American Literature

Written by

Prof. Sherine El Shoura

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 Table of Contents

Inviting the Reader to Play in Selected Stories of Postmodern Children’s

Literature 3

The Little Mermaid: A Fairytale of Individuation 21

Android Verses Humans in Alan Ayckbourn’s Comic Potential 38

Society’s Illusion of the Hallucinatory Figure in Mary Chase’s Harvey and David
Auburn’s Proof 56

Performing Masculinities in Jane Wagner’s Monologues:The Search for Signs of

Intelligent Life in the Universe 78

Bitter Laughter: Dark Comedy in David Mamet's American Buffalo 94

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 Inviting the Reader to Play in Selected Stories of Postmodern Children’s
Literature

Children’s picture books are generally dismissed when considering great

works of literature. That is due to the fact that they are presumably written for a child
audience and are therefore thought to be of no literary value, excepting their
recognition as beloved childhood stories. However, as any parent or teacher can
notice that many children books give as much to the adult reader as to the child
listener with surprising sophistication and layers of meaning. The position of
children’s literature within the realm of popular art and the tendency of such books
to be overlooked as serious works of art lends itself to postmodern evaluation—
which allows and encourages works to transcend between the worlds of popular art
and high art.

As stated by Thacker and Webb in their introduction of their text that

discusses children’s literature in the context of literary movements:

While there are exceptions…for the most part, children’s books are largely
ignored in this branch [literary history] of literary scholarship. It may be
that mainstream literary historians assume that books written for children
are independent of the forces that influence literary change. Alternatively,
the text themselves, focused as they are on educational values, may appear
merely to be exercises in social control. Children’s literature specialists
have demonstrated repeatedly that the exclusion of such texts belies the
complexity of their engagement with literary questions, whether thematic
of formal. (2)

This study will address the particular advantages that children’s books have
as representative works of postmodern literature. Therefore, postmodern literature

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requires an intelligent reader who can understand imbedded allusions, irony, parody
and context in order to derive the layers of intended meaning from writing. The study
will also discuss the positive impact of this aspect of postmodern children’s
literature. This will actually create an intelligent reader who must pull from outside
knowledge to look past the outward appearance of a text in order to understand a
given work. The study will also discuss the negative aspects, which include the risks
that are taken when an audience fails to comprehend the meaning behind the
writings.

To deal with works of children’s literature, the study is specifically addressing

books that are written for beginning readers as The Stinky Cheese and Other Fairly
Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka (1954) and Lane Smith (1936-2005), Beware of the
Storybook Wolves (2002) and its sequel Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? (2002)
by Lauren Child (1965), The Giving Tree (1964) by Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)
and The Taking Tree (2010) by Shrill Travesty. These are the books that are first
read by an adult reader to a child listener. These are the same books that child then
go on later to read on his/her own as she/he gains the skills to do so. They are short
enough to be read in fifteen minutes before a child’s bedtime, as they are absorbed
and analyzed not only by the child, but by the parent or other adult reader. However,
the important distinction between the children’s books addressed here within and
children’s books at large is the implied audience that includes both the adult reader
and the child listener or the beginning reader, as the author attempts to engage both.
This distinction is meant to provide a limitation on the scope of discussion and to
narrow down the large field of books that are purportedly written for children.

Because the intended audience of such books is at first unable to read the
written words, the books naturally include pictures or visually engaging elements
that correspond (or contrast) with the written words to provide meaning to the

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audience that is unable to read, or to enhance meaning for the audience that is able
to read. Picture books demand that attention must be given to both words and images
in examining the content and meaning. As for postmodern children literature, the
particularly engaging picture books are most notable for the interplay between
words, images and the mixed media.

The term postmodernism has been used to describe an era which to some has
already come and gone. To others, it is seen as an opposite to modernism, with Flynn
pointing out the inherent problem of considering postmodernism to be the binary
opposite of modernism due to problematizing of binary oppositions (Flynn 545). It
is more often seen as a reaction to or against modernism its predecessor. It has come
of age in a changing society where technology plays an increasing role in peoples’
lives, and where people have constant access to a wide variety of information from
all over the world.

The term “postmodern” has been used in many different fields, including
philosophy, visual and performing arts, literature, and also used to encompass
essentially any creative or intellectual endeavor. By looking at some of the
commonalities between philosophy, visual arts, and literature, one can come to a
general understanding of what is meant by term postmodernism. Postmodernism
reflects the term “incredulity of the metanarrative” (Lyotard xxiv). While the
postmodern art forms react against the preceding modernist art forms, they often do
so by directly quoting and acknowledging the modern pieces that have come before
them. Hence, the reader can expect postmodern children’s picture books to take
elements of both postmodern art and literature, drawing from traditional children’s
stories but then moving beyond them to create new meaning that can be significant
to both the adult reader and child listener, even when the viewpoints seem to be at
odds.

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 Postmodern children’s literature invites the audience—both the beginning
reader and listener, and the adult the reader—to play along and to become the creator
of meaning through the employment of techniques that leave meaning open to
interpretation. Daniel Green illustrates that audience’s willingness to play as: “Most
readers of even serious literary fiction expect a novel or short story to disclose its
meaning in some directly discernible way; when it doesn’t seem to do so readily or
according to recognizable methods some readers no doubt conclude that such fiction
has no meaning to disclose” (735).

Postmodernism uses self-refuting irony to create humor, wherein the audience

must be able to laugh at itself. Perhaps essential to postmodernism and modern
children’s books specifically, is the author or creator’s ability to play with meaning,
which invites the audience to play along in order to create meaning even in the
absence of the author whose work is left open for interpretation by an audience with
conflicting viewpoints.

Children’s literature is in a unique position to exemplify the pop-cultural

aspects of postmodernism, to be postmodern it must also offer sufficient literary
content to hold up to thoughtful analysis. Thacker and Webb states that; “books for
children have, until very recently, been relegated to the realms of the popular and,
therefore, they are often outside the remit of literary critics” (7). However, it is
precisely the fact that children’s literature has historically been overlooked as a
serious form of literature while inhabiting the realms of popular, that it is now able
to ascend as an exemplar of postmodern art when it also offers substantial literary
content.

Because these stories are written to be accessible by young children who are
beginning readers, the language is accessible to any reader. Similarly, the subject

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matter tends to be equally approachable using concepts that are readily understood
by children but may nevertheless address the same complex issues addressed by high
literature.

Due to this ease of accessibility to both the adult and the child audience, the
child’s picture book has a firm place in popular culture which is precisely where
postmodern artworks aim to subsist. At the same time, the content of a successful
postmodern children’s book that is able to spark thoughtful analysis is also worthy
of high culture status. Therefore, often without even trying, authors of children’s
picture books have given their writings a unique advantage of accessibility and
placement within popular culture, which is not as easy to achieve in the case of adult
literature, while also remaining relevant to a more sophisticated high culture reader
who takes the time to delve into thoughtful analysis. In other words, the authors of
children’s books automatically place their artworks into the hands of an audience
that is naturally at once varied and contradictory, contrary to the more select
audience of traditional readers of high literature, while simultaneously remaining
relevant to both groups.

Children’s picture books target at least two recognizable and specific partners:
beginning readers/listeners (children) and the adult that are guiding the children to
literacy (parents and teachers), while acknowledging that this relation results in an
audience that is comprised of readers with world views that are directly at odds with
each other. “Perhaps the most obvious class of works written for two distinct
audiences is one well known to all parents: children literature. Many works of this
genre appeal both to the child’s mind and sensibility and at the same time to the very
different interpretive framework of adults” (Richardson 259).

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 By its very nature, children’s literature is viewed at once by two duel part of
audience; however, the author must choose to address and be relevant to its readers
on both ends of the spectrum in order to take advantage of its natural position,
resulting in contradiction or self-refutation. Although all children’s picture books
have this natural advantage of being read by constituents of popular culture—adult
and child—the author of a specifically postmodern work of children literature will
choose to take advantage of this unique position by addressing the duality and
inherent contradictory viewpoints of the dual audience.

In spite of the fact that a child and adult simultaneously are reading one story,
hearing the same words and seeing the exact same images, each will find different
meaning in what he is experiencing. That is due to the differences in each reader’s
past experiences and understanding of the world. While any two readers/ viewers
experiencing the same artwork will naturally have different perspectives, the vast
difference in life experiences between a child and an adult, which are given equal
consideration and validity, can result in self-contradiction within the book. Subtle
“double encoding” can be employed to address each respective audience member:
Stevenson describes this as a “wink past the child reader to the adult beyond, or wink
past the adult to the child” (33). When a story is “doubly coded” (Richardson 260),
the author has acknowledged the importance of the multi-narrative of both the adult
and the child. This has attempted to simultaneously address both using language and
context that will appeal and translate differently to each reader with apparent
contradiction.

By “doubly coding” a story, an author is therefore rejecting the idea of the

metanarrative, in that he is rejecting the notion that there is one story to be told to
one audience in given work. The author is providing stories that are subtly different

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and potentially self-contradictory depending on the reader, therefore accounting for
the different perspectives that can be present within one audience and one story.

In Lauren Child’s Beware of the Storybook Wolves, both the child listener
and adult reader are specifically included as characters within the narration of the
story, which begins with a mother (adult reader) reading a bedtime story to her son
Herb (Child listener). Both adult and child are immediately involved into story since
the adult reader will be drawn to relate the adult mother figure, as she—like the story
mother—is reading a story to a child and the child listener is shown as Herb. The
perspectives of the characters are at odds with each other, with one knowing that the
storybook wolves are not real but are simply make-believe creations that pose no
true danger, and with the other believing that they are real and scary. This is due to
the difference between fiction and reality that has not yet been fully realized in a
young child.

One can then go on to read the words in the story, choosing to view the
narration from either point of view, as they become divergent and sometimes
conflicting. After Herb asks his mother to take his storybook from the room when
she leaves, due to the wolf inside, the narrator says, “Herb’s mother would smile to
herself because she knew that storybook wolves are not at all dangerous”. In this
case, the reader adopting the perspective of the parent figure might smile, able to
reflect on her own child’s fear of “storybook wolves” and her knowledge, like the
story mother’s knowledge, that storybook wolves are in fact harmless. On the other
hand, to the perspective of a child reader (or sympathizer) and Herb alike, storybook
wolves are in fact scary and dangerous as any flesh and blood wolf, being one and
the same, particularly as Herb is preparing to embark on an adventure including a
real encounter with a storybook wolf. Thus, the contradictory points of view of both
the reader and child listener assert that neither child nor adult member is incorrect in

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their interpretation of the story. Each interpretation is equally valid in the sense of
the micro-narratives that make up the whole of the story. The mother, who in her
experience knows that stories are not dangerous, will view storybook wolves as a
figment of imagination with no real power. On the other hand, the child who can
imagine a confrontation with the storybook wolf as a reality will see a different
danger in storybook wolves. Each individual will gain something possibilities of
divergent perspectives.

One cannot forget while reading the story to the child voice or character of
the writer. It is easy to overlook the writer of a story when one’s focus is on the
characters in a story. An interesting trait of postmodern works is the writing’s own
acknowledgment of the writer self-referentiality. This allows the writer to assert
herself/himself, to assert her/his existence something with a fictive self, even once
the story is out of her/his hands with interpretation and creation of meaning left to
the reader in the author’s absence. Employing self-referentiality leads to a work of
metafiction, or a work that does not let the reader become so drawn into the story
that the reader ceases to recognize it as being simply a story. “One common aspect
of the discussions about metafiction is its self-referentiality or self-consciousness;
metafictive texts draw attention to their status as fiction and text through the use of
a number of devices or techniques” (Panteleo 19-20).

Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith have chosen “Jack” as their narrator, or their
fictive self in The Stinky Cheese Man, as he identifies himself on the first page as
he accosts the Red Hen: “I’m Jack. I’m the narrator. And no, I can’t help you plant
the wheat. I’m a very busy guy trying to put book together”. Thacker and Webb
discuss Jack’s role as postmodern narrator: “the construction of the text is physical
task. The reader thus gains a sense of the book as physical entity rather than a

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linguistic and visual representation divorced from the actualities of production”
(158).

Instead of invisibly narrating the stories that follow, Jack obtrusively makes
his presence known as he directly addresses his readers in his role as the creator of
the book. After an upside-down page appears in the book, presumably at the
direction of narrator Jack, he states, “I know. I know. The page is upside down. I
meant to do that”. This calls attention to both the author and the narrator of the book,
and to a book as an imperfect expression of the author’s ideas. The reader is not
allowed to immerse herself in the fairy tales within the book, as she was likely
encouraged to do when she originally encountered the same stories told in a fashion
in the past. Thus, the reader is immersed into the book itself alongside the creator.
Jack keeps reminding the reader that these are just stories that were created by the
author. This indicates that the author/creator is no other than human but is rather the
teller of a story that comes from his own perspective within the limitations of his
own skills and abilities and has become a part of the story.

The author’s absence from the reading of the text becomes an expression of
the text. The reader is left with textual clues that form an interpretation of who the
author is, and what she/he is trying to express within the pages of the book once the
text is in the hands of the reader.

In Lauren Child’s Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? , the skills of the
creator are called into question. Herb, who began as the reader of stories, has
suddenly and literally become part of the stories he is reading, and attempting to flee
a series of well-known storybook characters. Tongue; the narrator (who now
becomes a character in the book, as does the illustrator) states as Herb stands before
a looming brick wall with a large door, “It was difficult to open because the

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illustrator had drawn the handle much too high up but, after three attempts at
jumping, Herb managed to grab and slowly creak the door open”. In this case, the
creator of the book (author) has actually hindered the reader (Herb’s) ability to
literally navigate through the story.

Another metafictive device employed in Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book?
is described by Suzanne O’Sullivan: “Child also resists the spatial boundaries of the
text by having characters ‘break through’ the page” (49). The reader expects a book
to be linear, able to be read left and right, top and bottom. She anticipates that the
book will flow naturally from beginning to end. This does not allow the reader to
remain within the normal boundaries of a book but expects the reader to go beyond
them, just as Herb has done.

The line between the book that is held the reader, and the books that are held
by Herb, is blurred. When Herb has the “odd pea squashed between the pages”, there
too does the reader of child’s book have a printed representation of pea squashed
between the pages. At one point, Herb must literally cut through the pages of his
book to escape to the next page, and the reader also finds an actual hole in his copy
of the story. By blurring the difference between the reader’s book, and Herb’s books,
the author brings herself as the narrator, the reader, and the characters of the book
into the same reality. The author and the reader are now subjects to the structures of
the text, which conditions and creates their reality and identities.

When considering the various features of postmodernity within children’s

literature, it would be impossible to discuss the meanings of the text without
discussing the meanings of the illustrations. It is also problematic to consider simply
the terms “text” and “illustrations,” because postmodern children’s picture books in
fact employ more complex visual representations than can simply be described as

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words and pictures. The visual aspects of the books include not only drawings and
words, but also the font size, in which the words are written in order to convey
meaning and interest. The illustrations themselves are affected through a wide
variety of mixed media, from painting, collage, computer graphics, and everything
between.

If postmodern visual arts employ a pastiche of styles and materials, Child’s

children’s books certainly embody this characteristic. In both Beware of the
Storybook Wolves, and Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book, the illustrations consist
of a combination of drawings, reproduced stickers, realistic photographs, reproduced
textured fabrics, and other colorful and visually exciting medium. The text itself
adds to the visual elements of the story, as described by O’Sullivan: “Child also uses
typography to imitate oral delivery, often giving each character their own ‘voice’ by
setting their dialogue in a unique font” (51).

When attempting to read and view a postmodern picture book, the reader is
not given a simple picture that can be expected to correspond to the written words
and be easily interpreted. Instead, the viewer/reader is confronted with irregular
variety of visual effects that may or may not correspond to the text. The illustrator
gives the reader a scene, and the writer gives the reader words, but each component
may be offering a different narrative. In the case of Child’s books, one must examine
the pictures, and might even have to turn the book sideways and upside down in
order to take in whole intended scene. Therefore, the use of visual images and text
that may be telling different stories does not allow for easy interpretation; instead,
the audience must reflect, analyze, and consider the connections between the words
and images in order to discover meaning within postmodern children’s literature.

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 Postmodern children’s literature tends to uproot the exception of the reader,
listener, and viewer. It does not convey to represent as objective reality, but rather
supports a micronarrative interpretation with the meaning that is jointly created by
the author as a product of the text, and the reader who is similarly drawn into the
text. Because the readers are unable to depend on their first impressions of the story,
they are forced to reread and take a second look at the pages in order to find the
intended meaning and be passive observer. O’Sullivan describes the reader as “for
this kind of playful interactivity to succeed, readers must be willing to play” (50). In
other words, because the story does not offer an attempt to an objective
metanarrative, the reader must draw on their interpretation of the signifiers to
construct her own understanding of the micronarrative. The audience of postmodern
children’s literature must work to find meaning within the text, to find the truth that
is being represented. Because the author does not offer the answers directly, the
reader must be willing to actively engage in the story for meaning to be conveyed.

The title of this children’s book authored by Shrill Travesty, The Taking Tree
immediately reminds the reader of Shel Silverstein’s children story, The Giving
Tree (1964). To understand this parody, one must therefore remember The Giving
Tree. It is simple story about a boy who grows to be an old man through the course
of the book, during which time he repeatedly takes from an apple tree that is
portrayed to be happy with the sacrifices. The tree first offers a place to climb, later
offers apples and branches, and finally offers her whole trunk in self-sacrifice.
Though seemingly a simply tale, the story has been interpreted by parents, educators,
and readers primarily with unending variations of two themes: as an instructional
tale about selflessness from the perspective of the tree, which seems to be a favored
interpretation; or as a tale about greediness without repercussion from the

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perspective of the boy essentially in parody of tales about selflessness (Strandburg
and Livo 17-18).

