The plays, works about women as seen through the prisms of identification (Williams) and rueful desire (Chekhov), have in common the themes of disappointment and death, and neither involves transformation or catharsis.
This theme of creative disappointment got me thinking about what constitutes success for a writer.
(And while many other details of the story have been changed, the novel's themes of parental disappointment, spousal bereavement and late-mid-life restlessness resonate with force and subtlety in the movie).
At heart, Mr. Harper is a singer-songwriter, addressing the traditional singer-songwriter themes of romantic disappointment, spiritual malaise and social injustice in deliberate and well-constructed folk-style plaints like "Walk Away" (from "Welcome to the Cruel World," his first album) and "Another Lonely Day" (from "Fight for Your Mind," his second).
These studies give some indication of common themes, including feelings of disappointment after transfer [ 15, 18- 20], the importance of choice, control and continuity [ 15, 18, 19], and, from one study, a suggestion that women's feelings of disappointment could be ameliorated by preparation and explanation during the antenatal period, during labour and postnatally [ 18].
Even if their approaches are radically different, they share a common theme: Life is so full of disappointment, and time moves so swiftly, that memory enables us to recapture those special, transcendent moments in our lives.
The Murphys served Fitzgerald as symbols of the great theme of the Lost Generation: romantic disappointment, given intensity by the majesty of the dreams at stake.
There are obvious parallels between "Girls" and that earlier HBO series, but the theme of female friendship and romantic disappointment stretches back long before, all the way to the early 1940s and Mary McCarthy's first novel, "The Company She Keeps".
There's a pretty clear implication that most people's luck actually turns out to be pretty rotten, which underlines one of Anderson's recurring themes: British life always comes with the sour tang of disappointment.
