Assignment 9
American Drama in the 20th Century
1. Read the general overview of the developments of American Drama in the 20 th century and fill in
the information about Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee’s plays as it has been done
in Eugene O’Neill’s section.
Plays (title, date / period) Brief characteristics of the plays
Modern American Drama: Eugene O’Neill and the beginnings of American artistic drama
1) Beyond the Horizon, 1920 1) naturalistic play with autobiographical reference to
O’Neill’s sea-faring and tuberculosis crisis
2) The Hairy Ape, 1922 2) conflict between natural, animalistic man (a proletarian
stoker emblematically named Yank) and decadent,
industrialized society; expressionistic choral and telegraphic
3) All God’s Chillun Got verbal styles
Wings, 1924 3) depiction of the Black community via an inter-racial
4) Desire under the Elms, marriage
1924
5) Mourning Becomes Electra, 4) naturalistic drama of generational conflicts
1931 5) includes imitations of Greek chorus, mythology, but re-cast
6) Long Day’s Journey into in American terms; his Nobel Prize winning work.
Night, 1955 (written 1940) 6) realistic play, a classically Aristotelian play (one set, one
date, one continuous and tragic action of downfall and
redemptive insight)
Social criticism of Arthur Miller’s theatre
1)Death of a Salesman (1949) 1) This play raises larger issues of success-worship, self-
delusion and the over-valuation of popularity and appearances
rather than achievement which are still problems in American
social life, but its specific reality depicts a depression survivor
who in fact cannot survive the psychic trauma.
2) The Crucible (1953) 2) Miller’s next important play uses the witchcraft hysteria and
trials of Salem, Massachusetts, of the 1690s, as an allegory for
anti-communist hysteria in the American 1950s. Its hero, John
Proctor, hangs for refusing to compromise himself or
denounce his friends.
3) An expressionistic and cinematic dream play which appears
3) After the Fall (1964) to stage the associative memory process of psychoanalysis.
Quentin, survivor of two marriages and about to enter a third,
addresses an invisible “Listener” located in the audience to
relate his formative experiences and try to decide whether he
dares commit himself again to another person in marriage.
These experiences include parents who blamed and hated each
other for financial mishaps during the Depression; youthful
involvement with socialist intellectuals which was sorely
tested under McCarthyism when Quentin and his friend are
asked to testify against a mentor, and constant recollection of
concentration camp slaughters, although not from direct
experience.
Psychological plays of Tennessee Williams
1) The Glass Menagerie 1) The Glass Menagerie is a "memory play," in which Tom
(1945) recalls scenes from his youth during the height of the
Depression. It shows his mother, Amanda, trying to maintain a
lost gentility in the midst of overwhelming poverty and
cajoling her children into her idea of happiness. Tom also has a
crippled older sister, Laura, who resembles her collection of
class animals in her delicate [inner?] beauty and fragility. Tom
works in a shoe factory to contribute to the family's support
while dreaming of becoming a poet. At his mother's insistence,
he brings a friend from work home as a possible suitor for
Laura. The suitor, went to high school with Laura. He is the
only boy that she ever had a crush on. The evening turns into a
disaster. After Jim leaves, Amanda scolds Tom, who runs off
to join the merchant marine shortly after that disastrous night.
But, as Tom tells the audience, he was never able to leave his
guilt behind. So, in the end, none of them escaped from the
traps in which they were caught.
2) Williams portrays the larger-than-life collision between two
elemental forces embodied in aristocratic but neurotic Blanche
Dubois and her honestly-appetitive but cruel and narrow-
2) A Streetcar Named Desire minded brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. They seem like
(1947) opposite types, but as they battle they show unconscious
attraction for each other. One needs to study the play at length
to identify all the connotations of their struggle. Blanche
embodies a poetic sensuality but has an obsessive attitude
toward sex; she stands for the arts and civilizing forces, but
also falls for trashy sentimental decorations and taunts Stanley
for his stupidity. Stanley is the elemental sexual being but also
a possessive tyrant; he is child-like in his sentiments and
needs, but when he turns to humiliate Blanche, he falls back on
adult hypocrisies.