The Taking Tree begins on the dust jacket with the summary: “We all know
the story of the selfless tree that gives and gives and gives just to make sure one little
boy is happy. This is a different tree. A different boy. And a very different book.”
The cover of The Taking Tree, similar to that of The Giving Tree, depicts a boy
taking leaves off a tree. However, the parody features a tree whose body language is
oriented away from the boy, with a grimace. This is in contrast to that of the original
giving tree, which is leaning towards the boy offering an apple seemingly of its own
accord. The original story allows the boy some ambiguity of motivation, and
although he takes from the tree, the tree for its part is happy to give. The tree, which
is symbol of nature, is passive to the will of the boy. On the other hand, The Taking
Tree is clearly reluctant representing a resistance of nature against man, and the boy
is depicted to be clearly mean spirited and exploitative. The tree in The Taking Tree
is represented to be resentful of the boy’s constant taking: “The tree just hated the
kid. But she couldn’t get away from him. She was a tree. This was where her roots
were”. When the kid asks if he can cut down her trunk, the tree that has been given
a voice, unlike the tree in The Giving Tree says, “Are you out of your mind?” The
author thereby asserts that there is another story to be told, the story from the
perspective of the tree as a representative of nature that is quite different from a
reality in which a tree gives selflessly and quietly of itself. He gives a tree a voice,
and that voice insists that it is indeed not happy or selfless, but simply unable
physically to fight back (until the end, it should of course be noted, where the boy
cuts down the tree which in turn crushes him. In Silverstein’s version, the tree and
nature do not have a voice, but the narrator informs the reader that the tree is happy.
In Travesty’s version, the tree speaks for itself as a representative of the natural

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world, while the narrator also offers his own commentary, calling the boy a “real
jerk”.

In The Giving Tree, the narrator’s voice as created by the text appears to be
non-judgment. However, the author/narrator of The Taking Tree almost becomes a
part of the story with the offered judgments, such as calling the boy a jerk and
concluding the story, “I have no idea if the tree is happy about this or not”. In this
way, the author becomes a part of the story, directly imparting opinions of the
situation between the tree and the boy. In the absence of the author while the reader
is viewing the book, the author becomes a character within the reality of the story,
telling the reader how the situation. Thus, the reader must then accept or reject the
author’s explicit perspective, thereby subjecting himself to the structures of the text
and also taking his own role in the story.

Travesty takes advantage of his dichotomous audience by inserting remarks

that are clearly directed at an adult audience. One page depicts the boy with his arms
crossed, with the words “And he carved things into the tree ---that he almost instantly
regretted”. The following page shows the tree, attempting to cover its trunk with its
branches. When the small house that the boy built from the tree’s branches burns
down, the narrator says, “The tree was very happy---until she found the kid survived
the fire. In fact, he had insured the little house for five million dollars. For some
reason”. The adult will recognize that the kid burnt the house for the insurance
money, while a younger reader may not know the complexities of insurance fraud
as implied by the narrator.

By parading The Giving Tree—an ambiguous book that is often seen as an

instructional tale about selflessness from the perspective of the tree—with an
unambiguous story that portrays the boy as selfish and troublesome, Travesty takes

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a beloved story with beloved characters and brings the characters out of the realm of
fairytale, calling attention to a different story, a different micro-narration with a
different moral. Travesty takes an old story and creates new meaning, or perhaps
calls attention to the meaning that was lost through interpretation of the original
story.

Parody requires the writings to portray one thing while simultaneously

meaning something different. When properly employed, and received by a willing
player, parody creates a strong message by first calling attention to the literal image
or idea portrayed, and the subverting that image by implying an entirely different
meaning that is contrary to the literally represented idea. In order to function and
produce the intended meaning, parody assumes knowledge and complicity of the
audience. Poorly executed parody risks only portraying the literal image or idea,
with the second subversive meaning falling short of audience understanding.

A young child’s ability to understand complex literary devices can be seen as

an audience that is more willing to play, perhaps even better suited to read
postmodern literature than the adult audience due to his generally open mind and
natural interaction with stories. The child audience is naturally curious, and is known
to read the same picture book over and over again in order to understand the multiple
layers of meaning that must be unraveled. Although the young audience may have a
different perspective than the adult audience, young readers are nevertheless able to
make meaning from postmodern children’s literature that allows room for multiple
interpretations and multiple understandings.

By inviting the reader to play, postmodern children’s literature assumes that

the reader will investigate the texts and images to form their own meaning. By the
act of the readers “playing”, they engage with the postmodern devices in the stories

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and become active readers and formers of meaning. Postmodern children’s literature
both assumes and then creates a reader through the ongoing process of reading and
creating that takes place within the covers of the books. This reader interacts with
the text and is able to create diverse meaning significant to each individual’s own
respective experience, counteracting the metanarrative and claiming literature as his
or her own.

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 Works Cited

Child, Lauren. Beware of the Storybook Wolves. London: Hodder, 2002. N. Pag.
Print.

--------------. Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? London: Hodder, 2002. N. Pag.
Print.

Flynn, Elizabeth A. “Rescuing Postmodernism”. College Composition and

Communication. 48:4 (1997): 540-555. Web. 25 March 2016.
http://www.joster.org/stable/3584457.

Green, Daniel. “Postmodern American Fiction”. The Antioch Review. 61. 4 (2007):
729-741. Web 1 December 2015. http://www.joster.org/stable/4614569.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.

Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brain Massumi. Minneapolis: Univ. of MN,
1984. Print.

O’Sullivan, Suzanne. “Playfulness in Lauren Child’s Picture books”. Papers:

Explorations into Children’s Literature. 18. 1 (2008): 48-55.

Pantaleo, Syliva. “Young Children Engage with the Metafictive in Picture Books”.
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy. 28. 1. (2005).

Richardson, Brain. “Singular Text, Multiple Implied Readers”. Style. 41 .3 (2007).

Scieszka, Jon and Lane Smith. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid
Tales. New York: Penguin, 1992. N. Pag. Print.

Silverstein, Shel. The Giving Tree. New York: Harper, 1964. N. Pag. Print.

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Stevenson, Deborah. “If You Read This Last Sentence, It Won’t Tell You Anything:
Postmodernism, Self-referentiality, and The Stinky Cheese Man”. Children’s
Literature Association Quarterly. 19. 1 (1994): 32-34

Strandburg, Walter and Norma J. Livo. “The Giving Tree or There is a Sucker Born
Every Minute. Children Literature in Education. 17. 1 (1986): 17-24.

Thacker, Deborah Cogan and Jean Webb. Introducing Children’s Literature, From
Romanticism to Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Travesty, Shrill. The Taking Tree. New York: Simon, 2010. N. Pag. Print

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 The Little Mermaid: A Fairytale of Individuation

Researchers that focus on the relationship between mythology, fairytales, and

human psyche have been limited. Although theorists such as Jung, mythologist
Joseph Campbell, and Jungian analysts James Hollis and Marie Louise von Franz
contributed important theories about the importance of these archetypal stories to
the field of psychology, this topic remains understudied. My study therefore focuses
on how the use of mythology and fairytales helps one connect with one’s deeper
Self. This study is used to analyze Hans Christian Andersen’s (1872-1974) fairytale
The Little Mermaid. The story describes the process of individual psychological
development in a metaphorical language that is accessible to many people and as
well as contributive to their unique human life journeys.

As the central archetype, the Self subordinates all other archetypes such that
“every archetypal image carries at least a partial aspect of the Self”(Edinger 38-39).
Studying the archetypes is a process of looking at the mythical world, or the inner
world of images inside oneself (Campbell 17). According to Campbell, the imagery
of myth is a symbolic language system that communicates deep truths about
humanity, and the symbols and deities in myths serve as models that remind people
to consider the deeper, transpersonal aspects of life (21). The stories that occur in
myths allow people to understand their own stories and function to bring people in
contact with themes that resonate human values.

Mythology not only grounds one’s personal story in a deeper layer of

existence but also functions to provide understanding of one’s inner psychic world.
According von Franz, the characters and stories in mythology serve as symbolic
motifs that reflect the basic patterns of the human psyche (1-12). According to
Hollis, all mythology centers around a pattern he called “the cosmic drama” (53).
The eternal return is a life-death-rebirth cycle, and the hero’s quest is the movement
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from identification to individuation. Historically, said Hollis, the myth of the eternal
return was associated with “[the] Great Mother archetype, which represented
procreation and nurturance, the transformation through the many passages of life,
and the weaver of fate” (54-55). On the other hand, the hero’s quest was associated
with the Father archetype, the solar hero who represented “the capacity to rise to the
challenge of life” (55) and take on the task of individualism.

Hollis illustrated that the Great Mother and Father give birth to the archetype
of the divine which is synonymous with the Self in that the child is the entity within
that undergoes the process of the psychological development and individuation (60).
Donald Kalsched pointed out that, like Self the child, as a symbol, is “suspended
between two worlds, one material, one spiritual, one inner, one outer; and this dual
aspect of the child is part of what marks him or her as a symbol for that paradoxical
unity or wholeness” (56) that is the Self.

The child can be seen as the symbol of the emergence of the Self that must
undergo the cosmic drama. Hollis identified four parts of the cosmic drama: chaos,
creation, separation, and going home (110). Chaos is “a metaphor of the time when
the earth was without form and humans nonexistent” (110). Thus to the individual,
chaos is like the womb of the great mother or “the fetal state where [individuals]
float timelessly through the unconscious sea” (110). Creation is the making of
something from nonexistence and corresponds to the coming together of the Great
Mother and Father to create the divine child (111). Separation is the embodiment of
the hero’s quest in that one must become conscious and fully human. Lastly, going
home refers to the process of returning to the source of the Mother and reclaiming
the renew life one has lost along the way (112). The cosmic drama embodies both
the life-death-rebirth cycle and the hero’s quest, and that is the central theme in
mythology. Although mythology is capable of leading to self-knowledge, fairytales

22
are the preferred to the Self. In Individuation in Fairytales, von Franz points out
that because the fairytale lacks cultural ties, its stories and motifs “seem to be the
international language of mankind---of all ages and of all races and cultures” (27-
28). She makes the point that, “the fairy tale is like the sea, and the sagas and myths
are like the waves upon it; a tale rises to be a myth and sinks down again into being
a fairy tale” (26). Thus fairytales ground people’s stories and reflect the human
psyche in a more universally understandable manner.

The archetypal images in fairytales are “the images by which consciousness

are put in touch with the unconscious” (Campbell 87). By using the introductory
words “once upon a time”, fairytales refer to the archetypal stories that occur in the
realm of the collective unconscious. The characters found in fairytales are
“projections of … [people’s] own fantasies, [and their] own consciousness, … [and
their] own deep being” (Campbell 107). Because they put people in touch with their
own deep, archetypal images, fairytales offer a medium by which consciousness and
the unconscious communicate. Fairytales attempt to describe imaginably what the
Self is. Although there are many variations of fairytales, they all point to the
archetypes of the Self. Exploring different fairytales, then, allows one to get in touch
with the essential properties of the Self and the archetypes that are related to it.

By studying the symbols, motifs, and archetypal patterns inherent in

fairytales, one can gain a better understanding of one’s deeper Self. According to
von Franz, the fairy tale must first be divided into its various dramatic aspects (27).
These aspects, according to the 19th century literary scholar, Gustav Freytag include
the exposition, the complication, the climax, the falling action, and denouement
(Dailey 211). After dividing the fairy tale into various dramatic aspects, one can
focus on the fairytale’s characters, the symbols, metaphors, and motifs that appear
in the story. By enlarging the images that arise within the story, one can make a

23
sound interpretation about what the fairytale seems to represent. Lastly, one can
translate the enlarging story into psychological language in an attempt to bring the
meaning of the images and the plot of the fairytale. As people translate the fairytale
within their own psychological framework, they gain a better understanding of
whether their own personal story fits with the archetypal story of the fairytale (von
Franz 32). According to Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Fairy tales, myths, and stories provide understandings which sharpen our sight
so that we can pick out and pick up the path…. The instruction found in story
reassures us that the path has not run out, but still leads---[people] deeper, and
more deeply still, into their own knowing. The tracks we are following are those
of the wild and innate instinctual Self (4-5).

Like the beginning of many archetypal stories, Andersen (1974) located the
fairytale in a distant, far off place. As translated by Haugaard, the tale begins:

Far, far from the land, where the waters are as blue as the petals of the
cornflower and as clear as glass, there, where no anchor can reach the bottom,
live the merpeople. So deep is this part of the sea that you would have to pile
many church towers on top of each other before one of them emerged above
the surface (57).

Von Franz in Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum said, “The sea is the symbol of
the unfathomable depth of the unconscious, or in mystical language, of the depth of
the Godhead” (155). By situating his fairy tale in the deep sea, Andersen situated the
story in the realm of the collective unconscious, the chaotic phase of the cosmic
drama, from which the whole story can unfold. The sea is the symbol of the
dynamism life and therefore a representation of the Great Mother archetype.

24
 Held within the motherly sea are the merpeople—mermen and mermaids.
Taking on both masculine and feminine forms, these beings are half human and half
fish. According to the psychologist Gillian Pothier, the merpeople live between two
worlds – human and fish – that connects the upper body of spirit and consciousness
with the lower body of the soul and unconscious (21-30). Fish have also been said
to symbolize human’s “lost participation in the archaic, unconscious world” (“Fish”
202). As integrated being that fuse consciousness and the unconscious, mermaids
thus participate in both the external and internal worlds, and symbolizing this
paradoxical unity and wholeness, they are associated with the coming together of
disparate elements of the self. Pothier proposed that “the symbol of the mermaid
remains an essentially unwaving mythological, intrapsychic, and cultural figure
precisely because she carries transcendent meaning” (33). She added that the
transcendent meaning of the mermaid is shown in how she unites the dual aspects of
the Self, essentially acting as a bridge between consciousness and the
unconsciousness (36).

In the process of psychological development, ideally, uniting opposing

elements or forces in the psyche is the goal (Edinger,1972, 3-7). However, the
merpeople in The Little Mermaid do not have souls and that indicates that they are
incomplete and not whole. According to von Franz (1997), it is important to take
into account who or what is missing in the exposition of a fairy tale, because it offers
the opening psychological situation (36). This missing piece of the self, the soul, is
one thing that must be redeemed in the story.

In the exposition of The Little Mermaid, the merpeople include the Sea King,
his six daughters, and the grandmother who takes care of them. The Sea King is the
dominant spiritual content in the collective psyche. He is a widower, which suggests
that although the daughters are held by the Great Mother, symbolized by the ocean,

25
they are lacking a personal mother and a queen. Because the story is missing a
mother and queen, which is not representative of the complete fairytale family, it
can be assumed that the story revolves around redeeming the female principles
represented by these archetypes.

According to Birkhauser-Oeri, “ the archetypal mother in both her light and

dark aspects, ultimately represents the urge toward transformation with the psyche”
(47). In her positive aspect, she represents transcendental love, which has the ability
to join what is divided within the psyche and therefore make it whole. Along with
her life-enhancing qualities, the archetypal mother also represents the destructive
aspects of the self that aim to compensate for imbalances within the psyche. Jung
(1990) explained the dark aspect of the mother archetype as “anything secret, hidden,
dark; the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces and poisons,
that is terrifying and inescapable like fate (27). In The Little Mermaid, the dark
mother is presented as a witch. The mother archetype, as both life-enhancing and
destructive force within the psyche, is the root of all change and growth. In the
exposition of a fairytale, a figure lacking a personal mother suggests that these
archetypal qualities have not been integrated into the psyche.

Another archetypal quality is missing in the exposition of The Little

Mermaid- that of the queen. According to von Franz (1977), “if we take the king as
representing a central and dominant symbolic content of collective consciousness,
then the queen would be its accompanying feminine element” (39). The missing
queen within the story, then, suggests that the principle of eros, which is also the
positive aspect of the mother, has been lost. Associated with spontaneity, feeling,
instinct, and intuition, this lost feminine principle keeps the little mermaid from
developing a relationship between consciousness and the unconscious.

26
 The Sea King without the feminine ruling principle of the queen, rules the
kingdom of the merpeople alone. Missing the mother and queen within the fairytale,
then, suggests that the feminine principle in its entirety has not been integrated in
the story. The opening psychological situation thus suggests that The Little
Mermaid is a story about redeeming the feminine principle and the soul.

Because the archetypes of the Great Mother (the Sea) and Father (the Sea
King) give birth to the divine child archetype, all of the mermaid sisters can be
considered divine. Of the six mermaids, the protagonist is the youngest, and as a
divine child that lives in the depths of the collective unconscious, she represents the
archetype of the self that will undergo the process of individuation. The little
mermaid, a symbol of the unity of consciousness and the unconscious, is therefore,
the child-hero of the story who undergoes the process of the self-realization.

This young female mermaid is very happy tending her garden, which was
round “like the sun” (Andersen 58) and held a red weeping willow and a marble
statue of a boy that was cut out of stone. The garden can be considered as the Pure
Land and Western Paradise that reflect “an idealized inner space of potential
wholeness and hidden design” (“Garden” 146). The garden could be a symbol of the
self. The little mermaid has planted red flowers in it so it will look like the sun,
which alludes to her longing for consciousness of the Self.

