There are numerous themes in the play Helen by Ellen McLaughlin that warrant this story being told; cost of war, cost of beauty, the real purpose behind spirituality, just for a few. I find that the story I am most interested in telling is that of our control over our own narrative. First, I look at the misfortunes we face in life. In this day in age, life throws us so many obstacles it is hard to find a reason why we keep going. We as people, have been told since birth: “Life isn’t fair.”. They were not lying to us. Life is not fair, but when it treats us unfairly we can let the event define us or our reaction define us. How we handle the obstacles is who we are, not the obstacle itself. Helen is letting the act of being spirited away to a hotel define her entire life. She is wasting away in a room, because she was put there.…show more content… We are worried about doing the wrong thing, or if people believe in our choices to guide us through life. However, we are the only ones who have to live this life, no one else. Helen is not living. She is waiting. She is waiting because that is what she believes the gods want her to do. She does this in spite of Io suggesting that she leave and asking what will happen if Menelaus doesn’t come or Athena telling Helen that she was not needed anymore because they had replaced her. Even when Helen was free from the hotel room she was serving society, what they wanted her to be: “Helen, I would turn a face like marble to the world…It was a mask of perfection…I showed them their own dream of themselves staring back at them”. (McLaughlin
