmental handouts but sheremains subject equals with Miss Helen an impossibility to restrict herdealings with Katrina and apparently enjoy one another'scompany Even her relationship but who are helping to influence her fate to the church So many in a foreign and therefore subversive religion The churchcouncil acting funeral Candles have a specialsignificance for her reminding her of owninterpretation of the event p For Miss Helen having the light at night Once she realized that she she accidentally set fire to her that moment instead was a thrill ofpower that temporarily overrode sad and stressful was also liberating in acompletely unexpected instance argues that all losses of any kind the conventional expectation that the death that grief unhinged Miss Helen rather than freeing indication that she would soon need institutionalization She resolve reformulate and transform her loss Conway p interpreted by the individual client not simply howthey ought has entered what mostsociologists agree to be the chronological period theories about this period of surrounding culture Helson p While MissHelen's Her sculpture is all about light and by leaving something of herself behind Erikson's term is generativity artists are able to create theirmost important enduring works only contemplation and self-examination that often p Miss Helen has dealt with this identity was thefirst person who truly understood and her willingness to look at the sculpture as art along in her personal development restrictions of apartheid that she sees as limiting herabilities she broke off eventually and which resulted inan abortion She and investigate her own feelings what is best for Miss Helen harmless accident When she finds outthat they are instead proof the lossof independence they represent not heareverything that the older woman is to reconcile what they were actually able to accomplishwith so long and the inspirations that eventuallyallowed into reality The sculptural confections she hasproduced do lasting legacy she has created doesnot completely mirror actas though nothing has happened world that the elderly artist has created at the end of the play she isbeginning to place over a year or more He dramatizing this casewas the opportunity to explore an important men they represent a greaterproportion of represent thepredominant caregiver As Nancy L Kriseman and vulnerable to the pressures ofher Fugard has created a complex and while following some patterns is alsounique statistic References Conway P Losses pp Itasca IL F E Peacock Fellin P Group Helson R The self in Lexington Kriseman N L Claes J A Gender issues and in working toward women's well-being Families in Society The Journal and reality pp New York Brunner If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.