Significantly, within the garden stand a red weeping willow tree and a stone
statue of a boy. According to Birkhouser-Oeri, the tree is a symbol for a higher
version of the mother or female principle (143). Jung said that the tree also
symbolizes the Self in that it “signifies a psychic center beyond the ego reconciling
such opposites as above and below, or heaven and earth; its branches reach into the
sky and its roots penetrate deep into the earth” (270). The fact that the tree is a willow
tree is also significant since the willow tree and weeping willow, in particular, are
27
associated with water, tears, and sorrow, “specifically for lost love” (Alisoun
Gardner-Medwin 240-241). The weeping-willow tree, then, can be considered a
symbol of the Self that is essentially mourning the loss of the feminine principle. It
also suggests that redeeming the feminine element of eros may require suffering,
and the healing element of tears and water.

A marble statue of a boy that was cut out of clear stone stands in the garden.
Sandra Burke found this statue to be a representation of the internal masculine
principle that carries the internal masculine spirit of the self that “gives to woman’s
consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation, and self-knowledge” (113).
Utilizing the symbols of the garden, the red weeping willow tree, and the marble
statue of the boy, Andersen’s tale suggests that wholeness may be attained by
tending to the lost feminine principle and by redeeming the soul, which, in the little
mermaid’s situation, is personified by the internal masculine principle and is
represented by the statue.

On her 15th birthday, the little mermaid rises to the surface of the water to see
the human world she so yearns to see. Therefore the little mermaid is ready to
undergo the process of transformation that leads one on the path to individuation.

Rising to the surface of the water, the little mermaid sees a handsome young
prince on a ship, who reminds her of the marble statue she has in her garden, and she
falls in love with him. The prince represents the positive male counterpart to the
feminine eros principle. Birkhauser -Oeri explained that “[the prince] embodies a
new, liberating, spiritual attitude to life, embracing thoughtfulness, religious
seriousness, courage and a genuine understanding of one’s own and others’ natures”
(40). The fact that he looks like the marble statue in her garden alludes to the idea
that the little mermaid’s attraction to him is based on projection, a psychological
term that, according to Jung (1983), means that the inner masculine spiritual
28
principle has been cast upon an external male object (92). Therefore, the little
mermaid’s attraction to the prince is an unconscious means by which the internal
feminine principle seeks totality. She falls in love with her own internal image, the
masculine image of her soul, which has been projected onto the prince.

A storm blows after the mermaid sets eyes on the prince. The storm represents
the inner conflict inside herself. A storm is a “natural metaphor for spontaneous
upheaval in the ordinary affairs of life that can annihilating or transformative”
(Ronnberg and Martin 66). The projection that the little mermaid makes on the
prince, then, is symbolically what causes the storm in the story, and it is yet to be
revealed if it is annihilating or transformative for her.

After this incident, during which the little mermaid saves the prince from
drowning, she cannot focus on anything else but going to the human world so that
she can be with the prince. She lets her garden wild and dark, which suggests that
she has given up tending to her Self in order to chase the projection of her soul. The
little mermaid, yearning to live beyond the soulless world that mermaids are resigned
to, essentially decides to give her Self up in order to attain the prince’s love and earn
an immortal soul.

Realizing that human beings find mermaids’ fishtails ugly, she laments the
fact that she does not have legs. According to Pothier, the tail represents the shadow,
or unintegrated, aspects of the self and alludes to the primitive feminine realm of the
unconscious (27-28). Along with the dark and shadowy aspects of the tail, the fishtail
as an aspect of the fish, is a revealer of wisdom, therefore, the fishtail can be seen as
the unconscious aspect of the Self that, like the shadow, offers wisdom.

Another source of unconscious wisdom comes from the mermaid’s voice. Her
singing voice, as the most beautiful of all, can be considered the wind of the soul.

29
The voice and song represent the meaningful utterance of the unconscious and those
parts of the self that are worth bringing into the world. When the little mermaid
trades her voice and tongue to the sea witch in order to obtain legs, she can be seen
as essentially giving up both of her ties to her unconscious self. In order to take a
stand in the world, literally and figuratively, the little mermaid gives up a significant
part of herself.

The sea witch, willing to take away the mermaid’s tail and voice, represents a
missing or dead parent within the story. According to von Franz (1997), the mother
figure in the little mermaid has died, which signifies that the positive mother aspect
of the maternal archetype has moved into the unconscious, and her absence in
consciousness activates a negative figure to take her place(128-129). Although she
was afraid of the witch, the little mermaid went to her willingly, which suggests that
she is both afraid of her own physical and instinctual experience and also drawn to
it. Also, her willingness to go to negative mother suggests that the little mermaid is
capable of bringing the negative aspects of the mother to consciousness.

The sea witch lives in strange forest. The forest symbolizes an untamed,
natural place where one may meet terrifying things like the evil and uncontrolled
drives. Thus going into forest to meet the sea witch is both an opportunity and a
dangerous trip. According to Birkhauser-Oeri (1988) the forest is as a symbol of the
unconscious to which the positive principle has retreated, the forest also carries the
lost positive aspects of the self that can produce a life-enhancing effect for the little
mermaid (134).

In Andersen’s tale, the sea witch gives the little mermaid a draught that will
make her human so she will have the chance to make the prince fall in love with and
marry her. If he does not fall in love with the little mermaid but decides to marry
another, her heart will break, and she will become foam on the ocean (69). By trading
30
essential aspects of herself to the sea witch in order to win the prince’s love, the little
mermaid acquires into the negative aspect of the mother archetype, which is
destructive and dangerous. Even though the little mermaid can walk and dance more
gracefully than any person on earth (68), the sea witch robs her of her wholeness.
Lacking wholeness, the little mermaid lives on land, in great pain.

Although the little mermaid would be able to take a stand in the world and be
the most beautiful of all humans, no matter how hard she tries, she cannot make the
prince fall in love with her. With every step she takes, and every dance she dances,
she is thus in terrible pain. Just as the witch warned, “every step felt as though she
were walking on sharp knives. But she suffered it gladly” (Andersen 70). This
suffering suggests that the little mermaid has been willing to make a great sacrifice
to earn the prince’s love, but the prince, being merely a projection of her own soul
and therefore not her soul itself, cannot truly love her. Her love has been in vain, for
even though he thought she had “the kindest heart of them all” (72), she could not
make him love her. The complication arises because the little mermaid, having lost
the feminine principle within, enlists the sea witch’s help to attain the prince’s love
and an immortal soul. Driven by the negative aspect of the mother and lacking the
eros principle, she cannot make the prince fall in love with her.

The prince falls in love with another, whom he thought had saved him, and
decided to marry her. Although the little mermaid saves the prince from the storm,
it is to the woman from the holy temple, the future queen, that the prince exclaims,
“you are the one who saved me, when I lay half dead on the beach!” (73). He was
essentially half dead until he found his other half, the queen. Even though the prince
did not marry the little mermaid, it must be noted that a marriage between the prince
and a holy princess occurs in the fairytale. Thus marriage symbolizes the union of
opposites male and female and alludes to the fact that the missing eros principle has

31
been revived within the story. Even so, it seems as though the little mermaid cannot
earn an immortal soul.

In an attempt to save the little mermaid from death that the marriage would
bring, her sisters visit the sea witch and trade their hair for a knife. According to
Birkhauser-Oeri, hair is symbolic of one’s unconscious thoughts and fantasies (37),
and the knife is symbolic of the capacity for discrimination and judgment and acts
as an instrument of liberation (104-105). However, because the knife was offered by
the sea witch, it can be considered a means by which the little mermaid continues to
be trapped by the negative mother. The shadow quality of the knife represents an
internal masculine principle that discriminates and judges oneself incessantly.
According to Marion Woodman, the witch sets this type of self-judgment in motion,
and the only way to get rid of the attachment to the negative mother is to disappoint
the witch herself (68).The little mermaid does this by ridding herself of the knife
within the tale, which allows her to relinquish her bond to the sea witch. Instead of
plunging the knife into the prince’s heart to kill him, which would allow her to live
the rest of her life as a mermaid, she tosses the knife into the sea. Even though she
knows she will die as a result, the little mermaid decides to sacrifice herself instead
of taking the prince’s life. According to Woodman, sacrificing herself in this way is
essentially sacrificing the aspect of the Self that has been tied to the witch (161). By
sacrificing herself instead of killing the prince, the little mermaid symbolically kills
the projection she has had of the prince. In doing so, she allows the holy marriage
and the eros principle that it embodies to remain. By surrendering to her imagined
death in the ocean, she essentially sacrifices herself in the name of love.

Returning to the watery realms of the unconscious, the little mermaid feels as
though she is dying and turning into foam. Having relinquished her attachment to
the sea witch and withdrawn her projection of the prince, however, the little

32
mermaid is able to reconnect with the positive aspects of the mother. Finding herself
once again in the womb of the Great Mother, the little mermaid can accept the grief
of losing her stand in the world, and reconnect with her instincts. Woodman
described this process as “jumping into water releases the instincts: they swiftly rise
to the surface…where [they cease] to be rigid and [begin] to flow, as if in the depths
of the waters of the unconscious the answer resides” (75). By willfully returning to
the waters of the mother, the little mermaid essentially becomes conscious of the
positive mother, and within the Great Mother’s womb, she can be purified for
rebirth. The little mermaid is reborn from the sea as the child of beginning.
Remembering the wholeness of being, which occurred through the life-death-rebirth
cycle, the little mermaid has been reborn with a divine purpose, the seed of
individuation.

According to the fairytale, because she had a pure heart, the little mermaid
finds herself up in the clouds among the daughters of the air (Andersen 75). Being
an air spirit with an ethereal body (and no tail), the little mermaid finds herself
among the clouds. Flying between heaven and earth, like angels do, she can earn an
immortal soul by doing good deeds (76). She can “fly to the warm countries, where
the heavy air of the plague rests, and blow cool winds to spread…[and] carry the
smell of flowers that refresh the heal the sick” (Andersen 76). The little mermaid
can therefore earn a human soul not from something or someone external, but from
the love she now finds internally, and that she can offer to the world. As a child of
the air, she is essentially the divine child that can undergo the process of
individuation and help heal the world around her. By redeeming the feminine
principle within herself, and offering her love to the world, the little mermaid can
earn her immortal soul.

33
 The fairytale ends on a hopeful but cautionary note---the little mermaid’s time
of trial, or the that time would take her to earn an immortal soul, would be shortened
if she encountered a good child in the homes of human beings, and it would be
lengthened if she encountered a bad child in the homes of human beings (Andersen
76). Andersen’s ending the story in the human realm suggests that it is the human
being’s duty to heed the call of individuation. Having been reborn in the womb of
the Great Mother, a good child would follow the path that is represented by the
hero’s journey. According to Birkhauser-Oeri, however, the heroic child, the one
that undergoes the process of individuation, is always in danger because it embodies
a new way of being in the world (85). Therefore, it is a human being’s choice that
shortens or prolongs the attainment of an immortal soul.

Von Franz (1970) indicated that fairy tales provides a variety of typical
scenarios of different phases of the individuation journey (20). Andersen’s The Little
Mermaid can be considered a tale individuation that illustrates the life-death-rebirth
process that people may need to undertake before they undergo the hero’s quest, or
the process of individuation.

The story, in its most basic form, illustrates the process of psychological
maturation and transformation that begins the path to Selfhood. Reflecting on the
process of psychological maturation, the little mermaid’s journey is moved from
psychological immaturity. The fairytale begins with the little mermaid in the watery
realm of the Great Mother, which is synonymous with the psychological state of the
ego being completely merged with the Self and represents the original psychic state
present in infants and young children (Edinger 6). In order for children to develop
psychologically, they must emerge from this identification with the Self and adapt
to the world around them. Like the little mermaid, adapting to the world requires the
child to lose contact with aspects of the Self. These aspects of the Self sink into the

34
unconscious and must be redeemed if the child is to continue the process of
individuation. In order to redeem them, the individual, like the mermaid, must
sacrifice his or her conscious standing in the world so that the totality of the self can
be realized. Only then can he or she be reborn psychologically with a sense of true
meaning and purpose and the ability to undertake the hero’s quest.

Developing the ego-Self connection requires that one be able to integrate the
conscious and unconscious aspects of the Self. Like the little mermaid, people can
redeem lost aspects of the Self by willingly surrounding to the motherly womb of
the unconscious, and by redeeming the feminine principles of spontaneity, feeling,
instinct, and intuition (Baring &Cashford xii). Integrating the feminine principle
requires that people look at the shadow aspects of themselves, both positive and
negative; that they cut ties with the negative mother; that they remove their
projections from the external world; and that they stay true to the divine child within
themselves.

As a story of redemption, the little mermaid lost an essential part of her Self,
the feminine principle, which she had to regain in order to attain an immortal soul.
Psychologically speaking, she underwent a life-death-rebirth cycle that allowed her
path toward individuation. The little mermaid had to sacrifice herself to the totality
of the Self, which included both consciousness and the unconscious. This integration
of consciousness and the unconscious allowed her to resume her spiritual path
toward Selfhood. Therefore The Little Mermaid offers people guidance in their
lives.

35
 Works Cited

Andersen, H. C. The little Mermaid. The Complete Fairy tales and Stories (E.C.
Haugaard, Trans., 1974). New York, NY: Anchor Books.

Baring, A. & Cachford, J. The Myth of the goddess: Evolution of an Image.

London, England: Viking Arkana, 1991

Birkhauser-Oeri, S. The Mother: Archetypal Image in Fairy Tales. Toronto, ON,

Canada: Inner City Books, 1988

Burke, S. Up from the Sea: A Jungian Interpretation of “The Little Mermaid”.

Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria,
CA, 2006

Campbell, J. Pathways to bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Novato,

CA: New World Library, 2004

Clements, R., & Musker, J. Director. The Little Mermaid. Motion Picture. USA:
Disney, 1989

Dailey, J. “Life doesn’t give us happy endings”: Writing with Eugene O’Neill. In C.
Edgar & G. Lenhart (Eds.). The Teachers and Writers Guide to Classic
American Literature. New York, NY: Teachers & Writers Collaborative, pp.
200-216

Edinger, E. Ego and Archetype. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1972

………………………………. Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in

Psychotherapy,Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1994

Estes, C.P. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild
Women Archetype. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1995

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Franz, M.-L. von. Individuation in Fairy Tales. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1977

--------------------. Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales. Toronto, Canada: Inner City

Books, 1997

-----------------. [Psychological commentary]. N M. Ibn Umail, Corpus Alchemicum

Arabicum: Book of the Explanations of the Symbols Kitab Hall Al-Rumuz
(T. Abt & Madelung, Eds.). Zurich, Switzerland: Living Human Heritage,
2006

Gardner-Medwin, A. “The willow motif in folksongs in Britain and Appalachia”.

Studies in Scottish Literature, 26. 1. 1991. Retrieved from
http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol126/iss1/19

Hollis, J. The Archetypal Imagination. College Station: Texas A & M University,

2000

Jung, C. G. The Essential Jung: Selected Writings (A. Storr, Ed.). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1983

-------------. The Undiscovered Self (R. F. Hull, Trans). Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990

Kalsched, D. Trauma and the Soul: A psycho-spiritual Approach to Human

Development and its Interruption. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013

Ronnberg. A & K. Martin. Ed. The Book of Symbols. Cologne, Germany: The
Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism/Taschen, 2010

Woodman, M. Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride. Toronto,

Canada: Inner City Books, 1982.

37
 Android Verses Humans in Alan Ayckbourn’s Comic Potential

In recent years, science fiction has been attracted by researchers but this trend
has not expanded to literature. There are many playwrights who fall into the category
of science fiction as Robert Anderson, Edward Bond, John Guare, David Henry
Hwang, Sam Shepard, J.B. Priestly and Alan Ayckbourn. But despite the fame of
their authors, they seemed to have little or no connection to the science fiction
community. Rarely has a science fiction writer embraced by this community
ventured into theatre, and rarely has science fiction playwriting aroused interest
among science fiction audiences. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore that the
door is still opened to a new dimension of the theatre which will raise playwriting
above the ordinary. This idea is through Alan Ayckbourn’s (1939- ) science fiction
play Comic Potential (1999). His play illustrates Ayckbourn’s innovation of new
methods and ideas that take place in the future and beyond expectation. It explains
how Ayckbourn skillfully deals with comedy in order to stir both laughter and
bewilderment of his audience.

Critics vary in their interpretation about the definition of science fiction.

Kincaid in his essay “On the Origins of genre” exclaims that “a definition attempts
to fix the pattern that applies to science fiction, but the pattern […] is in constant
flux, and no definition has successfully managed to encompass all that is, all that it
has been, and all that it might be” (414). Heinlein offers a more specific definition
when he insists that “science fiction must use the scientific method and reflects the
knowledge of the time while taking into account how these will affect humanity”
(8). Ray Bradbury believes that the emphasis should be on the study humanity over
science, “since fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the
writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together” (as cited in
McNeilly 17). It is clear that science fiction makes no attempt to describe what is

38
real; instead it images, changes and explores what is new. In this introduction to The
Road to Science Fiction, Gunn expands upon this idea by saying that “traditional
literature of change, and thus of the past, science fiction is the literature of change,
and thus of the present and the future” (vi). Therefore, science fiction expects its
readers to be looking for something new and different.

By searching about science fiction in literature, one can notice that there is no
first book that is called science fiction. Since the early nineteenth century, science
fiction has provided to literature. In 1818 Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein was based on
science fiction since the story created imaginary worlds which suggested that
human’s innovations could reach into the machinery of the universe. In 1895, H.G.
Wells’ The Time Machine, reached many years into the future to argue that man
could invent and travel across the future even if people didn’t believe in science.
Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House (1919) employed a collection of allegorical
characters to explore the dangers of the British character with its own destiny. David
Linday’ A Voyage to Arcturus (1920) is another science fiction story where Maskull
was sent across the terrain of an alien planet in search of his own soul. By searching
beyond the familiar world, science fiction challenges accepted assumptions about
reality and raises significant questions about the nature of being and the purpose of
life itself.

