The American Dream! Damn it!

Summary:
The American Dream is a play of character introductions. It begins with Mommy and Daddy discussing banalities in their average looking living room and waiting for the arrival of a mysterious 'they'. Mommy gets sidetracked in a story about materialism, and then Grandma appears, carting a large number of mysterious boxes. Grandma rants about the state of the world, about being old, and about Mommy when she was young. Then there is a knock at the door, and who should it be but Mrs. Barker, the 'they' (yes, plural) that Mommy and Daddy were awaiting. However, none of the three of them know exactly what Mrs. Barker is meant to do there. Grandma knows, but she is constantly being interrupted and corrected- or misunderstood in the case of Mrs. Barker who was not working at anywhere 'very much like' an adoption agency. It isn't until the final character introduction, to the American Dream himself (otherwise known as the Young Man) that the backstory shapes itself completely, the conflict is discovered, and the conflict is resolved. Long ago, Mommy and Daddy adopted one of a pair of twins, and mutilated it because of its natural urges. Now, the other twin appears, physically perfect but bereft of all human emotion- the perfect child that Mommy and Daddy tried to create. Grandma, even as she departs, arranges everything so that everyone else is satisfied. At least, they think they are.

Style:
Albee uses absurdism to get his point across in this particular play, with massive circular conversations, an even larger narrative circle, meaninglessness of dialogue. No one knows or cares what anyone else is saying as long as the tone is right, and Mommy is particularly guilty of shifting topics each time the conversation threatens to get too emotional. The play as a whole, however, cannot be absurdist, because by definition absurdist plays have no message or meaning. Albee clearly communicates his ideas on the consumerism, materialism, and 'deformity' (conformity) of the 50's and 60's, marrying the best of both the absurdist and more traditional worlds of screenplays.

The key to unlocking this particular play seems to be repetition. Sometimes dialogue will be carried over from pages ago, only to be brought back again. This doesn't just emphasize the absurdist format of the play, but it draws attention to the dialogue itself. Why does Mrs. Barker's cream hat come back, after it was beige when Mommy bought it, and wheat on the street outside? To remind the reader about the two women's relationship with each other. Why does Mommy directly contradict one of her earlier statements ('you can't get satisfaction') with 'Who says you can't get satisfaction?' at the end? To remind the reader what the play is about- the quest for satisfaction and the meaninglessness that follows it wherever it may go. Why do Grandma's perfectly wrapped boxes keep coming up? To remind the reader of Grandma's character- her boxes were always full, despite what everyone thought due to their exterior.

Grandma's character is the most sympathetic to audiences, and one of the subplots of The American Dream is her departure from the apartment/her death. She starts out by packing, taking every memory she can manage, then declares The American Dream to be the 'van man' to take her away. Once she has left the apartment and at least metaphorically died, she closes the play by shattering the fourth wall into a thousand pieces, saying that "that just about wraps it up" (emphasis mine, because I just realized that this connects to the boxes that Grandma also wraps so prettily).

Albee emphasizes the points he makes by creating a very shallow work. Giving Mommy the flibbertigibbet about 45% of the lines, he ensures that the dialogue will be stuttering, stilted, and emotionally detached. Mommy bickers with Daddy, with Grandma, with Mrs. Barker, without any real ire, she cries without real pain, and she's more than eager to distract herself from anything that would give her any depth of emotion. Even when Mommy is absent, the dialogue is as hollow as the characters themselves are meant to seem, except, of course, for the Young Man. Ironically enough, the character who professes himself unable to feel give the most poignant speech in the show as he talks to Grandma and describes the emotional aspects of Mommy and Daddy's mutilation of his twin. This puts the Young Man at the emotional center of the play, with no one else coming close to his level of participation and sympathy. Even Grandma is a caricature in comparison. With this contrast of character, between the Young Man and everyone else, Albee creates a much more effective picture than vapidity would have alone, because the Young Man is clearly desperate to feel, and surrounded by people who are quite the opposite.

Theme:

• Edward Albee's play The American Dream discusses the cheapening of ideals as they are passed down through generations. 

