Each patient in Cosi has their own way of escaping reality. Discuss
The play Cosi, comprises of many different characters with unique outlooks on life. Throughout the play, each of the characters tries to escape the reality of the asylum and their conditions become evident. Ruth obsesses over truth, reality, and illusion, she requires constant reassurance and a detailed routine to feel sane. Similarly, Roy creates a false memory of a fantastic childhood and obsesses over the music of the spheres to suppress his childhood and experience in the mental asylum. While Julie uses drugs in order to feel sort of living and claims that opera allows her to get out of the ward, and not having to think about drugs constantly.
Roy seems to find optimism in his make-believe childhood, despite it being revealed by Cherry that hes an orphan who spent most of his early life in orphanages and being farmed to foster parents. He desires to create a world that was like [his] childhood: tea parties, dances in our ballroom, circus performers to perform just for me, but, was never provided with love or a sense of belonging. This illusion he has of his childhood is him trying to find the happiness he never had. Roy appears to hope that Cosi Fan Tutte is much like [his] childhood, a world that is as far away from [the] depressing asylum as possible. The play allows him to forget his mundane life within the white walls of his ward. The theatre allows Roy to feel alive and escape the harsh reality of his past because, throughout the play, he continuously attempts to cover up his past and block out the reality of the asylum as it appears to be too much for him to handle.
Ruth is a character that is unable to cope with illusion as she feels it is something she cannot control. She desires to be able to differentiate between illusion and reality but appears to struggle to tell which is which. The difference between reality and illusion is not a problem to the audience, who are able to accept theatrical illusion for a temporary period unlike Ruth who can handle something being an illusion or real but not at the same time. She fears being ridicu...