While the theatre insists on occupying itself with the present, science fiction
continues to devote itself to the art at which it has always excelled: imagining new
possibilities for humanity beyond past and present experience. It was science fiction
writers whose imaginations put submarines, rockets, atomic weaponry, space ships,
and computers to work before they had even been invented. Smith Bacon observes
that science fiction was “a powerful tool of mind that could have actual effect on the
world, science fiction was dreams that might come true” (266). But although

39
hundreds of plays based on science fictional premises have been written, few of these
scripts have a direct connection with the science fictional genre. Most seek not to
challenge the audience, but to entertain it, and few achieve even that goal. The
theatre has never taken science seriously and that is due to many facts. One
possibility is the theatre’s presumed incapability of physically producing the
fantastic worlds and events of science fiction literature. Roger Elwood summed up
the problem in 1976 in his introduction to Six Science Fiction Plays:

There are not a great many science fiction plays available.

The two forms do not meld easily. It is difficult to translate the imaginative
leaps characteristic of science fiction writing into the hard reality of dialogue
between articulate characters. Writing a science fiction play is a bit like trying
to picture infinity in a cigar box. The whole effort can too easily degenerate
into space opera. So, you do not often find a playwright who writes science
fiction, or a science fiction writer who writes plays. Besides that, the science
fiction plays that do exist usually require sets and costumes that are more
elaborate and expensive than those used in traditional theatrical productions-
and when corners are cut, it seems to show. (vii)

This discouraging opinion is based on the assumption that in order to have theatrical
science fiction, one must have motion -picture realism. In fact, dramatists have been
most successful in bringing science fiction to the stage when they abandon attempts
at realism in favor of other kinds of drama. They have produced great prose without
relying on robots, laser guns, aliens and other realistic clichés of the science fiction
genre.

Another reason beyond disappearing of science fiction plays from theatre is

the appearance of the science fiction plays from theatre is the appearance of the

40
science fiction magazine. Hugo Gernsback, the publisher, is called by many authors
and fans the father of science fiction. Grand M.I. Asimov says:

Even now, when I know the long and respectable history of science fiction,
I can’t accept it with my heart, I cannot shake the worship felt by a 9- year
old I once knew long ago. To me, deep in my soul, science fiction began in
April 1926, and its father was Hugo Gernsback. (as cited in Gunn Alternate
Worlds 11).

Since the 1960s, people have been reluctant to theatre and the reason behind
that is the appearance of the science fiction films. Science fiction and the movies
have gone together since the beginnings of that medium. Clute and Nicholls points
out in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction:

From the outset, the cinema specialized in illusion to a degree that had been
impossible on stage. SF itself takes as its subject matter that which does not
exist [---] so it has a natural affinity with the cinema: illusory qualities of film
are ideal for presenting fictions about things that rare not yet real. SF, no
matter how sophisticated, by definition must feature something new; some
alteration from the world as we know it [---]. Film, from this viewpoint, is
sf’s ideal medium. (219)

Through films, fans and people can catch movies they missed, view films that did
not reach wide release or simply enjoy classic favorites. There are many lists of the
scientific films as George Miles’ A Trip to the Moon (1902), The Invisible Man
(1933) by James Whale, Godzilla by Ishiro Honda (1954), Franklin Schaffner’s
Plant of the Apes (2001), several films by Peter Jackson as Lord of Rings trilogy,
King Kong (2005) and District 9 (2009).

41
 Computer and video games are another source which lead to the disappearance
of the science fiction theatre. Computer games have also become a popular source
of science fiction. The obvious popularity of non-textual science fiction has resulted
in the rise of conventions dedicated to media aspects of genre. The biggest example
of this type of convention is Dragon Con, “the largest multi-media, popular culture
convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art,
music, music, and film in the universe” (Dragon Con, 2016). Dragon Con has
attracted thousands of people and that leads to the lack of attending theatre.

Alan Ayckbourn has rejected to join the new wave of writers at the beginning,
but he gradually became one of them. He shares with them many of their
characteristics. They are young, theatrical, sensational fantastic, outrageous and
shocking. Their art is described as “pop”, meaning that they often choose popular
up-to-date and obvious subjects for their writings. They usually introduce
homosexuality, prostitution, violent death and shallow humor. They may do work
for radio and television, but ultimately go back to the theatre (Brown 7,9). It is
obvious that they all respond to their society in their themes, settings, characters and
dialogue.

The most important step in Ayckbourn’s early career was in 1957 when he
managed to obtain a permanent job as a member of the famous director Stephen
Joseph’s Theatre-in -the Round company at Scarborough (Billington 3-4). Up till
now, Ayckbourn is still working at and for Scarborough theatre. He feels that he
owes so much for the place and its pioneer Stephen Joseph. Thus, he has written the
majority of his plays for this theatre. It gives him a good chance of direct contact
with the audience. His audience in Scarborough are always anxious and exited as
they can never predict what he is going to produce for them next. The only thing
they know for sure is that his new play will bear challenge and delight.

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 Comic Potential is one of Ayckbourn plays in which life cleverly imitates art.
The play reflects Ayckbourn’s fascination with technology. It is “a science fiction
romantic comedy that takes place in the near future” (Jessica Williams: online
source). At the same time, it is considered to be a comedy classic dealing with an
old-fashioned romance. In Comic Potential, Ayckbourn mixes innovation with
traditionalism. He uses classic techniques as pratfalls, double-takes and slapstick,
but also he has given farce and comedy his unique stamp. His use of juxtaposition
in his play goes further to oppose human to machines. This idea expresses
Ayckbourn’s fears of technology and industrializations as elements of destruction in
modern world. As for irony, it is introduced in Comic Potential in an exaggerated
way, in order to evoke disturbed laughter, as most of the ironies of the play are due
to fact that while the machine (actoid) is taking on human nature, man is taking on
some features of the machine.

Concerning the structure of the play, as it is always the case with Ayckbourn,
he surprises his audience with his innovation. The play consists of two acts. The first
act normally contains three scenes which have quite familiar length. While the
second act has ten scenes of act one take place in the TV studio within a few days.
Act two is different; it has six interchangeable locations, as Adam and Jacie are on
the run trying to escape and protect their love, and actually their project too. The
most frequent location is the studio. Then there are four locations at the Grand Hotel:
the foyer, the boutique, the restaurant and the bedroom.

Concerning the plot of Comic Potential, it opens in a television studio in “the

foreseeable future when everything has changed except human nature” (John
Allsopp: online source). By that time, the stars of soap opera are not real actors. They
have been replaced by well programmed computerized robots called actoids. The
dramatic irony is that the actors (actoids) pretend to be more mechanical than they

43
are. As a matter of fact, they may not act better than human actors, but at least they
are cheaper and have no complaints.

Chandler Tate who was used to be a great American film director, has fallen foul of
studio bosses. He prefers to be called Chance, and the irony is that it is his last chance
to improve his performance in the studio. His program is already losing its viewers
whose number has decreased from sixteen million to only fourteen.

Chandler: Shit! Do you think it’s about the drop to fourteen million?

Chandler: -----. It’s about the fourteen million, it has to be---

Trudi: if we don’t finish this episode, it’ll be eight million---

Chandler: Who cares? Show them an old episode, they’ll never know.
When’s that going to bother our viewers? They’re all subnormal, anyway---.
(Comic Potential 5)

Adam Trainsmith is a young writer of comedy and one of Chandler’s biggest fans.
At the same time, he is the nephew of Lester Trainsmith, the owner of the studio and
the whole business. Adam wishes to convince Chandler to make good movies again.
He wants “to restore the great days of film making when the length of a drama was
dictated by its content, not by its place on a schedule” (Paul Allen 300).

When Adam visits the studio, he discovers the talent of one the actoids named
Jacie Triple three or JC-F 31-333. Jacie shows remarkable comic potential when she
responds to a joke without being remarkable to do so. She thinks it is a programming
fault, but in fact she is taking on some human features. Then Adam comments
saying: “that’s natural. We see something funny, we laugh. Involuntarily,
sometimes. We can’t help ourselves” (Comic Potential 20). Adam asks Jacie
whether she found Keaton funny. Jacie replies; “that’s look he gave”. By this Jacie

44
means one of the basic old technique of comedy called the double take, or generally
speaking, the take. Adam starts to explain it with elaboration:

It’s a well-known comic device-the double take-or in Keaton’s case the

quarter take. --- But at the other end of the scale you have someone like-let’s
see -James Finlayson. --- He was famous from the Laurel and Hardy movies-
--. Well, Finlayson would do takes where he literally took off and left the
ground. Bold massive takes. Like this. (21)

Jacie looks confused so Adam starts to teach her by giving a practical example. He
asks her to imagine that she is reading a book, and then he continues:

You hear me come into the room---You know it’s me, so you don’t look up at
once. What you don’t know is that--- I have fallen in a puddle outside the
house and I am covered in black slimy mud from head to toe. You look up
casually, you see me, register my presence but your book is so interesting you
go quickly back to it. You do that… Now, as you look at your book again, the
image of me suddenly registers on your brain. You realize what you’ve seen.
You look at me again. Quickly, sharply this time. Amazed. (21-22)

Actually, it is not Jacie that makes benefit of the information, but also do most of
Ayckbourn’s readers and audience who want to learn.

Jacie keeps imitating all what Adam says. He implies that Jacie could become
a good comedian. Then he promises that he will teach her the custard pie slapstick,
as another old technique of comedy. Jacie is very eager to know about it so she asks
Adam if it is funny. Adam answers that it is funny only if it is in the right hand:

In the right hands. It’s a-It’s basically just a pie. Full of custard-or usually
cream. Flat on a plate. And when someone annoys you-or gets up your nose-

45
 you know-(miming)-you take the pie and you squash it in their face and you
twist it-like that-so it-. (22-23)

Jacie copies Adam’s mime and tries to decide if this is always funny.

When Jacie makes a double take without being asked to do so, Chandler gets
mad and blames Trudi and Prim for that mass. when Chandler starts to swear them,
Prim warns him not to swear in front of the actoids. They will record the swearwords
and this will require much editing. Chandler calls Trudi and Prim “a pair of talentless
dykes” (26). They go off, threatening to charge him officially.

Ayckbourn expresses in Comic Potential his point of view about real comedy.
Adam tells Chandler that he is ambitious to write real comedy, but Chandler ignores
that; confessing that there is no need for writers any more. That is because “the soaps
don’t get written, not any more, they just happen” (31). Their characters are so well
programmed that they can keep the viewers entertained for hours. Thus, the actoids
are considered to be a miracle of modern technology. This reveals Ayckbourn’s fear
and worry of technology. Though Chandler assures Adam that those androids can
only do funny things, but they cannot produce comedy. He believes that the writer
of comedy is like magician, the always introduces the unexpected as Alan
Ayckbourn himself.

Chandler: The great Oliver Hardy, he’s a chimney sweeps sitting in the fire
place. The whole chimney’s collapsed. All the bricks are coming down,
showering down on his head. He sits there letting it happen. It finishes. He
looks at us--- He looks at us--- He looks up the chimney, appealing to heaven-
a last brick hits him in the face. We know it’s going to happen, but not when
it’s going to happen or, just as important, how it’s going to happen. That’s
comedy. (32-33)

46
 Moreover, Chandler informs Adam that the basic double-take cannot be used
any more. Instead there must be some variations. While Chandler is showing Adam
Series of small mini-takes, Jacie laughs again. Adam confesses to Chandler that he
is responsible for teaching Jacie the take, and tries to convince him that Jacie is
exceptional and has a sense of humor. Chandler insists that ‘it’ not ‘she’ is just like
all other actoids. “It’s a dishwasher” Chandler says; “It’s a floor polisher. It’s a
tumble dryer, that’s all it is” (34). When he hears Adam calling her “Jacie”, he tells
Adam that it has no name; it only has a registration number. He says that “JC” stands
for Juvenile Character. Adam urges Chandler-or Chance- to give him a chance and
let him try some new ideas for Jacie. He begins to teach Jacie how to read and she
is eager to read a lot.

Adam and Jacie are progressing throughout Adam’s project but Clara interferes
and tries to spoil their development. Clara insists that other experienced writers can
co-operate with Adam in his project, and that Jacie can be replaced by a household
actress. When Adam objects, she starts to insult Jacie severely, ignoring the
menacing music that comes from Jacie. “It’s an actoid”. Carla says, “it has all the
personality of a meat safe”. She adds “a piece of scrap metal cavorting around with
about as much sex appeal as a tin of corned beef” (57). The astonishing surprise is
that Jacie gets angry. She picks up a custard pie that is prepared for the scene and
squashes it in Carla’s face. She does so exactly the same way Adam has taught Jacie.
All the attendants laugh, and Jacie is so pleased with their reaction. Lester insists on
doing the program under Carla’s conditions. He is afraid that next time, Jacie can
kill someone. He believes that she is unstable, so he orders her to get melted down.
Meaning to be returned to the factory, where her memory can be erased and restarted
with a new one.

47
 Jacie does not mind to be melted since she has nothing to care about. But after
she has a wonderful romantic scene with Adam, she refuses to melt down since she
has wonderful memories that she wants to keep. Tim Richardson explains: “[Jacie]
decides to have herself melted down rather than suffer any longer the confusion
which comes with emotion. But she is pulled back from the brink by her love for
Adam, a love founded in a shared of comedy---for Ayckbourn it provides the way
into a human universe which has as much joy as pain to offer” (online source). Prim
told Adam an important fact about Jacie.

What it talks about, Adam – the words it uses – it’s so-called conversations of
all the characters it’s played in all the shows it’s ever been in. its personality
is nothing more than that. Every time you speak to it, you trigger some
response. It pulls it out of its memory bank and blurts it back at you. (Comic
Potential 60)

The strange thing is that the more the proofs are given that Jacie is just a machine;
the more they prove her humanity. When one focus on what Prim says, one agrees
with Adam who tells her that this might be what all humans do. There are many
situations that are unfamiliar to Jacie. When she faces such situations, there is a lot
of fun and laughter. For example, the scene where Adam takes Jacie to the hotel
boutique to buy her a dress. Jacie has never chosen a dress, so she says: “but I don’t
know what I want to wear…I’ve never played this scene before. I just get given
things to wear by the wardrobe department…” (73). There are other people in the
boutique; an assistant and a man with his girlfriend. One can get the feeling that the
real girl and Jacie are to some extent alike. The man is so bored, as he has been in
the boutique for more than seven hours. The girl cannot decide which dress to
choose. She hates all the dresses, and basically she hates her body shape. While the

48
girl is inside the cubicle, Adam is shocked of Jacie’s comment about wearing a dress;
“I don’t want to wear any clothes at all…” (73).

The whole situation shows that appearance verses reality. It shows that the
characters of the programs are not actors but android since neither the man nor the
assistant knows that Jacie is not human.

In Comic Potential Ayckbourn wants to “demonstrate a link between sex and

comedy”, and as long as he puts limits for the sexual relation between Adam and
Jacie, he also wants to show the way in which sex and comedy can “from an alliance
against the forces of mechanistic logic, whether these are the computers themselves
or the people who use them in the vain belief that the world can be sensibly planned”
(Ayckbourn The Crafty Art of Playmaking 301). In Act two, Scene nine in the
Mombassa Hotel, a prostitute enters Jacie’s room and warns her that it is not a
respectable place. Jacie increasingly becomes miserable and despaired and she tells
Adam that she does not feel good about what he has involved himself in with her.
She indicates that she is not real and that she is just a machine. She confesses to
Adam saying:

I’m not Jacie, Adam. I am JCF 31 triple 3. There is no Jacie. There’s no real
me. I’m a machine, Adm. I wasn’t taught to think of myself as that, but I
acknowledge now that I am. On the one hand, it’s a fact that every day we
stay together, you’ll change and I’ll stay the same. I’m nineteen years old and
I have been like this since the day I made. (Comic Potential 99)

She is so sad and wants to go back to the factory and be melted down since she can
no longer control herself. She even cries without having a stimulus to do. Jacie
believes that she has some faults and at the same time she cannot cope with Adam’s

49
love. By being more and more human being rather than an android, Jacie
increasingly becomes miserable and despaired.

Throughout the play Jacie becomes more progressive and development, the
more she believes that she has some faults. Therefore, at the end of the play, she
hates the fact that she only can retrieve her programmed responses. The irony is that
the anger she directs at Adam just proves that his project is not true anymore. When
Adam confesses to Jacie that he loves her and “once we’re out of here, we’ll”, Jacie
sarcastically interrupts him saying: “What? Get married? Have children? Become
sheep farmers?” Adam gets angry and wonders what programme she is in now. The
surprise is that Jacie rebelliously and freely says:

This is not a programme. This is me talking Adam. And I’m lost and I don’t
know what I’m doing and nobody’s telling me and the only person in the
world that I trust is standing here talking to me like a child. And I refuse to be
treated like that, do you hear me? You make plans for our future without
consulting me, you dress me up like some mindless puppet, you humiliate me
in shops and restaurants, move me in and out of hotel rooms and make me feel
like a second-hand trollop and then you won’t even make an effort to
understand what I’m trying to tell you- well, you can just go to hell and screw
yourself and see if I care, you-stupid fuck dyke. (100)

Jacie does not want to be humiliated so she rebels against Adam. This obviously
recalls Pygmalion legend, when the statue of the woman rebels against its creator.
When the show comes to an end the audience sees a maturing human being. She
appears indistinguishable from any other human woman. David Levy takes the
human-robot interaction a step further to illustrate that love between a robot and a
human is inevitable given that humans have already developed social relationships
with their computers, “if we accept that a robot can think then there is no good reason
50
we should not also accept that it could have feelings of love and feelings of lust”
(12).

