"Trifles"

I remember reading Trifles by Susan Glaspell my senior year in AP English.  We had to read it, annotate it, write about it in a journal, answer questions about it, and of course, do homework and take a test on it, and I remember thinking as I read it the first time just how interesting it was.  I remember thinking just how specific it was in all its details, not just in the stage directions, but in the actual story itself.  You see, when I read things, books, scripts, whatever, I like to picture in my mind if I were to film this, how would I do it, and when I read Trifles, I'm allowed to have a very specific vision of how I would want people to see it.  The specificity of the play however is not the only aspect I found interesting, but the language of the play caught my attention as well.  Despite the fact that this play was written a long time ago, the language is still understandable, as if we would still speak this way today, not just with the words themselves, but how they are said and how the characters speak to each other.  It is very relate-able in that way.
This play is very intriguing for its length.  In the short pages, so much happens with so little, and I love that.  The sentences are very short and straight forward, and somehow it is so strong.  Again, the story itself is very alluring as well, as many people agree, because of its showing of how women in that time were controlled by men and how they were made to feel inferior, but in the end they turned out to be smarter than the men and ended up getting what they wanted.  I myself, however find not only that aspect of the message of the play alluring, but also the fact that, as the title suggests, it's all about the little things.  Sometimes the tiniest things that people overlook is what is the most important.  It reminds me of the television show "Monk".  These women "solved the case," the murder, by looking at the smallest details that everyone else overlooked.
Lastly, I'd like to comment on the "feel" of the play.  Although some people view the play as amusing based on the women outsmarting the men, and others view the play as sad for obvious reasons, this play, to me, is very eerie and dark.  Sure, it's a story about women outsmarting men, but the story also explores the inner workings of a very disturbing and unhappy marriage taking place in this sort of desolate, or isolated farm in a small, lonely town.  It explains a woman's loss of mind after a marriage to what on the outside seemed like a good man but was actually someone who took away her soul and every bit of freedom and happiness.  It makes you think of, what is really "good" and what should or shouldn't make a woman happy.  That eerie thought is what makes this play, to me, so powerful and exciting and great!