3) The play’s general themes of impotence yielding to fertility
and accepting one’s own identity (even as a deviant or dying
man) are embodied in a concrete and significant setting. Big
3) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Daddy’s plantation and mansion, to gain which Maggie must
(1952) make his son father her child, is not just the mythological
“twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest bottom land this
side of the valley Nile” that he calls it. Having been born a
white trash tenant farmer, having been a hobo during the
Depression, but rising to prosperity due to ruthless ambition
during the war, Big Daddy is the 1950s is the archetypal
patriarch who gained a prosperity he is not sure he deserves;
his ennui-ridden, alcoholic and miseducated son is the typical
offspring of that rootless rise to fortune.
Theatrical innovations in Edward Albee’s plays
1) The Zoo Story (1960) 1) Realistic and violent, The Zoo Story tells of an encounter
between a bland, middle-aged executive, Peter, and a disturbed
urban drifter, Jerry. Jerry accosts Peter at the older man’s
favorite haunt, a Central Park bench, and teases and taunts him
into a conversation. Gradually we learn that Jerry has intended
to pick out any average citizen at large, particularly of the
“uninvolved” type, and involve him in the staging of Jerry’s
own suicide. He does this after a faked fight for an absurd
symbol of territorial possession, Peter’s park bench. But in the
process, he has reached over his own void and authentically
contacted another person, whom he has also shaken out of an
unexamined spiritual lethargy: as he tells his horrified
“murderer” while dying, “It’s all right, Peter, you’re not a
vegetable, you’re an animal.” In his dialogues, Albee has
mastered aggressive contemporary city talk with its bitter wit
and poetry of insults, to show the loneliness lying beneath it.
2) In The American Dream, Albee uses absurdist theatrical
techniques, particularly the Ionesco brand of satire, against
domestic complaisancy. A parody family with names like
2) The American Dream Mommy and Daddy, plus an adoptive son known only as the
(1961) American Dream, bicker and settle their scores after a lifetime
of parental frustration. Due to Albee’s skillful writing, which
mixes witty parody and emotional concern for these symbolic
puppets, his satire still shocks and moves even after one gets
the point of his simple allegory. This play sets up the terms for
Albee’s later and more complex indictments of the American
family, and it illustrates a characteristic absurdist technique of
treating cliches literally, giving them dramatic life by taking
their banal terms at straight semantic value and actualizing
their scary implications.
3) He wrote the best example of this kind of contemporary talk
in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The play involves a
middle-aged couple, George and Martha, apparently childless,
who have insulted each other for mutual inadequacies all
during their marriage, but have come to depend on their clever
put-downs for intellectual stimulation and emotional
3) Who’s Afraid of Virginia communication. The action unfolds over one drunken evening
Woolf? (1962) at an all-night party. George and Martha gradually draw a
young visiting couple, Nick and Honey, into their game-
playing, eliciting shameful secrets from each of them which
they eventually turn against the youngsters in games they call
“Get the Guests” and “Humiliate the Host.” The night-long
orgy ends in shambles, with George and Martha wondering
whether, stripped of debilitating illusions, they can salvage a
life together alone: “Just . . . us?”
2. Answer the questions in the Discussion Section (in writing).
1. Who do you think is the main character of the play — Tom, Laura, or Amanda? Why?
The central character, or the protagonist, of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie is Tom Wingfield.
Tom finds himself in conflict with his own character traits at times, so he is sometimes his own antagonist.
In addition, Tom is in conflict with tradition and its illusion, as represented by his mother, Amanda, and her
values and dreams of a "gentleman caller." Therefore, Amanda is an antagonist to Tom, as she complains
that he will not act as "normal people" do, and she tries to force Tom into the role of provider.
In truth, all three characters, Laura, Tom, and Amanda, pay an emotional price because they dwell in
illusions. Laura creates an illusory world with her glass menagerie, Tom escapes into the novels that he
reads and the movies that he attends, and Amanda retreats to the traditions of her youth and the concept of
the gentleman caller who will rescue her daughter and support the family.
AMANDA: Why can't you and your brother be normal people? Fantastic whims and behavior.
Preposterous goings on (Scene 6)!
Yet, it is Amanda who blocks Tom from being himself by confining him to the warehouse job, and by
making him feel responsible for the care of his sister and mother.