The end of the play expresses Ayckbourn’s feelings toward technology as he

considers it a double-edged weapon. Lester the mouthpiece of Ayckbourn sends a
message to the audience when he takes to Jacie saying:

At one time, I never liked your things. Quite frankly, I never really trust any
machinery and I mistrust artificial intelligence even more----which is ironic
when you consider I run the largest company in the world, dedicated
exclusively to the production and development of artificial intelligence. But
now I’m getting older—and I’m becoming increasingly reliant on artificial
intelligence. By the time I’m a hundred and twenty---I shall probably look a
little like you. (110)

Lester offers Jacie Carla’s job, but she refuses. She believes that there is something
wrong with her since she is unstable and cannot control her feelings anymore.
Machines vs. human beings, Prim says; “if that was a criterion we’d all be melted
down” (11).

Robots, love and comedy are all fascinating subjects of the play. Lester feels
sorrow for Jacie’s loss “I’m a little sad. You’re rather special. You made me laugh.
On two occasions. Which is twice more than my three wives ever managed” (112).
This indicates that one can very excitedly admire, or even fall in love with a person
who can make him laugh. When a technician arrives at the studio to take Jacie to the
factory, Jacie with some difficulty manages to do a comedy trip, in order to give the
audience and the cast a last laugh. Chandler wonders who teaches her this comedy
and he says;

51
 “If you are going to use a comedy trip---you’re got to make sure you’re not
already drawing attention to your feet, otherwise the audience is expecting it
--- comedy is surprise”. Then he concludes; “Such a waste! All that potential!
Who cares if it’s an actoid or a person or a performing parrot? If it makes you
laugh, treasure it. Tragedy? You can get that in the street being run over”
(115).

These words are for Chandler’s himself not Ayckbourn’s since Ayckbourn is
totally standing the other side of this. He wants to express that neither disastrous and
death are defined as a tragedy, nor the happy ending is defined as a comedy.

In the end of the play Adam is alone in the studio and Jacie silently enters the
studio without being noticed by Adam. She decides to return back to Adam and
accept the job offered by Lester. Adam feels happy. This is what Ayckbourn wants
to prove in Comic Potential. The end of the play seems really to be happy, but just
as the whole play; it has its dark side. Jacie now is in the place of Carla but the irony
is that she could be worse as “she has long since overridden her own initial
agreement that a sense of humor is a ‘fault’ in a logical machine, and the strength
she now derives from it will enable her to take over the whole show” (Allen, Alan
Ayckbourn 301). The play ends by warning the audience of the androids since the
danger lies in the fact that the actoid Jacie is taking total control on humans. The
curtains fall while she is incisively saying; “All right, people, let’s go to work---
Action!” (119) .

Ayckbourn is totally self-conscious as a playwright since he introduces

information about directing, television, and some old techniques of comedy. This is
also obvious in introducing some techniques like the play-within-the play, multiple
role-playing, and appearance vs reality. He changes the setting of the play and moves
it in numerous scenes. He changes the setting of the play the setting of the play and
52
moves it in numerous scenes. He explores the difference between human and
machine through juxtaposition and the use of irony. Irony is used for the sake of
creating laughter, as well as evoking the audience to think. The message that
Ayckbourn prevails in his science fiction play is to be wear of technology, otherwise
it may lead to destruction. Machines are directing humans and controlling their lives.
The actoids are given authority over human beings, the things that must make people
feel awfully threatened. Ayckbourn represents love and art as the complex things
they are, with no easy answers to be offered to the audience.

53
 Works Cited

Allen, Paul. A Pocket Guide to Alan Ayckbourn’s Plays. London: Faber & Faber,
2005

-----------. Alan Ayckbourn: Grinning at The Edge. London: Methuen, 2001.

Allsopp, John. “Comic Potential” in John Pattison.

http://www.johnpattisoncom/comic.html.2001. Access date [July 30, 2016.

Asimov, I. “Science Fiction, I love you” in Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated

History of Science Fiction (9-11). Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975.

Ayckbourn, Alan. The Crafty Art Playmaking. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003.

--------------------. Comic Potential. London: Faber & Faber, 1999.

Bacon, C. Smith. Science Fiction Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 2000.

Billington, Michael. Modern Dramatists: Alan Ayckbourn. London: Macmillan,

1992.

Brown, J. Russel. Ed. Modern British Dramatists: A collection of Critical Essays.

New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India, 1980.

Clute, J. & Nicholls, P. Eds. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1993.

Dragon Con. Welcome to Dragon Con. http://dragoncon.org/2016 . Access date

[March 18, 2016].

Gunn, J. The Road to Science Fiction: From Gilgamesh to Wells. Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow Press, 2002.
54
Heinlein, R.A. Tomorrow, The Stars. New York: Berkeley Medallion Books, 1959.

Kincaid, P. “On the origins of genre”. Extrapolation, 44, 2003. 409-419.

Levy, David. Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot
Relationships. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2007.

Mcveilly, Wills. E. Science Fiction: The Academic Awakening, Shreveport, LA:

The College English Association, 1974.

Roger, Elwood. Ed. Six Science Fiction Plays. New York: Washington Square
Press, 1976.

Richardson, Tim. “Comic Potential: World Premiere Reviews”. Country

Life.http://comicpotential.alanackybourn.net/styled-8/index.html.1998. Access
date [May 3, 2016].

Williams, Jessica. “‘Comic Potential’ brings robot love to the stage”.

http://dukechronicale.com/staff/jessica-williams.2015. Access date [June 18,
2016].

55
 Society’s Illusion of the Hallucinatory Figure

In Mary Chase’s Harvey and David Auburn’s Proof

Hallucinations are generally defined as “percepts arising in the absence of

any external reality-seeing things or hearing things that are not there” (Sacks ix).
Having a deranged mind, the hallucinatory distorts an individual’s ability to separate
truth from illusion, converging dream and reality, making them almost
indistinguishable. For the hallucinatory, the images seen and the voice heard are real.
The hallucinatory figure can be created by “wandering mind” (xiv), which is
identified as a haunted mind. The characters are haunted by loss or grief, and from
that loss or grief the hallucinatory figure is born. Just as children create imaginary
friends when they are little to stave off loneliness, the hallucinatory figure becomes
the adults’ escape from reality.

Although the hallucinatory figures are featured in some of theatrical works,

but they have gone largely unnoticed. There is no systematic study on hallucinatory
figures or their purpose within the play. Nor is there any analysis of the different
ways in which a playwright may choose to embody them or the affects their reveal
has on the audience’s perception of the character. It is the purpose of this study to
create a systematic guide to the hallucinatory figure on the stage through Mary
Chase’s (1906-1981) Harvey (1945) and David Auburn’s (1969- ) Proof (2000).

This study will identified two different kinds of hallucinations which will
appear in the plays. The first representation includes a figure that is both seen by the
audience and by a character on the stage. These figures are physically embodied by
an actor and are generally linked directly to the immediate family within the play.
The second representation includes a figure that is not seen by the audience but is
visible to a character on the stage. In this particular form of representation, the

56
audience sees that the character can see the figure but does not directly see the figure
themselves. This particular representation will be referred to through the dialogue
which used to create the figure. This performance on stage determines participation
from the audience as the absence of a physical actor engages their imagination and
actively asks that they suspend their disbelief. Each of these plays features a
comparison between a hallucinatory figure that is either physically present or one
that is constructed through the dialogue. Throughout the two plays, the hallucinatory
figure reveals something intrinsic about American life and the basic human who
need to connect to another being, allowing the characters and the audience to explore
a different world.

The hallucinatory figure has been a well-employed theatrical device for

centuries. It has been used in many Shakespearean plays such as Richard III and
Julius Caesar, and most famously in Macbeth. In Macbeth, it is the title character
that experiences several hallucinations including that of his friend Banquo, who is
representative of Macbeth’s guilt. For Lady Macbeth, the blood that she sees on her
hands is a clear indication of the guilt that ultimately leads her to her death. There is
also Macbeth’s famous dagger speech in which he is confronted by a hallucinatory
object.

Is this a dagger which I see before me?

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me cluth thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

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 Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? (II, i. 33-39).

In this passage, Macbeth states that he sees the dagger before him but understands
that it is a simply a trick of the mind. Macbeth’s hallucination provides the audience
with a vivid image of his inner thoughts and the war that is conflicting inside him.
While the focus of Macbeth’s speech is a hallucinatory object, the power it holds in
demonstrating his wandering mind is undeniable; the presence of the hallucinatory
object incites Macbeth to action. The difference between a hallucinatory figure and
a ghost lies in the plan of the character. In Macbeth, we are invited to watch as
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s mental states deteriorate due to the presence of their
hallucinations, but in Hamlet the ghost is not a representation of Hamlet’s
deteriorating mind. The Ghost appears with plans that encourage Hamlet to action.
“If thou didst ever thy dear father love-[…] Revenge his foul and most unnatural
murder. […] Murder must foul, as in the best it is; But this must foul, strange and
unnatural” (I.V. 708-713). It is the Ghost that demands that this murder be avenged
and not a discovery that Hamlet makes it is easy to see the difference between a
hallucinatory figure and a ghost. A hallucinatory figure is clear mark of an individual
character’s psyche but the ghost is an agent brought forth to have his or her needs
achieved.

The hallucinatory figure nowadays represents the struggles ordinary people

face in their everyday lives in order to find success and fulfill their rightful place in
society. Society is cruel, especially to people who do not fit the accepted norm.
Society views those who experience hallucinations as either blessed by divine or
marked with evil. On the contrary, hallucinations are neither divine nor evil but they
are a projection of the human psyche. In spite of that society still has quick judge on
hallucinations since it categorizes them as abnormal and seeks to separate them from
normal people. In Mary Chase’s Harvey and David Auburn’s Proof, we are

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confronted with an individual who hallucinates and is thereby marked as abnormal,
yet who also has the power to alter society’s judgment look.

In his work Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of

Reason, Michel Foucault states that there once existed a great debate between
madness and reason:

In the serene world of mental illness, modern man no longer communicates

with the madman; on one hand, the man of reason delegates the physician to
madness, communicates with society only by the intermediary of an equally
abstract reason which is order, physical and moral constraint, the anonymous
pressure of the group, the requirements of conformity. As for a common
language, there is no such thing; or rather, there is no such thing any longer;
the constitution of madness as a mental illness, at end of the eighteenth
century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as
already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect
words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and
reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of
reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such silence
(x-xi).

It was the implementation of mental institution that silenced this debate and exiled
madness (Whitebook 319). Around the eighteenth century, as Foucault states,
society began to alter its view on some of those who were different by labeling them
as unreasonable, insane, or mad. This change in perception eventually led to the
“gradual, localized, and piecemeal” process of separating people who are mentally
ill from normal society (Caputo 236). Despite previous generations’ outlook on

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some mentally disabled people as divine prophets, the wish to separate from society
people who deviate from norm has long been a standard way of dealing with them.

Lennard Davis in his “Constructing Normalcy” points out that if we look at

“the word ‘normal’ as ‘constituting, conforming to, not deviating or different from,
the common type or standard, regular [or] usual’, it is easy to see that anyone deemed
as living outside of this construct may be ostracized, especially if the construction
of normality implies that the majority of the population must or should somehow be
part of the norm” (3, 6). The interesting parallel that relates Davis to Foucault is that
with the creation of normal we are confronted with its binary opposite, “abnormal”,
which must exist in order to establish the norm. Foucault performs the same kind of
operation with respect to reason: madness is the opposite of reason, and therefore,
defines it. The two binaries (reason/madness and normal/abnormal) establish the
idea that those who fail to conform must live outside of normal or reasonable society
(3).

Madness is not a medical term. It is a commonsense category, reflecting our

culture’s recognition that Unreason exists, that some of our number seem not
to share our mental universe: they are ‘irrational’, they are emotionally
withdrawn, downcast, or raging; their disorderly minds exhibit extremes of
incomprehensible and uncontrollable extravagance and incoherence, or the
grotesquely denuded mental life of the demented. (Scull 2)

People are conditioned to care about others think. Tim Stanly confesses:
“After all, people seem to have an inherent desire to compare themselves to others.
But the idea of norm is less a condition of human nature than it is a feature of a
certain kind of society” (230). Hallucinations according to society are more often

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considered to portend madness or something horrible happening to the brain --- even
though the majority of hallucinations have no such dark implications.

Harvey and Proof contain interesting parallels in the ways that the
representatives of social norms interact with characters that that see a hallucinatory
figure. Neither Elwood nor Catherine seem to take much stock in what society thinks
of them and both possess unique and exceptional gifts that cause them to be
ostracized. Elwood’s belief in the presence of a large, white Pooka forces him
outside of society’s embrace though he is considered to be an exceptionally kind and
caring individual. Catherine’s aggressive behavior, lack of formal education, and
mathematical genius cause her to be deemed abnormal. The societies in both Harvey
and Proof are painted in cruel/harsh contrast to these uniquely gifted characters.
Representatives of social norms seek to isolate Elwood and Catherine instead of
allowing their gifts to flourish. Chase and Auburn make it clear that these gifts might
move society forward, suggesting that it is society, not those deemed abnormal, that
should change.

In both plays, the central characters are considered to be abnormal, yet both
possess unique and exceptional gifts that, if left to the devices of society, would be
locked away forever. For both Elwood and Catherine, the arrival of their
hallucinatory figure corresponds directly with the loss of a parent. As an ever-present
issue plaguing American life, the need to fit in and acquiesce to societal pressure can
force those outsides of the norm to experience a mental break, resulting in the
presence of a hallucinatory figure. It is through the construction of their
hallucinatory figure that audience is forced to consider if it is the individual or
society that should change.

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 In Chase’s Harvey, we are introduced to Elwood, whose kindhearted nature
allows him to greet everyone he meets as a potential friend. He is a lovable eccentric
who has as his closest friend an invisible six-foot white Pooka named Harvey. As
Elwood is not in the business of being impolite, he introduces his hallucinatory
figure to several people, causing them to run away from Veta’s (his sister) social
gathering. Fed up with the effect of Harvey on social lives, Veta moves Elwood
committed to a local sanitarium. After a series of comic encounters, Veta goes to
release Elwood after she finally understands who and what Harvey is.

Defined as a “mischievous fairy creature that comes from Irish mythology”

a Pooka is a shape shifter that can appear in any form (Upstage 6). For Elwood,
Harvey takes the shape of six-foot and one half-inch tall white rabbit. According to
society’s judgment, a man whose constant companion is invisible white rabbit is
troublesome. Although there is no six-foot white Pooka that physically appears on
the stage, his presence is established by Elwood, who addresses him directly and
often carries his hat and coat for him. There is only one moment where the audience
is allowed a visual of Elwood’s hallucinatory friend. This visual comes in the form
of an oil painting that displays “ Elwood seated on a chair while behind him stands
a large white rabbit, in a polka-dot collar and red necktie” (Chase 43). While it is
suggested that this painting only exists because Elwood has enough money to
convince an artist to create it, it is more likely that Harvey is much more than just an
imaginary friend that Elwood employs to keep him company. He is also a
hallucinatory figure that may serve a wider purpose for the whole society.

Before Harvey’s arrival, Elwood seems to have been praised for his manners
and kindness. After exhibiting the bizarre behavior of seeing Harvey, however, he
is labeled “the biggest screwball in town” (3, 6, 35).

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 JUDGE: I always liked that boy. He could have been done anything-been
anything-made a place for himself in this community.

MYRTLE: And all he did was get a big rabbit.

JUDGE: He had everything. Brains, personality, friends. Men liked him.

Women liked him. I liked him.

MYRTLE: Are you telling me that once Uncle Elwood was like other men-
that women actually liked him-I mean in that way?

JUDGE: Oh, not since he started running around with this big rabbit….Of
course there was always something different about Elwood (35).

Elwood was adored by the community and seemed to have a bright future
ahead of him, but with Harvey’s arrival everything had changed. People change their
mind about Elwood, shifting him from beloved member of society to the idiot
person.

It is noted that Harvey’s arrival corresponds perfectly with the passing of

Elwood’s mother. Veta notes that Elwood, who had never married, was very close
to their mother and when she and Myrtle Mae came to live with Elwood after their
mother’s death she noticed Harvey’s appearance (13,15). It is obvious the Harvey’s
arrival offered Elwood a much-needed reprieve from his loneliness and as Sacks
points out in Hallucinations:

Especially common are hallucinations engendered by loss and grief….

Losing a parent…is losing part of oneself; and bereavement causes a sudden
hole in one’s life, a hole which-somehow-must be filled. This presents a
cognitive problem and a perceptual one as well as an emotional one, and a
painful longing for reality to the otherwise. (231)

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Harvey, as Elwood’s hallucinatory figure, acts not only as a friend but as a
comfortable person to Elwood:

Harvey and I sit in the bars and we have a drink or two and play the jukebox.
Soon the faces of the other people turn towards mine and smile. They are
saying ‘We don’t know your name, Mister, but you’re a lovely fellow’.
Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We have entered
as strangers-soon we have friends… They talk to us…. Then I introduce
them to Harvey. And he is bigger and grander than anything they offer me.
(Chase 54)

Harvey is a tool that helps Elwood psychologically through the grieving

process. If Harvey’s appearance corresponds directly with the passing of Elwood’s
mother, then he closely can be identified as a construct of Elwood’s grief.

