Theme stemming from initial idea.

I have now decided that Children's play was abit too broad a topic, but I realised that a big theme within this concept, was Abandonment. I have created subtopics with in Abandonment below, so I can develop my research, and come up with a project idea.

Abandonment

A.       People

1. Who abandon society for drugs

2. People who commit a crime, abandon society

3. People with mental health problems abandon the real and go into their own 'surreal' world

4. Orphaned or neglected children

B.       Spiritualism

1. Abandoning modern way of life, for a greener more natural existence

2. Monasteries

a.      abandoning physical world for spiritual

C.       Materialism

1. objects/belongings

a.      Sofas/mattresses dumped on side of motorway.

b.      children’s toys

2. Mass production

a.      Abandoned traditional methods of manufacturing, for quick cheap version

D.       Places

1. Regeneration of areas, so old buildings are abandoned or demolished

2. derelict buildings are abandoned

Initial idea

My first idea was to look at Children and social play today. The idea of 'play' today is very different to how it was in the previous generation. Saying that, even when I was young and carefree (which was not that long ago I hasten to add, 14 years ago to be exact!) I always played out in the woods, or creating dens.

The theme abandonment in folklore, fairytale and plays

Snow White

Romulus and Remus

Oedipus and the Sphinx

Hansel and Gretel

Moses 

Abandonment features in many different tales. Snow White is left in the forest; Romulus and Remus, the mythological founders of Rome, are placed in their cradle in the Tiber River; Hansel and Gretel are forced from their home and into the hands of a witch. In the story of Moses, it is his abandonment that saves his life.  As the Pharaoh has ordered that all male babies born to Hebrews be drowned in the Nile, Mose's mother hid him in a basket in the river where he would be found (and most likely be adopted) by the Pharoah's daughter. In Hansel and Gretel's case, the children return back home, having killed the witch, to find that their stepmother has died and they then are able to live happily with their father.
            However, in other stories, the theme abandonment turns out to be tragic.  In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is abandoned as an infant because it has been thought that he will grow up to kill his father and marry his mother, the King and Queen of Thebes. So a servant is then ordered to take the baby away and kill him, but the servant cannot carry out the order, so leaves the baby at the gates of the royal family of a distant city, Corinth.  When Oedipus is a young man, he hears of the prophecy, thinks that it is in reference to his adoptive Corinthian parents, and flees.  Ultimately, the prophecy comes true as he kills his real father, Laius, in self-defense and marries Laius' widow Jocasta, his real mother.  Jocasta then hangs herself and Oedipus blinds himself with the pins from her dress. Tragedy resulted from the abandonment of the child, implying that this fate might never have occurred if the baby had been cared for, and such a fallacy had not been believed.

My proposal

I will be looking into the theme Abandonment. I feel it is a very present and frequent theme in today’s’ ‘throw away’ society. ‘Throw away’ could be thought of from a materialistic point of view, or as a child is abandoned. The more prominent context, being the latter.  I will explore and confront these two contrasting mediums to understand more about the derivation and meaning of the word abandonment. However, looking at research by a tutor at Kings College London, I came across a very interesting analogy. It seems the theme abandonment is misconceived, and is only thought of in a negative sense:

In the Middle French, for instance, metrè à bandon could have meant both "to proscribe" and "to release from proscription."  Thus, the term might apply equally to the slave who is proscribed to his master and to the master who has given up the slave.  Both are engaging in "abandon," or according to one definition, the act of relinquishing a person or an object to another.  One may then abandon one's child, one's property, or one's self.  The common thread in these definitions in that there is an active choice being made and that the nature of this choice is absolute.  Abandonment is never accidental, and it is never partial.  It is deliberate and it is complete.  It is, perhaps, these qualities that account for the reoccurrence of the theme in folklore and mythology, in social science, and in art and literature.

(staff.kings.edu/jamcclin/Theme-abandonment.doc)