Grandma is the oldest person in this play. Mommy, Daddy, and Mrs. Barker are all of the next generation, and the Young Man and his deceased twin make up the third. The thing to consider here is the whole story surrounding Grandma's boxes. First, we see Grandma carrying them all downstairs in the present time, but then we are sent back to Grandma's heyday when Mommy was a child. They were poor, and Grandma would pack beautiful lunch boxes, that were full of good food. Mommy would pretend they were empty, refuse to open them, and eat everyone else's lunch, and Grandma would get the food back. Despite the fact that the boxes were full, the reader fully expects them to be empty, and so does Daddy. A full box, that is beautifully wrapped, implies something that is just as substantial as it is lovely. The box that Daddy expects is all form and no function. The same idea of functionless form is carried over into the Young Man, an attractive man, who cannot love or feel- and ends up being ideal for Mommy and Daddy.

The middling generation, however, is not as adept at existing as empty boxes, however. Mrs. Barker succeeds the most at this particular goal, becoming a 'they' in her quest to do everything and become the perfect person. She so has many faces, from a 'professional woman' to bring them satisfaction in the dirty sense, to the chairman of the women's club and a respectable upper-class lady, that none of them really suit and she becomes a wall of different personas, with nothing of substance to support her own personality. Mommy and Daddy, however, can't manage such a feat. They try, certainly. Mommy never keeps her mind in one place for long, but the sheer fact that she needs to change the subject so often implies that there are feelings of discomfort beneath it all. She even cries when she discovers Grandma is gone. Daddy, of course, has been demasculated and is considered useless except for his money by Mommy. He attempts, though, to convey his misgivings about things, or his dislike of a course of events, which gives him an opinion and a character, weak as they may be. His thoughts are easily swept out of the way of Mommy's rants and schemes. 

Quotes:

1. Grandma: "The American Dream! The American Dream, damn it!"
• This quote makes more sense out of context than it does inside it, truthfully. Grandma hollers this to Mommy when Mommy asks who is in the apartment with Grandma. It is a true statement, but it is also a nuanced one. It expresses immeasurable frustration with the idea of the American Dream, 'damning' it, obviously, but it also indicates Grandma's personal feelings towards her situation as a whole. She knows that this American Dream is going to replace her, and even with the sympathy she feels for him, she can't help but be distraught at her own predicament.
2. Grandma: "Well for the last straw, it finally up and died; and you can imagine how that made them feel, their having paid for it and all."
• This expresses not only the cry against commodification that echoes through the play, but reemphasizes several characteristics of the narration as a whole. The baby's death and Mommy and Daddy's feeling, whatever it may have been, about it is expressed in financial terms. They paid for it, they must mourn its absence because of the investment that it represented. It's also a continuation of the pattern of announcing feelings, rather than expressing them indirectly. We aren't even told how it makes them feel, just that it made them feel something, presumably unpleasant. Aside from the mutilation of a child discussed directly before this quote, it dehumanizes Mommy and Daddy to describe them this way.
3. Daddy: "Because it was empty." Mommy: "Oh no. Grandma always filled it up; because she never ate the dinner she cooked the night before. . ."

• I've mentioned the relevance of this before, but Grandma's boxes are always full. Grandma always provides, even when she must do without, and this quote shows that even though they fight constantly now, Grandma and Mommy looked after each other in the past, and had a very close mother/daughter relationship. Grandma went without food at night, but Mommy always made sure to bring it back. It adds complexity to a relationship that is otherwise based off of only mutual disdain. It also showcases the materialistic natures of Mommy and Daddy, as well as the pessimism inherent in their generation, since Daddy expects the box to be empty. 

On the Corner of Snark St. and Science Boulevard

Madness ensues:

The G.O.P.'s Feminine Mystique 
Article here!

            Samantha Bee is a correspondent for The Daily Show, a liberal-leaning show on Comedy Central that dissects and mocks the mainstream media. However, in her article The G.O.P.’s Feminine Mystique, she shows no particular ire for the G.O.P. itself. Instead, she uses a clever blend of nonsensical asides, a disdainful tone, and a blend of snark with honest and clear criticisms to highlight the faults of a study performed by U.C.L.A grad students.

            The study, as she says, “determined that the women of the Grand Old Party have more feminine faces than those of their female Democratic colleagues” by way of random images first rated for their femininity, and then presented to college students who determined the political party of each face. Faces that were more typically feminine were rated to be more conservative.