The society in Harvey is comprised of selfish individuals who wish for

nothing outside of their own needs. However, because of the society’s view against
Elwood, they insist that he should be removed from society, considering him as a
deviant. Veta, whose biggest concern is getting social recognition, cares little of
how her brother’s life would be affected if he were institutionalized. She takes the
first step separating Elwood from society. Adamantly stating that Elwood’s behavior
is “a slap in the face to everything we’ve stood for in this community”, she locks
him in the study of their home to ensure that he can do no further damage to their
social lives (14). After this initial act of separating Elwood from the rest of society,
she then attempts to place him in Chumly’s Rest, a sanitarium for mentally ill
patients. Initially voicing concern for how society views Elwood, Veta finally admits
that her desire to commit him is more for her benefit than his. “I want him committed
out here permanently, because I cannot stand another day of that Harvey” (14). Yet

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while she is there, she admits that she sometimes sees Harvey. “Every once in a
while I see that big white rabbit myself…he’s every bit as big as Elwood says he is”
(15). This admission lands her in the institution instead of Elwood. After Veta is
released, she claims that Elwood is a dangerous person, but the truth is that he is
only dangerous to their social standing. When Elwood is finally confined to the
sanitarium, Veta pushes herself to believe that she wants Harvey gone, “I never want
to see another tomorrow. Not if Myrtle Mae and I have to live in the house with that
rabbit” (66). But it is not Harvey that she wishes to expel from the house as much as
she longs to have her social life back. “Our friends never come to see us-we have no
social life; we have no life at all. We are both miserable” (66). However, once she
realizes that Elwood is who he is because of Harvey, she turns against society’s
judgmental gaze and decides that living outside the norm is not so bad. It is not until
Veta chooses to embrace a life outside the norm and give up her selfish that she is
able to understand the power of Elwood’s hallucinatory figure.

Myrtle Mae is another representative character of society who seeks to

separate abnormal from normal society. Her inability to see beyond her own needs
and desires establishes her as the self-absorbed and unkind norm of society.
Although she is of an age to meet young men and begin the courting process, they
often run away shouting “That’s Myrtle Mae Simmons! Her uncle is Elwood P.
Dowd-the biggest screwball in town” (3). She is unpleasant when all she done is
whine and insist that Elwood needs to be locked away or somehow removed from
their lives. Her insistence is rooted in her selfish desire to have the estate turned over
to her mother so that they may enjoy the freedom of travel and societal acceptance
(35). Chase is making a point which is although Myrtle Mae serves as society’s
voice, it is she who is a deviant. Through her behavior, the audience is invited to see
her selfishness as anti-social. Elwood is nothing but kind and caring towards his

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deviant niece, often given her money and asking after her well-being. Myrtle Mae
aptly demonstrates that it is not Elwood who needs to change but those around him.

Dr. Chumley who is a psychiatrist and the head of the sanitarium believes in
separating those who are labeled as deviant from society. He becomes obsessed with
locating Elwood, believing that he is a threat and the sanitarium is the only place he
belongs (41). However, in his pursuit of Elwood, Dr. Chumley meets Harvey. This
encounter makes him the third person to “see” Elwood’s hallucinatory figure.
Doubtly thoughts if he believes in Harvey or not, Dr. Chumely searches for a way
to rid himself of the white Pooka. While Dr. Chumely tries to rid himself of that
rabbit figure, the audience finally sees the appearance of Harvey. “Rattle of the
doorknob. Door opens and shut, and we have hear locks opening and closing and see
light from hall on stage. The invisible Harvey has come in. There is a count of eight
while he crosses the stage, then door of Chumley’s office opens and closes with
sound of locks clicking. Harvey has gone in” (56). Harvey has opened the society’s
eyes to the possibilities of his existence. This physicalization suggests that Harvey
has become more real over the course of the play, opening the minds of the audience
to his existence.

Fearing from losing touch with reality, Dr. Chumley hopes that if he expels
Elwood from his sanitarium, things will return the way they were. But, as Dr.
Chumley begins to realize the impotence of Harvey and his ability to stop time and
predict future, he suggests to separate Harvey from Elwood. Dr. Chumley is willing
to free Harvey in order to stay with him, “I’ve got to have that rabbit!” (65). He does
not understand the relationship between Harvey and Elwood. Harvey came to
Elwood in the first place precisely because he needs nothing from him other than his
companionship. With Harvey, Elwood is perfectly happy just as he is, convincing
the audience that being a part of the established norm does not always provide a full

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life. Sometimes living outside of society provides much more clarity on the
important things. “My mother used to say me… ‘In this world, Elwood, you must
be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant’. For years I was smart. I recommend
pleasant’”(64).

Through statement like this, Chase indicates that the social norm isn’t
desirable. Elwood is a kind and gentle person always eager to make a friend perhaps
because he is different from other. Through the character of Myrtle Mae, Veta and
Dr. Chumley, we see that it is in fact the “normal” person who is selfish and deviant.
Despite Elwood’s differences and his hallucinatory figure, it is better to be outside
the norm, offering a new perspective to all, rather than to be selfish and unkind
person. Perhaps it is better to believe in a hallucinatory figure and reject society’s
judgment in order to live a happy life. The play ends with Elwood words: “I wrestled
with reality for forty years, and I am happy to state that I finally won out over it”
(70).

Much like Harvey, David Auburn’s Proof exposes society’s inability to

understand anyone who might live outside of the norm. After giving up the majority
of her adult life to care for her mentally ill father, Catherine, who is only twenty-
five, lives in constant fear that she will one day follow in his footsteps. Being genius
at the mathematical field, Robert’s mind began to deteriorate and he got mad. Robert
suffered from his own hallucinations while Catherine’s hallucination was her father.
The use of her father as the hallucinatory figure speaks to Catherine’s fear that she
cannot escape her genetic past. The role of the hallucinatory figure in Proof serves
to give voice to Catherine’s psyche. While Robert is a physically constructed
hallucinatory figure that appears on the stage as a hallucination in the established
present of the play, he also appears in flashbacks that provide the audience with a
strong understanding of the closeness their relationship.

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 The play begins with Catherine and Robert on the porch celebrating their
birthday. Although this appears to be a routine conversation between the two of
them, the reality is Robert has already passed away. As a hallucinatory figure, Robert
exposes Catherine’s fears through the conversation she is essentially having with
herself, suggesting to the audience that Catherine may suffer from the mental state
as her father. Apart from the lack of physical touch, there are few clues leading up
to the revelation that has already passed away but their conversation reveals to some
extent the genius that Catherine has inherited from her father. Mathematically
computing the days lost to her depression, Robert, as an extension of her psyche,
reprimands her for losing valuable time, “those days are lost. You threw them away.
And you’ll never know what else you threw away with them-the work you lost, the
ideas you didn’t have, discoveries you never made because you were moping in your
bed at four in the afternoon…by time I was your age I’d already done my best work”
(Auburn 8,9). Robert as Catherine’s voice, exposes her fears and draws a parallel
between her hallucinations and Robert’s:

ROBERT: A very good sign that you’re crazy is an inability to ask the
question, ‘Am I crazy?’

CATHERINE: Even if the answer is yes?

ROBERT: Crazy people don’t ask. You see?

CATHERINE: Yes…No…It doesn’t work…

ROBERT: Where’s the problem?

CATHERINE: The problem is you are crazy! ...you admitted-you just told
me that you are… you just said a crazy person would never admit it?

ROBERT: Well. Because I’m also dead. (11)

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This revelation that Catherine has been conversing with her dead father, establishes
him as her hallucinatory figure, while further alluding to the fact that she may be in
need of psychiatric care. Catherine ascertains, through Robert’s voice, that his
appearance could be a very bad sign. Foucault’s claim that a madman cannot
distinguish truth from illusion, then Catherine’s ability to acknowledge that Robert
is not actually there may, in fact, be a good sign that she is not mentally ill.

Like Elwood, Catherine’s need for a hallucinatory figure is to fill the hole
that is created when her father passed away. Catherine has lived with her father for
twenty-five years it is not until his passing that she experiences any form of
hallucination making him a construct of her grief and also her fear. Her strong desire
for “reality to be otherwise” suggests why Robert appears to her as the father she
knew and loved prior to his sickness as opposed to the mentally ill father she took
care of (Sacks 231).

The appearance of Robert as a projection of Catherine’s psyche is not the

only hallucination the audience touches in the play. Robert, in his deteriorated
mental state, is unable to separate truth from illusion and as such has begun the
search for an elusive mathematical proof. Although his ailment is not identified, it
is clear that Robert suffered from hallucinations of his own. “He believed that aliens
were sending him messages through the Dewey decimal numbers on the library
books. He was trying to work out the code…. Beautiful mathematics. Answers to
everything…plus knock-knock jokes” (16,17). Catherine, who shares much of her
father’s genius, wishes to avoid the stigma of his insanity, yet it is a constant battle.

It is obvious that “genius and madness seem to go hand madness seem to go

hand just like two sides of the same coin” (Nettle 11). Catherine, who shares so much
of her father’s intelligence, may also share his fate. She has written a proof that could

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revolutionize the mathematical world making the connection between father and
daughter even closer.

Catherine, in hope of providing her father with more personal care than
institution, was adamant about keeping him at home. Her sister Claire seeks to
discredit this belief by stating that although he stayed at home and had nine months
of lucidity, it was not worth the years that Catherine wasted. This interaction
between the two sisters shows their contradictory beliefs as to the power of
hospitalization. Although Claire notices the similarities between Catherine and
Robert, but she is not quick to admit that she has investigated resources that might
help her sister. Claire’s belief that the medical system can more aptly help the
mentally ill establishes her as society’s voice. Although it is not shown in the play
that Claire acts out of selfishness or concern of herself like the characters in Harvey,
she is ill-equipped to contribute anything more to the mental health of her family
other than providing the medical care she believes they need.

What Claire fails to understand is that by keeping Robert at home, Catherine

facilitated a few months of clarity for her father. Catherine firmly believes that if
Robert had been institutionalized he would not have experienced those months of
lucidity and the act of shutting him away would have prevented him from returning
to work at the university. After Catherine had left Robert in order to pursue her own
education, he relapsed into his mental illness and was never productive again (39).
Claire, fearing that Catherine is exhibiting the same instability her father did, treats
Catherine as a child. However this treatment is dropped when she alerts Catherine
to the fact that some offices stopped by to check on her after she exhibited some
erratic behavior towards them. Catherine tries to explain that Hal, one of Robert’s
old students, was attempting to steal a notebook from their home. Not believing that

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Hal is real, Claire, who represents the society’s voice, suggests that Catherine may
be in need of care.

Claire also acknowledges her fear of Catherine’s tendencies towards mental

illness when she explains to Hal that Catherine inherited a great deal of Robert’s
genius. “I probably inherited about one-one- thousandth of my father’s ability…
Catherine got more. I’m not sure how much” (58). In keeping with her belief that
her father might have been better off if he had been placed in an institution, Claire
seeks medical help for Catherine, hoping that removing her from the stresses of
society might somehow help her avoid her father’s fate. In selling the home that
Catherine has lived in for years, Claire leaves her with no choice but to move to New
York where Claire will be better equipped to handle Catherine and take care of her
needs. Before leaving, however, Catherine decides to antagonize her sister by stating
that she sees New York as nothing but “restraints, lithium, and electroshock” and
she will quietly take the treatments the facilities prescribe to her as she blames all of
her issues, not on her father, but as Claire (66). What Claire fails to understand is
that Catherine simply needs to feel understood. When Catherine feels belittled and
degraded, she lashes out and fights against society’s wish to contain her.

At the center of the entire conflict is the discovery of a mathematical proof,

a proof that could completely revolutionize the mathematical world. When Catherine
claims to have written the proof, both Hal and Claire refuse to believe her, each
burdened by their own inadequacies. It is hard for Hal to believe that Catherine could
have written the proof, considering that the notebook in which the proof was written
was found in her father’s desk drawer. After working for years on his Ph.D., Hal
cannot invent a proof that is important to Catherine’s one. Believing that the only
normal way for anyone to make any form of accomplishment in the field is through
years of study, Catherine shatters his perceptions and forces him to come to terms

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with the possibility of her genius. Claire’s inability to believe Catherine’s claim of
authorship is bound tightly to her belief that Catherine is becoming more and more
unstable. Claire is adamant that medical treatment and being close to Catherine is
the only way to help. Hal, however, begins to believe Catherine and attempts to
reassure her:

HAL: There is nothing wrong with you.

CATHERINE: I think I’m like my dad.

HAL: You’re not him.

CATHERINE: May be I will be.

HAL: Maybe. Maybe you’ll be better (70).

As Catherine begins to embrace the genius that she inherited from her father and
learns that she cannot live her life hindered by the fear of becoming him, we begin
to understand that she has released the hallucinatory figure. Living with her father
who was labeled as insane traps Catherine within her own discourse, causing her to
adopt and fear the label once placed on her father. While it is unclear if Catherine
will ever shake the stigma or ever stop fearing the possibility that she may share her
father’s fate, she has revolutionized mathematics, contributing greatly to the society
that cannot accept her abnormalities and would wish to see her silenced.

The hallucinatory figures in Harvey and Proof expose the faults of society
while also aiding the characters who see them. The loss of Elwood’s mother
coincides perfectly with Harvey’s arrival. Catherine lessens the pain of losing her
father by creating him as a hallucinatory figure, while also increasing her fear that
she may indeed be more like him than she wishes to admit. While Elwood has chosen
a life with Harvey, Catherine’s hallucinatory figure is released when she comes to

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terms with who she is and let’s go of the fears that have kept her from fulfilling her
true potential. In spite that Catherine and Elwood live outside of society but they
make unique contributions through their individual genius. While society has
attempted to expel the abnormal from the rational world, it is the abnormal, or those
who live outside the realm of normality, that have the greatest gifts according to
Harvey and Proof. Through her mathematical genius, Catherine contributes a proof
that revolutionizes the field while Elwood, through his compassionate and friendly
nature, allows those he encounters to see the world through gentler eyes. Each
character, individually, works to undo the stigmatization those considered abnormal
have suffered.

In classical antiquity madness was a gift. As society’s perceptions of

normality changed so too did the world of people considered mad. Although their
tones differ--Harvey being comedic and Proof dramatic--both look at society’s
efforts toward normalization. The hallucinatory figure exposes society’s inability to
accept what stands outside the norm. The existence of the hallucinatory figures
allows the characters in Mary Chase’s Harvey and David Auburn’s Proof to see the
world differently, not absent of reason but perhaps more enlightened.

The hallucinatory figure is a gateway into the psyche of the individual, a

device that exposes the haunted mind and gives life to the inner workings of the
character’s troubled subconscious. The hallucinatory figure reveals the desires and
fallacies that accompany American life. Whether the characters dream of receiving
social acceptance, the presence of the hallucinatory figure marks a decided break
from reality and exposes the hallucinatory quality of the American Dream.

Chase and Auburn are faced with many choices during the process of
creation. Obviously, determining the number and nature of the characters in the play

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is an important one. The inclusion of a hallucinatory figure, whether linguistically
or physically constructed, is significant. It clearly marks an opportunity for audience
members to gain a deeper understanding of the hallucinatory character’s innermost
desires, fears, and failures. Physically constructed hallucinatory figures give the
audience a visual of the character’s haunted mind, providing a glimpse into his/her
subconscious as it is breaking down. By using a linguistically constructed
hallucinatory figure, the playwright is given the opportunity to create a figure that
takes on many different shapes and meanings without ever compromising the
realism of the production. However a playwright chooses to construct a hallucinatory
figure, it is difficult to ignore the power it carries and the way in which it exposes
the complexities of life.

At the center of each of these plays is a family falling apart. This fact invites
us to wonder why the family and the hallucinatory figure are so intricately linked.
Of course the family drama has been a part of American theatre for years but what
the hallucinatory figure represents in relation to the family is all the more real and
tragic. As each of these families strive to fit into ideal American life, or have their
lives perceived by the existing society as fitting in, the hallucinatory figure reveals
the futility of such attempts and the fallacy of their dreams.

The hallucinatory figure works to unmask a haunted mind, providing the

audience an image- either seen or imagined- of the characters’ private thoughts. For
Elwood and his family in Harvey and Catherine in Proof, the hallucinatory figure
reveals the fallacy of social acceptance and the accomplishments that can be made
outside of society’s judgmental gaze. In each play, a character works to deal with
the intense emotions surrounding some kind of loss. These strong emotions are given
embodiment through the emotions connected to it in order to dispel the hallucinatory
figure and move on with life. It is through the acknowledgement of their grief or loss

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that the characters are finally able to release the pressures that have impeded their
lives and embrace a life that is free from hallucinations.

Loss is something that all humans experience, and as art emulates life, it only
seems fitting that the theatrical world would work to define this loss in some tangible
and real way. Used as a means of signifying loss, the hallucinatory figure works to
fill the hole left in the characters’ lives and provides the audience with a look into
their haunted psyches. When we look back on Harvey and Proof that have featured
the hallucinatory figure, we will find that the figure is always representative of a loss
of some kind that is experienced by the characters. It is time to pay attention to the
abundance of hallucinatory figures in theatrical works and always gives the readers
and audience main questions to answer, “where is the loss in the hallucinating
character’s life and how does the hallucinatory figure work to fill the hole created
by that loss?”. It is time also for society to open their minds and accept those who
are seen as different by allowing the great debate between reason and madness to
recommence.

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 Works Cited

Auburn, David. Proof. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 2001.

Caputo, John. “On Not Knowing Who We Are”. Foucault and the Critique of
Institutions. Eds. John Caputo and Mark Yount. University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press. 1993.

