Pris's thoughts on Hungry

While reading hungry again, I realized that I had missed a lot of things the previous time..
Its difficult to extract all the main issues because there are so many. And even when I identified them, it wasn’t easy putting them in words..

1) Death- does it solve the problem to the pain in life? (30)

2) Artists- Do they have to appear strange and measure their success based on the impression they leave behind?(39)

3) Abortion- Do we ever consider the baby as a living being with feelings? Or the situation of single unmarried mothers?

4) Taking for granted things that we cannot explain, like birth. (41)

5) Knowledge had replaced wisdom. We don’t want to think, we just want to know, and then blindly believe. (44)

6) Individualism- the fight for survival (50). The willingness to do something only when you get something out of it; like praying. (44)

7) The diff between truth (what a person believes in, no limitations as to the time zone) and reality (What one can detect using our five senses, things that are happening in the PRESENT). In TODAYS world, truth=reality. There is no faith, no belief; just proof.

8) Logical reasoning behind every action, so much so that we forget that it was once enjoyable. Eating oranges. (52)

9) Knowledge is limited and cannot answer some questions. Wisdom doesn’t answer it for you wither but at least it helps you cope with it.

10) Will we ever learn from our mistakes?
When alive each of the characters experienced pain----They wanted to escape the pain and so they killed themselves.-------IN Purgatory, they are STILL in pain, though of a different type.----Want to get rid of the pain--- They choose between Heaven & Hell
BUT: they don’t know what will come out of it either. Will it be painful? Even death can’t tell you! So was Sarah’s choice to cease to exist the only one that showed signs of learning from past experiences?


QUESTIONS-
1) Why did Sarah start eating shit claiming that she could go back? Is she trying to go through her past again? Quite literally at that! She says that she's going back. What is that suppose to mean? Any ideas?
2) How/why did Mug die? Where does he decide to go? Heaven or hell or a new life?
3) Why didnt Gek get reborn? Didnt she want to live again knowing that life didnt have to be perfect?


WEEK 1 WORK
1) The main issue of my character- Finding the answers to the purpose of existence.
2) Link to all other characters- Everyone is trying to find purpose and meaning not just in their past (when they were alive) but also in their present (in purgatory).
3) I think the best theme that we can go with is still the one about how we never really appreciate and live in the present instead we sit and spin our heads with questions about existance or sulk about the past and how we didnt use our time right. The amzing thing is that we dont learn, because ultimately were still wasting the present thinking about the past.
4) I think it's unifying because-
(i) Everyone is living in the past, trying to figure out what went wrong and how they can set things right if ever.
(ii) They STILL dont know what their future holds for them (what they will be reborn as/how heaven and hell will be like) and yet just as they did when they were alive, they go willingly towards an unknown future. The same 'mistake' repeated.
(iii) It ties in with greed.

Boo's thoughts on Hungry

List down all the issues that it deals with:

- People often start to appreciate something only when it is gone
- We always forget to look at the simplest meaning of things.
- People turn to death as an escape.
- We want knowledge more than wisdom in this generation.

Main issue for Muichoo:

- She thought that death is an escape but came to realize that it just reminds her more of her baby. She was very scared of her unpredictable future, that's why she killed herself. After dying, she regrets of her death and treats Baby very well to compensate her guilt. This links to people trying to compensate even though it's too late? (got an expression problem here)

Linkage with other characters:

-What's similar is that we used death as an escape only to learn that it opens us to our problems. We face our problems directly cause' there's no other way to escape from it. Example, for Sarah, she has to face the fact that "Books are useless for the most important answers" and for Gek, "It's the stupidest thing you can do, killing yourself."

Unifying theme:

- People often start to appreciate something only when it is gone
All of us started to regret killing ourselves after we're dead. We all wanted to live again. Even after trying many ways to convince ourselves that death is alright, we all end up appreciating life more. For Muichoo, she appreciated her body ("But once I got meat. Very nice meat.") and her baby as she takes care of Baby in her death.

Mark's thoughts on Hungry.

Putting it simply and at first glance, Hungry deals with the main issue about what we miss about life after it is taken away from us. It is the extreme case of what we deal with everyday. We always regret and miss something only after it is gone. Perhaps it is a loved one or our previous position. We are only hungry for something we don't have, or no longer have, much like the characters in the play. What we once had, we hunger for it again even though we once cast it aside or took for granted. This theme is explored differently with each character.

