Question #4

Emotion plays a huge role in Eve's attempt to promote women and fuels her efforts.  Emotion is the key part in changing people's views on women and vaginas.  Throughout all of the monologues Eve uses many different emotions to suck the reader into the story and keep their attention in order to support the cause.  When she includes jokes in the stories it is to relieve some of the discomfort involved with reading some of the plays.  In the story "The Flood" the old women says, "I used to have crazy dreams, crazy dreams. Oh, there dopey. Why? Burt Reynolds."  This quote is a little joke from the monologue used to create a comfortable atmosphere when talking about potentially awkward material.  The story was about an old woman being interviewed about her vagina, which in some people's eyes could be viewed as inappropriate.  Using jokes can make it less of a "big deal" sometimes because laughter can be extremely stress-relieving.  Ensler also uses sadness and embarrassment to motivate the audience.  When people feel sad for the people in the stories it creates a sort of connection between the reader and the character in the story.  She also talks about things such as rape, and other types of violence against women to raise awareness about these topics instead of ignoring them.  She is very open with talking about these kind of taboo things in order to cause people to be aware of what women have to deal with, which could potentially cause some kind of change or at least an increase in awareness.