TOM: I'm starting to boil inside. . . Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is
and what I am doing (Scene 6).
The protagonist Tom is not willing to sacrifice for his family. Yet, he feels guilt as he flees the confinement
of his life and the emotional toll of living in a world of illusion.
2. Discuss the symbolism of the glass menagerie in relation to Laura. How does Laura resemble the glass
animals?
As the title of the play informs us, the glass menagerie, or collection of animals, is the play’s central
symbol. Laura’s collection of glass animal figurines represents a number of facets of her personality. Like
the figurines, Laura is delicate, fanciful, and somehow old-fashioned. Glass is transparent, but, when light
is shined upon it correctly, it refracts an entire rainbow of colors. Similarly, Laura, though quiet and bland
around strangers, is a source of strange, multifaceted delight to those who choose to look at her in the right
light. The menagerie also represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself—a world that is
colorful and enticing but based on fragile illusions.
3. What does the unicorn represent at first, and what does it represent once its horn has been broken?
The glass unicorn in Laura’s collection—significantly, her favorite figure—represents her peculiarity. As
Jim points out, unicorns are “extinct” in modern times and are lonesome as a result of being different from
other horses. Laura too is unusual, lonely, and ill-adapted to existence in the world in which she lives. The
fate of the unicorn is also a smaller-scale version of Laura’s fate in scene seven. When Jim dances with and
then kisses Laura, the unicorn’s horn breaks off, and it becomes just another horse. Jim’s advances endow
Laura with a new normalcy, making her seem more like just another girl, but the violence with which this
normalcy is thrust upon her means that Laura cannot become normal without somehow shattering.
Eventually, Laura gives Jim the unicorn as a “souvenir.” Without its horn, the unicorn is more appropriate
for him than for her, and the broken figurine represents all that he has taken from her and destroyed in her.
4. Discuss the way Williams uses the following motifs in the play as symbols. What does each one
represent? How do they relate to the play’s theme?
The Glass Menagerie
Throughout the whole play there is the theme of “escape”. The Paradise Music Hall represents the life
outside their house and since Laura has removed herself from reality, it is a way of connecting to it. The
Fire Escape represents an escape from their lives, this is mainly true for Tom who feels like he is trapped in
their own house and the only reason he remains in the house because his departure would mean that
Amanda and Laura would be shattered since he is the one who mainly supports them. Laura's leg brace is
another way to represent inability to escape their fantasy life, but specifically for Laura, she's caught up in
her own world because of her insecurity that comes from her leg brace. The movies are ways of Tom
escaping his reality, he can't pursue his goals in life because he feels like he is trapped in his own house, he
explains himself when he says, “Yes, movies! Look at them? All of those glamorous people – having,
adventures - hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies
instead of moving!”. The movies are a way of him seeing the adventures that he would like in his life
happen without him actually doing it.
5. The climax of a play is the high point of the story — its most intensely emotional moment. What scene
do you think marks the climax of The Glass Menagerie?
The scene which shows Jim O'Connor's departure from the play is the climax. In this scene, we learn he is
engaged, and is no longer a potential suitor for Laura. At this point one could see that Laura's fragile
mental state suits, perhaps even necessitates a person in a situation like Mr. O'Connor's to support her,
especially in the inevitable absence of her suffocating mother and somewhat negligent, brow-beaten
brother (not to mention her father who will certainly be absent from her future). Her mother is clearly upset
by this turn of events, given another of her daughter's prospects has yet again not come to fruition. Her
disappointment is expressed as she tells her son. The failed date or set-up that Amanda so hoped for is
important because if Amanda wins this victory and finally manages to arrange a satisfactory future for
Laura, then maybe she would ease up her nagging after Tom about his selfishness and lack of concern for
Laura's (and Amanda's) future. Of course, the action of bringing home an eligible bachelor for Laura in
itself already proves some of his concern for her future.
6. What might happen to Laura after Tom’s departure? What might happen to Amanda?
The imagery and the rest of the play suggests that Laura is a lot like her unicorn. The unicorn's horn, or
individuality, was broken during the dance between Laura and Jim. That suggests that for that small
moment she was like other girls. But she gives the unicorn to Jim as a "souvenir" indicating he is taking her
"normalcy" with him. So the play suggests that she never overcame her shyness and tries to live her life in
the small apartment playing with her glass collection.