In the character of Mug, we see the case of one being brought down from a high position. Having been a Sri Vijayan God, Mug now serves as an anonymous deity for students who are sitting for their exams. A kind of solace that something will help them. However, Mug wants to go back to the times where he was recognized and praised in glory instead of being forgotten and old. He has fallen so much that he even asks himself where he is "God" in the first scene he appears in. In truth he WAS a God but wants to be a God again. His confrontation with Death shows most clearly his hunger for people to "need" him. He has become so hungry to satiate his desire for glory that his obsession has caused him to go slightly crazy. All he does hear nowadays, after all, are students reciting the mantra during their studying, thus the incorporation of many scientific and historical facts in his speech. In this way, we see Mug's hunger for lost-glory and how this hunger made him... well... a Mug.

Baby, on the other hand, explores the other end of the table, where life is yet to be experienced. It should be noted that Baby is still hungry to live and explore the world. I guess this allows us to put in retrospective, that all the characters are hungry for life in different ways. Baby has the ability to break things down to the fundamentals. She serves as a reminder to the characters that life, after all, is about living and not always about finding the answers to life. This is especially true for Sarah, who is always Hungry for answers. One profound statement she made was that "the most important reason why you eat oranges... because you're hungry. And oranges taste good". Baby once again reminds us to look at life once more through the eyes of a baby, if we are to appreciate it. It's not about knowing everything etc. We always want more in life that we forget what we have. We make things seem so complicated when actually, they're not. By apporaching the issue from a "post-life" angle, we (and the characters) realize what life is not about and why they lost out.

Mui Choo explores the concept through the eyes of a mother (rather a mother-to-be). She had thought that life was getting too hard for herself to sustain her baby in the womb. She was afraid of having the baby, having an unstable financial background as a waitress and no husband to support her. In many ways, she was sick of her life, so she killed herself, not realizing that the baby would die as well. It is only then does she realize her mistake. A very symbolic line that supports Baby's view on life and sums up Mui Choo's hunger is how she described babies as being "so beautiful" without "pimple or scar or white hair". These signs of aging are much like how our life gets corupted and uglier as we grow older and forget how to live, like a baby. We see Mui Choo's hunger here as well, as she hints how she wishes she could live her life again so that she can right the wrongs she made perhaps?

In the exchange between Death and Mui Choo, a line he said that struck me a lot is that "everyone feels like that". Everyone feels a sense of regret and longing for something they once had after it is gone. We only realize our mistake once it is done. We only realize the beauty of life after it is over. We only realize that answers can never be found after we can't find it. i guess it pretty much sums up the characters' hunger for life in non-life, much like how some of the characters hungered for death when alive.

afiqah's thoughts on HUNGRY

List down all the issues that it deals with.

hungry is a play that deals with the very interesting and always thought about, death and the reasons to life. as the title suggests, hungry, all the characters are hungry for something after they have meet their untimely demise.
so, in a nutshell, these are some of the main issues
1) what is there after life?
2) the meaning to life
3) the reasons for dying, suicide
4) the arts scene in Singapore
5) love
6) identity of a person


What is the MAIN issue for your character?

well, my character is guak, and the main issue for her is her need to understand that life is worth living, she does not realise this because she is so clouded with her over-ambitious desire to be a successful artist and only after death, does she realise that life ia ctually worth living after all. she realises this profoundly and is willing to risk it all to live again. in the play also, the issue of Singaporean artists is placed in question, as the struggling artist, Guak has not made it and this mirrors the situation in Singapore. she is hungry for life.

How can you link all the other characters to that key issue for your character?

i guess that what Guak wants is also similar to what the others want, to a certain extent. the need to have freedom and the want to live. eveyone of the characters want a second chance at life, but guak just shows it more.

What is the UNIFYING theme that stood out to you?

the unifying theme that spoke to me was the realisation that life is actually worth living,
because
1) guak and the other characters wants to move on.
2) sarah is looking for answers to the meaning of life.
3) death is not the end of one's journey.

Afiqah

Steph's thoughts

Sorry for the late post, I realised how incoherent I was so I made a mindmap in an attempt to organise the messy thoughts. Although you might not want to rely on the mindmap so much because I could not put everything I wanted to say in one pic. Update: After doing the mindmap, I spent another 2h editing. I still think there may be a missing link. Anyhoo we need to present the links more clearly for a better resolution.

Okay to me the unifying theme is hunger and escapism. (duh, but more specifically the hunger for certainty/success and the fear of failure as a result) The issues are in what the characters are hungry/searching for.

Hungry shows typical Singaporeans hungry for different things. However, it is because they hunger for certainty and success that ultimately lead to their downfall because they kill themselves/go crazy when they don't achieve it because they are scared of hurt or failure. (with the exception of death and baby) However, Death and Baby shows that all these hunger do not matter and that we (DV)should be grateful for life and to just live life for what it is, if not (sub-DV) we will regret sacrificing the things we sacrificed for that hunger.