Chase, Mary. Harvey. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1944.

Davis, Lennard. “ Constructing Normalcy: The Curve, Novel and the invention of
the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century”. The Disabilities Studies
Reader. New York: Rutledge. 1997.

Foucault, Michael. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of

Unreason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage-Random House,
1988.

“Harvey”. Upstage: A publication of the Education Department at Roundabout

Theatre Company. New York: Roundabout Theatre Co. 2012.

Nettle, Daniel. Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity and Human Nature.

Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005.

Sacks, Oliver M.D. Hallucinations. New York: Random House, Inc. 2013.

Scull, Andrew. Madness: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. 2011.

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet”. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works.

Shakespeare Head Press Oxford Edition. New York: Barnes and Noble
Books, 1994.

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Stanley, Tim. “The Changing Face of the American Family”. History Today. History
Today, Ltd. Vol. 62 Issue: 11 November 2012.

Whitebook, Joel. “Foucault’s Struggle with Psychoanalysis”. The Cambridge

Companion to Foucault. Ed. Gary Gutting. Second Edition. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 312-347. 2009.

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 Performing Masculinities in Jane Wagner’s Monologues:
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

The performance art monologue has become one of the most important
innovative and controversial theatrical forms. This is due to its increasing demand
for both playwrights, directors, actors and even the audience. The dramatic
monologue has many other theatrical terms as monodrama, solo play, one-actor play
or solo performance. Louis E. Catron defines monologue as “a speech that one
person makes, either to oneself or to other [imagined characters] (41). The
monologue, thus, has all the ingredients to any appealing, unified and successful
full-length play. The character in a solo play has a major objective but encounters
obstacles. Action in a solo-play depends upon four characterization, the audience,
unifying elements, and word choice.

The essence of the monologue is that it is a speech given by a single person

portraying a character in the story. Although there is only one character on the stage,
numberless characters are evoked by the same character. Thus staying only with that
one character can give the playwright more freedom to dig deeply inside the secret
soul.

The aim of this study is to determine how the masculine characters are
constructed and function in Jane Wagner’s performance of monologue through her
play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1986). I focus on the
male characters, Paul and Lud. And the men about which the female characters
speak. The study contributes to the discourses concerned with representations of the
male body and masculinities, particularly in live performance. It offers an analysis
of performance art monologues presented to the mainstream audiences that focus on
diverse masculinities.

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 Such performance makes the monologue more and more in demand for both
directors, playwrights, actors and even the audience. According to directors, it costs
less and can be performed anywhere. For actors, it is an opportunity for them to
express themselves and brings what insides them. Any actor who can succeed with
a solo play has the chance in playing classical characters with soliloquies.
Performing solo play forces the actor to develop vocal techniques, characterization
and physicalization. As for the audience they may be delighted to watch one actor
performing many roles all alone. Furthermore, monologue presents all their
problems, sufferings and views in a short time. The members of the audience, thus,
respond to their lives enacted briefly before them (“What’s New on The Rialto” 4).

The audience’s role is more effective in the monologue play than in a full-
length play. Being alone on the stage, the actor never speaks to himself. He either
addresses the audience or an imaginative character on the stage. Talking to the
audience replaces the theatrical character-to-character interplay as the audience
becomes involved in the dramatic action. The monologue is dynamic and changeable
according to the audience’s reactions.

There is a great difference between monologue and soliloquy, for the two
terms are always overlapped. To begin with, both dictionaries and literary current
refer to monologue as a dramatic scene or composition in which a single actor speaks
whereas soliloquy is referred to as talking aloud to oneself. Therefore, concerning
structure, the monologue is longer than soliloquy. It is an organic entity, complete
in itself crafted with a beginning, middle and end, but the soliloquy is an extract
from a long work. The monologue is performed and perceived in itself while as the
soliloquy cannot be fully understood expect with regard to the work from which it
extracted. Examples of soliloquies are Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” and Macbeth’s
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow”. Jane Wagner’s monologue in her play includes many

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separate soliloquies, some of them are easy to get away from the text, like Trudy’s
ones while others are not, like Paul’s.

Another difference between the two terms concerns the audience. The
monologue is addressed to listener people whose presence is overtly acknowledged
by the speaker. It is mainly performed for the audience while soliloquy is restricted
to talking to oneself of thinking a loud without consciousness of an audience whether
one is in fact overheard or not. The actors deliver the soliloquy in a sequence known
as “aside”. Thus, in a soliloquy, the actor does not have to imagine the presence of
other characters like the monologue. The audience’s role in the monologue is not to
watch and listen only, it is a part of the monologue and completes the dramatic scene
by judging, deciding and choosing, especially males of an aggressive or disciplinary
bent but build a case for the benefits of a communicative if marginalized masculinity.

In 1986, writer and director Jane Wagner (1935- ) and performer Lily Tomlin
produced The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe at the Plymouth
Theater in New York City. The play is about the absurdity of Life. The characters,
despite their different ages, religious, mental and social positions, seek to know why
they exist and the nature of their relationship to others. According to masculinities,
the play finds fault with hegemonic races. Jane Wagner employed over thirty
different characters all played alone by Lily Tomlin in her monologue play.

In The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Wagner

employs fifteen characters performed by one famous actress Lily Tomlin. Marilyn
French admits in The Afterword that:

Tomlin moves from one role to another swiftly, unerringly,

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 and brilliantly characterize each of these figures. We always

know who is speaking…. She moves into them. She becomes

her characters from the inside as only a great actress can (220).

This inside should parallel the outside appearance as well as Joe Adcock
states: “Tomlin assumes a repertoire of diverse types, complete with their
characteristic gestures, postures, moods and intonations” (1-2). Thus the main focus
is not what is said but how it is said. The performance text is more important than
the written text and this justifies the reason for the theatre-goers to watch plays
already known beforehand. A big deal of performance is achieved through language
because it is the means which signs are understood and interpreted. Wagner’s play
deals with the community of verbal and non-verbal signs to fulfill the dramatic
purpose.

Once inside the Plymouth, audiences for the play sit in a spacious one
thousand seat house before a proscenium stage graced with a red velvet curtain.
According to John Gentile, the curtain rises to reveal a “few set pieces: two chairs,
a stool, and a freestanding series of steps, all of which [are] of a slick contemporary
design. The stage itself [is] draped in black” and a black cloth covers the floor (172).
Susan Borey adds: “the set looks like the inside of a large black box. Minimally
furnished…its starkness spotlights Tomlin’s ability to transfer a multidimensional,
colorful, emotional, and noisy world from her imagination to the theater” (36).

“ Designed by Barbara Richer, the light and sound cues help the audience
distinguish between the characters as they come and go in the different scenes. The
lighting also enhances the various settings in which the characters appear. Light
changes can be insides reflecting the inner feelings of characters as well as the shift
in their activities” (Louis Carten 71). Tomlin switches from one character to the next
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with the speed and clarity of light going on and off. For instance, one character takes
a shower in a pool of flickering blue lights. While imitative of real life, the sound
cues are exaggerated for comic and metaphoric purposes. For instance, when Tomlin
pretends to push a shopping cart, the sounds of squeaky wheels are heard. When she
stops to deliver a line, the squeaks come to a screeching halt.

The play is divided into two acts. In the first act, Tomlin performs a collage
of a monologues and dialogues that are loosely connected by the recurring
appearance of a bag lady, Trudy. In the second act, Tomlin enacts drama of three
close friends over the course of fifteen years. To represent the various characters,
Tomlin retains a “neutral” costume of black dress slacks, a black blouse with a white
collar, and flats. According to Carr, the characters are what Tomlin and Wagner refer
to as “culture-types” (Artfourm International 81).

The performance opens with Trudy, a bag lady and the narrator of the show.
She walks dragging her footsteps and with a curve in her back. She “can’t walk too
good” because she wears her “panty hose…roll[ed]…down to her ankles (Wagner
20). In her first appearance, she carries imaginary shopping bags whereas, later in
the play, she pushes an imaginary cart. With pursed lips and squinty eyes, Trudy
speaks directly to the audience all the times.

Trudy claims to send and receive transmissions for extraterrestrials that are
in search of intelligent life in the universe. Her task is to show the extraterrestrials
“the variety of life on Earth, and she feels uniquely equipped for the job: her
umbrella hat picks up signals from everywhere. Trudy is a living TV set, with lots
of channels and great reception” (Rafferty 104).

Following Trudy’s first appearance, Tomlin enters as Lily or herself. She is

followed by Judith Beasley, a television spokeswoman for sexual gizmos. Chrissy

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is an interviewer and an exercise enthusiast. Paul is a middle-aged bodybuilder. Kate
is a wealthy socialite. Agnus Angst is a punk rock performance artist. Lud and his
wife, Marrie are Angus’s grandparents. Brandy is a white prostitute. Tina is a black
prostitute. Lyn is a divorce with two kids. Other characters are constructed within
and by means of the monologue and dialogues offered by main characters.

To close the show, Trudy reappears and observes that the audience has
experienced an “electromagnetic field day” (Wagner 201). Then she ends the show
by observing that the meaning of life is not as important as the way people behave
and that “if life is meaningless-this is the greatest mystery of all!” (203). Lastly, she
remarks, “at the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life that you don’t
understand, you are closer to understanding it all than it at any other time” (206).

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe is about the
meaninglessness of searching for a finite meaning in life. Instead, the show urges
that meaning lies in how we behave toward others and that intelligent behavior is
flexible and responsive to those with whom we interact. The show advances this
message by means of irony. That is, the characters are not intelligent in these terms.
Whether male or female, they search for a finite place and set of practices that
confirm their own being in the world.

The characters in the play are predictable in their search, aiming to control
their “being” and the behavior of others. They aim for an ideal place of being as the
meaning of life. In light of the feminist concerns of the pieces, the rule and aim of
individuality is double-edged. In the battle of equal rights for women, one of the
main questions is whether a woman should concentrate on asserting her own rights,
and thereby aid the movement. Or, should a woman focus on the collective struggle,
despite the particularities of her life? Or might a woman fuse the two and thereby

83
avoid the ideological enactment of manifest individuality or essentialism? It is in
light of these concerns and questions that I analyze masculinities that arise in The
Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.

Paul and the men Chrissy constructs in her monologue are bodies. They
engage in the style of bodybuilding in an effort to realize the ideal image of male
strength and fitness which they really lack: a healthy relationship with another
person. Christy sees the men at her gym as narcissistic. They are so centered on
“looking themselves” that they have not engaged her (47). In “Bodybuilder
Americanus”, Sam Fussell observes that the aim of the bodybuilder is not to build a
body so as to engage others as art and as an art object (45). Fussell connects this aim
of men with the “traditionally female role: body as object” (45). In Chrissy’s
monologue she points out that the men at the club choose to look at themselves rather
than at her although her aim of meeting men goes unfulfilled.

In The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the bodybuilder
Paul is a symbol of narcissistic reflection of man and his aesthetic although he
appears less than fulfilled by it. Paul’s aim is a big, muscular body that itself as such.
In order to achieve this body, he engages in the physical labor, the sweat, and grit,
of bodybuilding. Paul’s ideal is formed around the image of strength and work. It is
based in the concrete material body, not an abstraction, and therefore it is able to be
objectified, “ogled, appraised (Fussell 45). In Paul’s terms, it is a body that “turn[s]
heads” (48).

However, Paul does not find the experience satisfying. When a woman looks
at him, he feels “trapped” (48). The objectifying gaze assimilates his body as its own.
The feeling of modification is compounded when Marge asks him to donate his
sperm to her friends. As an object, the body is able to be fragmented into pieces, the

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desired bits used and the rest disposed. Having made his body into art object and
placed it on display Paul loses control over the body image and hence the masculine
ideal. This lack is reflected in the failure of his marriage, the loss of his son and the
children conceived through artificial means. The irony is that Paul continues his
disciplinary regimen and, at the end of his monologue, locates his identity in the
same fragmented bits desired by Marge and her friends. He “can’t stop thinking
about” the children of his sperm he will never know (52). Paul’s bodybuilding
regimen. Cocaine use, womanizing, and sperm obsession are strategies he build a
self-image he build a self-image he desires (e.g., the body as art object) but in light
of the same image breaking down. Thus, Paul’s narcisstic strategies contribute to his
fragmentation.

The character of Lud, and the men in Lyn’s life are constructed as various
types of dominating bodies in the performance. In general, the men perceive others
as a threat to their rightful place and practices within a given context. To minimize
or silence the threat, they call on hegemonic discourses of gender and sexuality.

Lud is threatened by “the crazy world” in which he lives (66). To gain power
over the unpredictable world of women, he uses insults and aggressive gestures. He
attempts to break down his granddaughter’s door, and threatens to call “the paddy
wagon” (82). He calls her music “junk” (79” and a “poltergeist” (81). He also picks
at his wife with his toothpick of insults, calling her “dense” and “flighty”, “hateful”
and “negative” (70, 81). As a result of that Marie (his wife) always sees Lud as a
“male chauvinist pig” (70).

In Looking Good: Male Body Image in America Lynne Luciano observes

that “the male chauvinist is not proud figure that men take him to be, insisting on his
legitimate superiority over women, but rather a man who cannot accept

85
responsibility for the failures in his own life and therefore assigns them to women”
(47). In Lud’s eyes the failure of his financial ventures, marriage and even the failure
of his daughter and granddaughter are not his fault, Marie is the one to be blamed.
In other words, Lud assumes that because Marie and Agnus are women, they are
naturally crazy and weird, whereas, because he is a man, he has the natural right to
demand their compliance in the rule of his domain. As a result of Lud’s acts, he
appears unsuccessful in fulfilling his aims. Agnus comes and goes as she pleases,
indifferent to Lud’s threats, and Marie is far from subdued by his insults.

At the beginning of the second section of the play the audience are introduced
to two national figures of characters Lyn and Edie. They represent patriarchal
institutions, such the Boy Scouts, Big Ten Football, the US Senate, and professional
sports. Lyn finds such institutions summarized by Kissinger’s statement she reads,
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac’” (140). That’s to say that men are fulfilled by
their control of social and cultural institutions and their ability to exclude minorities,
women in this case, from participating in them. In Wagner’s play, she implies that
women are complicit with the patriarchal institutions that regulate social life. They
use their feminine beauty in order to gain the institutions and discourses of men. In
Wagner’s play, she sets her sights on the specific men in Lyn’s life. Peter appears to
be a “suppressive, you do-as-I-say macho” male (148). He is aggressive in his
demands. According to Lyn, he “needs” for her to attend to his desires (147). Peter’s
desires are sexual as evidenced by his telling Lyn that she “used to be so sexy, but
now [she’d]…lost [her] sex appeal” (148). Peter blames Lyn’s problems on her
“sexual politics”, claiming” the feminist movement” had made “a monster” of her
(148, 149). She is no longer “a woman” but “a feminist” (148). By means of sexual
discourse, then, Peter discovers lack in Lyn and thereby controls the relationship.

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 Lyn’s reflections on Bob reveal that he changed over the course of their
relationship. He enacts practices associated with a communicative masculinity. In
his new age way, he listens to and empathizes with Lyn and gives freely of himself.
Thus bob is a “Prince Charming” in Lyn’s eyes (158).

After they marry, Bob displays oversensitive behavior. He is hurt by Lyn’s

remark about his leaky flotation tank, cries easily, and takes advanced classes in
sensitivity training (177). Mary Chapman and Glen Hendler agree that sensitive men
use sentiment to control women (2). Because sensitivity is gendered as female in
culture, an oversensitive male poses a threat to a woman’s understanding of herself
and him (4).

However, Bob’s sensitivity is short-lived. After marriage, he becomes more

like Peter, self-absorbed and insensitive. When Marge’s raped and she seeks comfort
from Lyn and Bob, Bob dismisses the incident by assuring her she looks “so good”
(171). In this case, Bob calls on the discourse of beauty to rewrite Marge’s ravaged
body so that he does not have to deal with it. Bob becomes a dominating male. When
he learns that Lyn is pregnant, he sings “Having My Baby” (175). Lyn is upset
because the songs imply that he views the baby as his, not theirs. After the birth of
the twins Bob claims that Lyn fulfills the roles of mother, wife, maid, and working
woman. That’s the most difficult situation for the woman either she fulfills her duties
or she will lose her job and her husband. In an effort to save her marriage, Lyn quits
her job but nonetheless loses her husband too.

In Lyn’s relationship with her boss, Sindell, he is an aggressive, dominated

man. He appears threatened by her competitive drive, her lack of team work, as he
puts it (173). As a result, he sends her to a seminar to learn how a woman should
behave in a corporate institution. At the seminar, Lyn learns how to display plants

87
and accessorize with scarves. Sindell’s aim is to male Lyn into a “corporate clone”
(181), by reshaping her consciousness so that she enacts practices that converse
patriarchy (Cockburn 82). In other words, the seminar redirects the energy of
aggressive women-a trait valued in men-to domestic concerns of household décor
and fashion. Thereby the dominant place and practices of men in the corporation are
retained. In his attempt to reform Lyn by sending her to the seminar, Sindell reveals
his fear of feminism. Threatened by it, he attempts to silence it, fully backed by the
institution in which he and Lyn labor.

Lyn’s assistant Tom, purses a different tactic than Sindell to gain control
over Lyn; namely, sexual intimidation, or as Lyn puts it, “a perverse power ploy”
(177). Since Lyn is Tom’s boss, he cannot demand her acquiescence as can Sindell.
Instead, Tom calls on the male chauvinist view that he has essential, biological needs
and hence the right to “come on” to Lyn. By asserting his sexual dominance as
natural, Tom implies that a refusal on Lyn’s part is unnatural. Tom’s tactic then is
to instill lack in Lyn and thereby gain the upper hand in their relationship.