Laura will continue to withdraw into her shell. Amanda will be all right. She's had a husband who left her,
she's raised two children on her own, she's working two jobs to make a living, she's survived several of her
gentleman callers, and we have nothing to suggest she won't weather this storm, as well. Amanda is
resourceful, judging from her elaborate preparations for Laura's one and only gentleman caller. Amanda is
capable, as she is running her household with little help from Tom and no help at all from Laura. Amanda
is practical, as she sees the need for Laura to prepare herself for a future alone. (It doesn't work, but it's a
decent plan.) In short, nothing so bad happens that I feel Amanda will now be broken or in some other way
derailed. I believe she'll be just fine.
7. What is the effect of the images and phrases that appear on the screen throughout the play? Do they
enhance or detract from the mood of what is occurring onstage?
The information and images appear to add to the reader's understanding of the scene, to provide
background and relevance from the past to give context to the current actions in the play.
8. Generally, plays do not have narrators. How does the fact that Tom is the narrator affect the style and
content of the play?
A narrator allows the play to be very dramatic. The narrator makes it easier because the play is about
memories. Memories are weird and typically different from reality. It further distances the audience from
the play; it makes it seem more dreamlike. It makes it easier for the audience to understand the emphasis of
the points he is trying to make. Yes, the appraisal of the events would be different if there was no narrator
because the play would be realistic and not dramatic and emphasized like memory is.
9. In any story, complexity makes for interesting characters. Good drama rarely pits a “good guy” against a
“bad guy.” The best drama often occurs when both people in a conflict are right. Do you sympathize with
Amanda, even though she causes her children to suffer? Do you think Tom and Laura are both wrong and
right? Explain.
In some ways I sympathize with Amanda, because she is an older woman whose husband left her, her son
isn't doing to amazing in the business world, and her daughter is struggling to be independent or find a
husband unlike her when she was a young girl. At the same, she expects a lot of Laura and doesn't seem to
understand why she may be self-conscious or shy, completely ignoring her defect instead of addressing it
in a good way, and puts a lot of pressure on Laura. She makes Tom spend all of his days doing what he
hates and being miserable to support them, and then acts like she's the only reason they're all alive.
Whenever Tom does or thinks about doing something for himself, she calls him selfish and is a hypocrite
in that way since she practically does nothing yet expects Tom to pretty much give up his life/happiness for
her. "Amanda: You're going to listen, and no more insolence from you! I'm at the end of my patience!
Tom: What do you think I'm at? Aren't I supposed to have any patience to reach the end of, mother? I
know, I know. It seems unimportant to you, what I'm doing- what I want to do- having a little difference
between them!". So overall, I don't sympathize for Amanda, although on some levels there are thing to feel
bad for her about. I think That they are both wrong and right because although Amanda accuses him of
being selfish for not sacrificing his happiness for them, in some ways that is his responsibility to provide
for his family until his sister finds a suitable husband, and he's being irresponsible about it. He has some
right to be considering Amanda's behavior on the issue but he doesn't necessarily have the right to not pay
the light bill and leave his family behind when they rely on him so greatly. As for Laura, she has a right to
e self-conscious because of her defect, as does anyone with some kind of physical or mental disability, but
at the same time disabilities/defects are something that you need to learn to live with and accept that that's
how you are, because if you have that confidence then people don't really care about that, and that's where
Laura is wrong. She's too self-conscious and down on herself because she can't move past/accept her
disability and that's really the only thing holding her back in life.
10. One critic has said that The Glass Menagerie shows a series of contrasts between
(d) psychological and physical handicaps
In The Glass Menagerie, a contrast of psychological and physical handicaps is present through the
character of Laura. She was born with a physical handicap - one of her legs is shorter than the other. This
somewhat contributes to her psychological handicap. She is so painfully shy because of it. She compares
herself to the unicorn in her collection of glass, which is broken and therefore doesn't stand out. Essentially,
because of her physical handicap she created a psychological one. However, later in the play Jim tries to
help her. He says, "I'd teach you to have some confidence in yourself. The different people are not like
other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful
people. They're one hundred times one thousand. You're one times one!". He says this to inspire confidence
in her.