            Bee’s reaction to this study is as hilarious as it is opinionated. She begins her entire article with two leading questions- “Did you know that science can teach you all sorts of amazing things about how the world works…” and “Did you know that it can also teach you things you never wanted to know and now not-so-secretly wish you didn’t?” Right off the bat, her opinion is made clear; that science can do incredible things, but that incredible can have two separate meanings. Following her explanation of the study, she mentions the name for the effect (“the ‘Michele Bachmann Effect’”) and proceeds to go on a long-winded tirade, ending in her living in “monkish isolation on a mountaintop,” about how she feels when hearing ridiculous things. This exaggeration, given in such close proximity to a conclusion from the study itself, heavily implies that the study itself is one of those selfsame ridiculous things. Her far more interesting aside, however, directly insults the scientific integrity of the study. She describes her own haphazard shoe counting at the Democratic National Convention as “the type of research done after three days of being yelled at…with only a steady diet of Coke Zero and SunChips to keep you upright.” By all rights, the U.C.L.A. study which “contains measurable scientific data collected by actual professional scientists” that she describes should have markedly different results than her own foray- but it doesn’t.

            With that critique of U.C.L.A.’s scientific integrity squarely tucked away, Bee takes on the tone of a much smarter, more worldly mentor despairing at the banality of the world at large, and the study in particular. In her second paragraph, as she explains the purpose and method, she not only expresses a disdain for the G.O.P. by spelling out “Grand Old Party,” but she chooses to add that the undergraduates who were selecting the faces were doing so “in exchange for course credit.” This casts a very greedy, banal mindset over the whole study, and implies that it wasn’t carried out half-heartedly for personal gain, rather than objectively. She also uses several well-known platitudes, saying first that “if the sensible shoe fits…” and mentioning that the scientists behind it have “basically given us the green light to go ahead and judge a book by its cover.” This is the essence of her complaint, but it also hints that the conclusions that could be reached by the data are childish and basic- much like the statement itself. Her superior tone only continues at the end of the paragraph, asking “…why would that stop anyone from conflating gender typicality with sex appeal?” and answering her own question with “The answer is ha ha, of course it wouldn’t, but I adore your innocence.” She is talking down, of course, but she does it in a way that doesn’t feel condescending to the reader in particular.

            Her most effective technique is the juxtaposition she offers between her comedic statements and her legitimate criticisms. One always follows another, and the contrast is often more effective than either would have been on their own. The whole piece takes on a structure of joke-criticism-joke-criticism. For example, she goes into a serious discussion of how the study suggests that a key factor in the “presence of a female politician on a national stage can be dependent on something as random as the placement of her eyebrows?” is immediately followed by the idea that the whole study is so “unforgivably retro” that “…once I finished reading the study I’m pretty sure 1970s Burt Reynolds reached across the passenger seat of his Trans Am to give me a wink and a boob honk.” She puts her worries about political objectification of a woman’s attractiveness in direct and honest comparison to an impossible comedic scenario- and in doing so, insinuates that the two aren’t as different as they initially appear. This structuring of her piece also manages to hide her working thesis for five paragraphs, but it does not diminish its effectiveness. The reader is forced to think through the entire opening scenarios she presents, and extrapolate her final argument. It keeps the editorial engaging, because the path she leads the reader on is clear enough to follow, but twisted enough so that her conclusions are at least a new thought in the series.

            In her article, Samatha Bee does what she is paid to do on The Daily Show- point out the flaws in something in a comedic way. It is her ability to sneak up on a reader with her point that makes her article unique. 

B-b-b-bird Bird Bird, Bird is the Word

1984. Select a line or so of poetry, or a moment or scene in a novel, epic poem, or play that you find especially memorable. Write an essay in which you identify the line or the passage, explain its relationship to the work in which it is found, and analyze the reasons for its effectiveness.

            Speaking from experience, it is incredibly easy to forget things. Names, faces, birthdays, mathematical formulas, atomic numbers, phone numbers, and appointment times are all things that slip through the cracks in the human mind. It is far more interesting to consider what makes things stick, and how people remember things. In general, for something to be memorable, it needs to hold emotional weight or personal relevance. The brain doesn’t hold on to details it finds unimportant, no matter how much easier life would be. Storage space is limited, so when a line from a work sticks in deeply, it must be highly relevant. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has worked its way into the memory of Western culture, but the lines exchanged between the two lovers as Romeo departs after wooing Juliet on her balcony are especially memorable because they serve not only to characterize the pair, but also to heavily foreshadow their fate.

            The average person could probably recite ‘parting is such sweet sorrow…’ but in this case, the lines directly preceding it are far more interesting:

ROMEO: I would I were thy bird

JULIET:             Sweet, so would I.

Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.

They are exchanged at an emotionally weighted moment. Juliet and Romeo have just declared their love for each other, and as Juliet is constantly interrupted and fluttering back and forth, their farewell is extended for quite some time. The audience softens to the lovers as they exchange passionate words of love and devotion, but these words also do much to establish their eventual doom, as well as the reasons that doom is inevitable.

            First and foremost, the phrase ‘kill thee with much cherishing’ is a massive clue that everything will not go smoothly for our star-crossed lovers. It is grim language for a thirteen year old girl, and highly introspective at that. Having just agreed to marry him, Juliet suddenly expresses fear that she would love him so much, as a spoiled child loves its pet bird, that she would kill him because of it. They are also her parting words to him- a warning- that he should not trust her, or that her emotions will come to be too strong. Romeo answers, to nobody, a wish for her to sleep and be at peace, which is eerily reminiscent of his own ultimate fate when Juliet’s fake sleep takes on the appearance of death (or, eternal peace) and leads him to his death so as to join her in it- another sentiment expressed in this grim farewell.

            Romeo’s tendency to variance and mood swings has already been established by the time this scene arrives, but this scene is still an instrumental indicator that he is far too headstrong for his own good. Having met and kissed Juliet once previously, he sneaks in to his enemy’s territory, and proposes to marry her, professing his undying love. However, the fashion in which he does it says much about who he is- for example, swearing his love on the moon, which (as Juliet is quick to point out) is ever changing, and often used as an excuse for reckless and crazy behavior. He also shows a slavish devotion to Juliet, throwing himself totally at her feet, notably expressed by his wish to be her pet bird, completely on her string and ruled by her entirely. The balcony scene paints Romeo for what he is- a young boy who is completely ruled by his emotions. He is ruled not only by his own whims, but by those of his lady-love, coming at her call and vowing to stay until she dismisses him.

            Juliet, for her part, is established as the more practical one, demanding that Romeo ‘swear not by the moon’ and worrying that she will seem too forward and he will loose his interest in her because she will not play games with him. She is also the one, in the end, to suggest he marry her if his love is true and faithful- ensuring her own security. Sadly, she falls to Romeo’s charms and turns to his whimsy, her initial fears of everything being too sudden transforming into a proposal of marriage and the same silver tongued adulation that Romeo uses so often. Juliet’s practicality could partially be explained by the location of this exchange. If she is caught with a man in her room, with her at night unchaperoned, the consequences for her would be devastating. While Romeo is unbothered by the risk, Juliet does much of the concealing, and more worrying than Romeo ever had. It is she, after all, who delivers the death stroke of foreshadowing “I should kill thee with much cherishing.” With that line alone, she reveals her own introspective abilities, and a clearer eye to the future than Romeo.

            Of course, from the beginning of the narrator’s introduction to ‘fair Verona’ the audience knows the fate of Romeo and Juliet, but there are still clues sprinkled throughout the play that the pair is doomed. Without those intermittent hints, the play would not have survived as a piece of literature, because it would have bored audiences to tears. A fated death is tragic, but one in which the reasons are evident is also interesting and memorable. While Shakespeare could have left all of the explanation and subtle reasoning out of his play, and attributed it all to fate, he was wise enough to see that clever characterization and beautiful language would also be necessary to make not only the balcony scene, but Romeo and Juliet as a whole, worthy of remembrance. 

Course Materials 2- Electric Bogaloo

A lot of what I remember from the days after the last course materials response is a blur of handouts that were frantically annotated and bickered over. I'm not sure mine were even legible, but I constantly found myself moving out of DIDLS and instead going towards conclusions, or I'd find something notable that I wasn't sure where to place. Where did alliteration go, exactly, or the other poetic devices in the DIDLS frame? How about color symbolism- details, maybe? DIDLS themselves are clear enough, but there are things that work beyond and outside the frame of diction-imagery-details-language-syntax that I'm not sure what to do with. I know they're relevant and I have comments to make on them. Regardless of that particular headache, I found myself with fascinating insights into different works. Two of them I had read and one that I haven't but now want to. I know for a fact that, had I not tried to purge my mind of past influences, I never would have thought that Alice was dying as she fell down the tunnel, but think about it. "Light at the end of the tunnel" sound familiar? I found that dialogue was harder to pull apart than narration, because it's too easy to imagine it simply as part of a character or as a forwarder of the action and completely gloss over it, which made Little Women patently difficult. It was unfortunate, though, that I missed the day we covered syntax, because I have a feeling it would have been difficult for me anyways. On the long, long list of things I don't pay attention to when I read, sentence structure is right at the top, and I have no reference for what it means to a work that it is 'subject verb object' or vice versa or some oddball combination of the three. I suppose I'll just have to feel it through based on what feels odd or noticeable. In general, if I could just read text excerpts and bicker about their meaning for the rest of the year, I'd be completely happy.