Sarah shows a typical person in search of the meaning of life. From a really long time ago, people have been in search of this, in the form of Wisdom. However, nowadays, it has been degraded into knowledge and mugging because people want quick, certain, black and white knowledge that other people thought of instead of thinking for themselves. Now this brings 2 implications. First, Sarah killing herself cus she can never find the answer through studying books about life or examining dead bodies. Secondly, the god of wisdom's loss of purpose in the world because not many people look for wisdom anymore. So he goes crazy with that loss. These implications give the sub-issue of how people may be intelligent muggers but not actually intellectual thinkers.

Gek shows an artist in Singapore searching for success in life(perfection) and recognition in her art. Putting the hint of the arts scene not being well supported aside, the 2 things Gek searched for are actually what Singaporeans want. A perfect life and recognition. However, most of us, after eating whatever is in the world, produce shit and so she dies. (Everything we produced is shit after consuming someone else's product whether intellectual or physical so why make a big hooha of everything? Why not just live life the way it is? regurgitating knowledge or other people's works is shit )

Mui Choo shows a person hungry for 2 things - Love and Escape. In the story, when she was scared, she forgot about love and just wanted to escape by dying. She hungered for certainty, beauty and scared of pain and ageing. So she escaped by dying in fear. Then she hungered for love because she did not have a chance to love her own baby. This links the theme and sub-DV together - how in the hunger for certainty/success or the fear of hurt/failure we actually sacrifice the most important things and later regret and hunger for those things.

Baby shows the simple perspective. It is ironic that people can take knowledge, books for what it is but cannot take the purpose of eating something or living life for what it is. Baby cannot get how people get the concepts of things taught by Sarah but can get the simple purpose of why anything exists. Baby shows how one can simply live because the sole purpose of being alive was to live.Baby also show no fear of hurt or failure. And I guess without the hunger the rest has, she does not have fear. and because she has not lived, she just wants to live.

Death supports the content of every single character. his last line "die in pain" and baby's last line "they hoped, they would return to the garden", show fear of hurt and hunger for certainty and idealism respectively.

The image of the garden of Eden shows us how people from the beginning of time are greedy/hungry. And because of that greed/hunger we lose things. And only when we lose things do we hunger for them. Adam and Eve hungered for the certainty and ideal state of Eden. So instead of being greedy, one should just be contented and live life before we lose anything else.

One more issue is the finality of death/exams. "5,4,3,2,1,pens down" This finality causes the characters to feel even more regretful and hungry for the things they have lost. Also, it causes us to live life in mugging, in working hard for the "exam" so that we do as much as we can before death.

P.S.
To search for answers to the questions:
1. list issues
The issues are in what the characters are hungry/searching for. (e.g. issue of hunger for knowledge/recognition/success/certainty/escapism/perfection or hunger to just live + One sub-issue presented in paragraph 4)
2. main issue my character deals with
Para 7 : hunger to simply live because the sole purpose of being alive was to live.
3. Link other characters to that issue.
Para 7 and the issue is linked to DV which is linked to theme which is linked to the characters.
4. Unifying theme: Para 2
5. reasons why it is that theme:
justified by the paragraphs after.

My Thoughts on Hungry as a Play

Issues that the play deals with(non-exhaustive)

1. Suggests that many people inhabits the space between life and death
2. Advocates death as the capacity to face up to the truth of limitations of life
3. Appreciate life only after having experienced death
4. Enjoy pleasure only after suffering the pain of a fall
5. Until one comes to apprehend the true meaning of life and death, one experiences a perpetual hunger
6. Hunger for knowledge & wisdom, truth & certainty, questioning instead of complacency and literal physical hunger
7. Predatory instincts behind the quest for success represented via cannibalism
8. Death brings about new life
9. Farce on Singapore's clean image and censorship guidelines
10. Pays tribute to cultural ritual of offering food to the deceased during the Hungry Ghost's Festival

Main issue for the character Death

• Until one can come to terms with what they want, one will never stop questioning.

This links to all the other characters as I will be the one that they come to after they have decided on what they want. While they are still questioning, I will not interfere. But once they have come to a decision, I will give them the repercussions of their choice, and if they are still sure, I will give them what they want.

Unifying Theme

• All of us will occupy this state of between-ness until we have figured out what exactly we want to know or have achieved what we aspire to have.
  

Reasons why :

1. The play takes place in this state. Death governs this state.
2. All the characters occupying this state are repeatedly questioning themselves and people around them in order to get answers.
3. At the end of the play, they finally comes to a consensus and reconcile themselves in being led away to where they want to go by Death.

- Melvyn