Then, at least according to my notes, we moved on to literary theory, which I found absolutely fascinating because I am a geek. By and large I walked out of it with a bit of a crush on Aristotle, and from there it was largely a rehash of things we'd gone over in Brit Lit previously, and AP World before that (at least with regards to the Dark Ages, Renaissance  and the age of reason (although we didn't go very far into that)). I hope I wont' be called upon to name specific authors from each period, though, because boy howdy are there a lot of them. I can pick out the notable ones, ranging from Beowulf's nameless author to Dante to Shakespeare to Blake and on and on and on. Funnily enough, the stuff about the earliest theory (Plato) and the newest postmodern stuff was really the only new information. None of my lit classes previously ever talked about a simulacrum idea of the world, or about Plato's cave, which I found fascinating, if a little harsh to authors. Thus, the crush on Aristotle. I found myself agreeing with a lot of Postmodernist thought, which is hardly surprising, considering we're living within it- although I am skeptical of a generation's ability to name the period they're living in. Let my great-great-grandkids decide whether postmodernism even exists; history written as it happens is hardly accurate and unbiased.

Critical lenses, by and large, were a review. Since I took both Am Lit and Brit Lit, I had already been drilled into the ideas, although I can definitely say that this particular mode of information transport was definitely new, but not necessarily in a bad way. Seeing the lenses actually applied to the same subject (even if it was just a urinal) was very helpful in comparing them and seeing what the real differences were between them. The two new ones were very closely related- postcolonial and Literary Darwinism. Thank god for last minute crash courses, because I had Literary Darwinism totally backwards from what it actually is- rather than the culture with the strongest literature being the ones remembered, I thought it was the dominant culture's affect on the literature- which is actually postcolonialism! Confusing stuff! I think it would have been better to go over these in class, but I understand that time was of the essence.

Speaking of massive time-sinks, the allusions presentations were absolutely bafflingly long. Luckily, they were all engaging. As a child, I had a big yellow book of greek myths that I read until the cover fell off, so a lot of the stories were review- but a lot of them weren't. And yes, sometimes it hurt me to have things confused or fumbled or mixed up, but I learned a lot of stories that I hadn't had the full background to- especially the backstory to the Trojan War. Who knew it all started because of a cranky goddess? That's what I truly love about Greek myths- there's an overarching story of a war in Troy, but there are a million other stories that all happen concurrently. Odysseus  Philoctetes, Circe, all work within that story, but they each have a story of their own. Greek myths are an immense stretching entity that weaves itself over history so cleverly that I can't help but appreciate it. The Bible had a lot more new territory- although more of it was familiar than I thought originally. Also, please please please know that the people of God are the IsraelITES not the IsraelIS. One is correct now, one is correct biblically. I know that giving my presentation was fun, although I always forget how nervewracking presentations are until I'm up there and no one is giving any feedback because everyone is taking notes at the speed of sound.

I have to admit to being that guilty good kid who dishonored her family when we didn't have enough copies of The American Dream to start reading on time. I also have to admit to kind of loathing the beginning, as I suspected I would dislike the Theater of the Absurd when we read the article about it claiming that previous literary movements had somehow had aspects of the Absurd as opposed to the other way around. All that aside, the first part of it is awkward to read through, seemingly empty, and essentially perfectly in keeping with the style of Theater of the Absurd. It was only after we moved on from that, as the article we read afterwards suggested, that the play got really good. While I'd contest him on Mommy being 'eager to get rid of grandma' or 'vicious and emptyheaded' (at least, not entirely) the author of the article had a lot of solid, salient points- most of which I had already picked up on, at least in part. What I'm wondering now, and what I was wondering as I read it, is what other meanings are to be found beyond the obvious and apparent. That's always where the real analytical gold is; hiding behind the overarching obvious point. There are subtle little things hiding in there, and I hope we get to them in class, because otherwise we're doing ourselves an intellectual disservice.