In contrast to the disciplined and dominating masculinities, a communicative

masculinity is offered as an alternative in The Search for Signs of the Intelligent
Life in the Universe. As constructed by Brandy and Tina, the hairdresser Bucci
represents this type. Brandy relates, he “just wants to talk. Talks to me…like I’m
his…sister” (128). Apparently, the three friends are fulfilled by their talk and,
thereby, they build a relationship that is flexible and responsive to their individual
and group needs and desires. According to Brandy, Bucci is a “sensitive” man (128).
His sensitivity is due to the verbal abuse he received from his “macho he-man” father
(129). Further, precisely because Bucci displayed his sensitivity in public, Brandy
and Tina were able to help him. The three friends figured out a way they could help
each other. Unlike all the other men in the show, Bucci is portrayed as loyal and a

88
man who keeps his word. Based on Brandy and Tina’s characterization of him, Bucci
appears to be a man who is physically attractive and feminine to a degree. He is
sweet, pretty and lightweight. Bucci has a healthy sense of his own masculinity. His
relationship with Brandy and Tina is fulfilling because his identity is based in
supporting rather than controlling, others. Due to his marginalized status, he replies
on Brandy and Tina for their advice and support and returns their generosity with
his own.

In The Search for Signs of Intelligent in the Universe, Lily Tomlin

evaluates the intelligence of masculine body types from a feminist perspective and
finds them lacking. She enacts masculine behavior associated with disciplined,
dominating, and communicative masculinities. By means of her performance, she
articulates that a communicative body is the most fulfilled of the three. Tomlin is the
most intelligent body in her performance. She uses a communicative orientation
grounded in performance to construct and criticize masculine practices. Her main
vehicle is Trudy, the crazy bag lady, who seems to understand more about intelligent
life than all the other male and female characters combined. Tomlin constructs
“culture types” (Carr 81) who are familiar and accessible to her audience. Once she
introduces the culture-types, Tomlin injects mild contradictions or contrasts so as to
problematize the type and our understanding of it.

Tomlin takes monologist control of the masculinities in her show. The

heterosexual masculinities in Tomlin’s performance are trapped in routine practices
that secure their dominant place in society. They do not exhibit the potential to
change their sexist ways. The significance of Tomlin’s work within feminist
performance art is articulated by Catherine Elwes when she observes,

When a woman speaks within the performance tradition,

89
 she is understood to be conveyed her perceptions, her own

fantasies, and her own analyses. She combines active

authorship and an elusive medium to assert her irrefutable

presence (an act of feminism) with a hostile environment

(patriarchy) (quoted in Carlson 164).

From her point of view, Tomlin suggests that masculine egotism and domination are
the biggest obstacles to feminism. While men may not be fulfilled by such
“unintelligent” practices, they continue to enact them in fear of the fragmented self
that may arise should they surrender control or look into a mirror that does not reflect
their own self-image. Just as men reproduce narcissistic and hegemonic practices in
real life, so too Tomlin reproduces these unintelligent types in her performance.

Wagner and Tomlin pepper the character, Trudy, throughout the

performance. All the time, Trudy offers a descriptive context for each scene, and in
the second half of the show, Lyn reads from her journal. The narrators, Trudy and
Lyn, also function to prompt critical reflexivity on the audience’s part by
commenting on the characters and asking questions the audience might ask. While
an answer often is implied, it rarely is stated directly. Thomas Bruke comments on
the play:

So, without saying it directly or making much of it at all,

Jane Wagner sets us up to ponder yet one more simple

truth of life that we are all somehow and on (some level

connected to each other) as we leave the theatre (1).

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 In The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Wagner and
Tomlin do not presume to prescribe meaning to the audience. Rather, they offer a
theory regarding and its relationship to how we behave toward each other. By means
of showing how the various culture-types behave, they leave the final verdict to us.
Wagner and Tomlin’s criticism of hegemonic masculinities is due of searching for a
marginalized communicative ideal. In other words, a bodybuilder and a hairstylist
do battle and the latter surfaces as dominant in this fictive performance text about
intelligent life in the universe. Jane Wagner keeps revising her own monologues
according to the audience’s reactions to the extent that there is a little similarity
between the original script which she wrote and the latest final produced show. Nina
Shengold states in an interview with Swoosie Kurtz: “There are challenging,
questioning, resisting, agreeing, you’ve either shocked them, or you’re stunned
them, or they think you’re lying…. That way, the monologue becomes a scene”
(Shengold xvi). Being alone on the stage, the actor performs his character, evoking
multiple characters, males and females of various ages, with open-end plays. These
elements influence the audience’s expectations and in turn their interpretation of the
performance. Those elements seem to predominate the performance text and the
theatrical terms since they construct the fictive world and reality of the performance.
Therefore the focus of Wagner’s performance is on how the masculine character
types, or masculinities, are constructed by the theatrical elements so as to reflect
social-cultural roles, identities, relationships, situations, and activities.

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 Works Cited

Adcock, Joe. “Tomlin is her Most Delightful Creation”. Seattle Post-Intelligencer-

Theatre Critic (Friday, Sept. 8, 2000).

Borey, Susan. “The Search for Perfect Sound of Intelligent Life”. Theater Crafts
(20.8.1986): 36-41.

Bruke, Thomas. “The Search of Intelligent Life in the Universe”. Theatre Review.
New York (November, 17, 2006).

Carlson, Marvin. Performance: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge,

2004.

Carr, Cynthia. On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century.

Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993.

-----------. “The Mirror Turned Lamp”. Artforum International (25.5.1987): 80-85.

Catron, E. Louis. The Power of One: The Solo play for Playwrights, Actors and
Directors. Heinemann, 2000.

Chapman, Mary and Glen Hendler. Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics
of Affect in American Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
2003.

Cockburn, Cynthia. In the Way of Women: Men’s Resistance to Sex Equality in

Organizations. London: Macmillan, 1995.

French, Marilyn. “The Search for the Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”.
Afterword. New York (1989). 219-23.

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Fussell, Sam. “Bodybuilder Americanus”. Goldstein, The Male Body. New York:
Macmillan, 2008. 43-60.

Gentile, John. Cast of One. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Luciana, Lynne. Looking Good: Male Body Image in America. New York: Hill and
Wang, 2005.

Rafferty, Terrence. “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Film”. New Yorker 67.9
(1991): 102.

Shengold, Nina. The Actor’s Book of Contemporary Stage Monologues. A Smith

and Kraus INC. Book (1987).

Wagner, Jane. The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. New York:
Harper and Row, 1985.

“What’s New on the Rialto”. An Interview with Louis E. Carton. Talking Broadway.
www.talkingbroadway.com/rialto (1997).

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 Bitter Laughter: Dark Comedy

in David Mamet's American Buffalo.

The line between comedy and tragedy is often thin and at times barely
discernable. Certain playwrights have a gift for blurring this line, which allows
audience to receive this message without often knowing if they should be laughing
at what appears to be a serious topic. David Mamet (1947- ) is one of those
playwrights. In "The Meanings of Comedy", Wylie Sypher writes, "The comic and
tragic views of life no longer exclude each other. Perhaps the most important
discovery in modern criticism is the perception the comedy and tragedy are
somehow akin, or that comedy can tell us many things about over situation that
tragedy cannot" (193). Mamet subscribes to this notion, and is excellent example of
the genre dark comedy in the late twentieth century. He has won critical acclaim,
Pulitzer Prizes and numerous additional awards for his writings. Leslie Kane says
that he is "acknowledged as one of the leading playwrights of the English speaking
world" (In Conversation 1).

So what do the plays of this popular award-winning playwright has that makes
his plays and style are so effective with today's society? The answer is that the plays
of Mamet reveal an evolving style of dark comedy, as defined by Pirandello and
refined by later twentieth century theorists, which aptly describes the style and which
has a great impact on the late twentieth century American drama. Mamet is not, of
course, the only contemporary American dramatist whose works could be described
as dark comedies. Other contemporary American playwrights, such as Sam Shepard,
David Rabe and Edward Albee, use dark comedy to present their ideas, but not as
thoroughly and consistently as Mamet. The main aim of that study is to shed light
on the characteristics of dark comedy and how Mamet helped in making dark
comedy a significant and reflexive genre through his play American Buffalo (1975).

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 Tragicomedy has been, in practice if not always in theory, a theatrical genre
since the plays of the ancient Greeks. Even though the genre existed, it was never
truly acknowledged by Aristotle and other classical theorists. Playwrights and critics
recognized that tragicomedy is distinct from tragedy and comedy, but it took
twentieth century theorists to accurately define its form and substance.

The term "tragicomedy" was widely used in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries to describe plays of a mixed nature. It is a broad term, which theorist J.L.
Styan, in The Dark Comedy, admits is too vague to reflect the "dark characteristics
of twentieth century dramaturgy" (52), so he renames the current form "dark
comedy". He claims that dark comedy has had its fullest expression in the last sixty
years (7), which is why he feels that the movement deserves a fresh title.

Styan contends that Chekhov, Pirandello, Anouilh, Brecht and Beckett took a
fresh approach to twentieth century playwriting (2). While the works of all the above
writers provide examples of dark comedy, it is Pirandello's works which offer "the
key to the comedy of our own times" (47). John Orr agrees that, "tragicomedy
becomes unthinkable without the work of Luigi Pirandello. Pirandello creates new
structures of feeling "through his unique fusion of rupture and shock, where the
audience as an image in a shattered mirror" (17). In The Critical Idiom:
Tragicomedy, David Hirst concurs with Orr's assertion:

Moreover, there is in Pirandello's drama a control of emotion, a balance of

feeling and thought … the effect of this constant shift of perspective means
that we are made to sympathize with the situation in which the characters
find themselves, and yet we are made aware of the inherent absurdity of
their predicament. It is a technique productive not so much of laughter as of
comic distortion. Like Shakespeare before him, and Brecht after him,

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 Pirandello is obsessed with the unreality of theatre as a mirror for the shifting
realities of life (105).

Pirandello's works and his doctrine On Humor were sufficient guidelines for
tragicomedy through the 1950s; but Styan (1962), Bentley (1964), Guthke (1966),
and Orr (1991) have described dark comedy at different points post -1950 and have
provided a framework for interpreting the modern form. All four critics agree on
certain characteristics and argue the influence of dark comedy in mid to late
twentieth-century drama. Resonances with Pirandello's theories are evident in the
works of all four critics.

The first area of consensus is the idea that dark comedy is the voice of the
twentieth century. No other artistic style reflects the thoughts and feelings of its
audience as effectively as dark comedy (Styan, The Dark Comedy 288). It
exemplifies the most modern form of despair and, in Guthke's opinion, depicts a
depersonalized man in a machine age (113);" the modern writer has no choice but to
reach comedy by way of tragedy" (119). This new type of drama emerged in the
1950s to showcase the" monstrous ironies of life" which were used as the subjects
and themes of the modern stage (114).

Critics also agree that dark comedy has remained a prominent genre because
it is expressive of the general human condition as perceived in the modern world
(Guthke 97). Since it deals with fundamental human issues, it can lead to self-
awareness. It does so by balancing "comic repetition against tragic downfall. It
demonstrates the coexistence of amusement and pity, terror, and laughter" (Orr 1).
Exposure to dark comedy can be cathartic and fulfilling since the shift from laughter
to tears energizes the spectator (Styan 118) and it is best and most painful when it
disturbs the audience. Writers of today's dark comedy want their audiences to
mindfully experience a sense of incongruity, which will result in a release of tension

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(42). They want to give a message illustrating that despite depression and pain that
surround oneself; the root of tragicomedy is hope. One must face pain since it allows
for the discovery of hope through despair. It is appealing because it is "the only kind
of hope we are in a position to accept" (Bentley 353). These ideas are also inherent
in tragedy, but according to Bentley" tragedy is not enough. Tragedy itself has limits
indeed it excludes most of the experience of most men" (338).

Since all of the theorists agree that Pirandello laid the groundwork for modern
tragicomedy, through his plays and from On Humor, Pirandello's key points will be
identified and used as guidelines for determining the criteria with which to assess
the works of Mamet as dark comedies.

Pirandello uses the term "humor" in the same way the term tragicomedy was
used before him. He stresses a need for the genre, which he sees as the only form of
comedy able to grow with the changes of the twentieth century. Pirandello remarks,
"the inner and peculiarly essential process of humor is one that inevitably dismantles,
splits and disrupts" (31), thereby allowing society to better cope with the adversity
they face. He states that there is no true definition of humor and adds that the
meaning of humor cannot be fully realized or explained and that the audience can
only subscribe to general outline of ideas. From this idea, Pirandello stresses on the
existence of the contradiction as the key element in dark comedy.

According to Styan, the discord Pirandello speaks of will "make the audience
suffer without relief of tears and makes it mock without a true relief of laughter"
(The Dark Comedy 260). This will cause the audience to feel distance while at the
same time feel" strangely involved" (260). There is a delicate balance between
comedy and tragedy that must exist to achieve the desired dark comic result, which
causes the audience to "weep at moments of great happiness and laugh at times of
great anguish, which may naturally happen through an unconscious apprehension of

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life's vagaries"(278). Pirandello has adopted this idea and reflected it on his plays.
For contradiction to occur, a dark comedy Pirandello says first" must surprise,
dislocate, fragment and disorient, forcing the spectator to uncomfortable judgment"
(On Humor 59). Second, it must include two kinds of experiences: playfulness and
the breakdown of perception, which Pirandello calls play and disrecognition:
"Disrecogntions are forms of forgetting, failures, or refusals to recognize the objects
of one's surroundings" (65). Play must occur when disrecogntion exists, and is a
necessary reaction to the lack of morality that is evident in American's society.

For a contradiction to occur, Pirandello also suggests that reflected images

must be presented in conflict. He believes that reflection explains several
characteristics essential to humor:" Each image, each group of images evokes and
attracts contrary ones, and these naturally divide the spirit which, in its restlessness,
is obstinately determined to find or establish the most astonishing relationships
between these images" (On Humor 119). He adds that reflection, as an integral part
of humor, prompts conflicting ideas and images to surface, which results in the
comic and its opposite both being present in and a byproduct of tragicomedy (124).
"Feeling the opposite" requires the spectator to associate with the state of being
which is presented in opposition. For example, if the viewer is lazy, he may laugh at
an overly energetic character who is actually mocking the viewer's disposition.
Pirandello clearly sets up opposites so the audience can relate to and analyze the
characters they observe on the stage. Styan states that a writer of dark comedy should
"balance loves and hates, which may cause us to sympathize with the villain, laugh
at misfortune, and forgive the sinner" (Styan, The Dark Comedy 286). The author
must entice the audience to explore these opposites and encourage them to judge the
characters and their actions. They should do so with caution, however, and should
avoid making the experience too personal (285), even though the aim of dark

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comedy is to create an uncomfortable state of mind. The writer must "mix sufficient
reality to hold our belief with sufficient unreality to have us accept the pain of others.
At the point of balance we are in pain ourselves, and the play is meaningful" (255).
In addition, the shift between comedy and tragedy, and the art of maintaining a
balance between them, should be employed by the author in an attempt to awaken
the audience.

From the feeling of the opposite stems the idea of irony. The dictionary
definition of irony is, "the use of words to express something other than and
especially the opposite of the literal meaning" (606). Pirandello calls this type of
irony rhetorical, irony, and does not consider it to be humorous in and itself. He calls
it "deception contrary to the nature of genuine humor" (On Humor 5), and claims
that with rhetorical humor the feeling of the opposite does not occur. He adds, "the
contradiction which in irony is only verbal, between what the writer says and what
he wants understood, would become real and substantial, and therefore would no
longer be ironic"(131). He does claim, however, that philosophical irony, when "the
self can choose not to take its own creation seriously", can be related to true humor
(6-7). This point leads to Pirandello's main byproduct in his definition of humor: the
audience will be skeptical of what they observe and will be compelled to analyze
their skepticism. The audience, then, must participate in the work of dark humor to
emerge.

After viewing a dark comedy, spectators should "have the moral courage to
admit gray into [their] thinking" (Styan, The Dark Comedy 287). There is a danger
to leave the audience in a dark mood and then expect them to return to the theatre
for more sadness, but dark comedy does force them to face truths about the nature
of themselves and their society. This event compels the spectator to analyze the
skepticism he acquired from viewing the production. To assist the audience in this

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process, Pirandello allows his characters to experience what he wants his spectators
to feel. In analyzing skepticism acquired from watching a dark comedy, the viewer
gets closer to discover the truth about himself, and the confusing society in which
he lives.

As for character, Pirandello suggests that the humorist "will decompose the
character into his elements and while the epic or dramatic poet takes pains to picture
him as coherent in every action, the humorist enjoys representing him in his
incongruities" (On Humor 143). A character in a dark comedy must be represented
in his incongruities, should be an ordinary human being, and garner pity and
sympathy from the reader/spectator who is also laughing at his disposition.
Pirandello addresses the audience's response to the dark comic character through
pity and sympathy. Despite the fact that the audience member is a key to the success
of this component, it is the actor who must portray the character to produce such a
feeling in his spectators. It is essential to the success of dark comedy. "They (the
characters) are victims of themselves and of society…that is their tragedy, and we
feel for them; they are also members of that society … and we criticize them" (Styan,
The Dark Comedy 276). However, the spectator may even sympathize too much
which could result in an uncomfortable outcome: "The real climax of dark comedy
may be, not the place where the hero is pressed to a decision, the villain unmarked,
the situation brought to a crux, but the place where the tensions are so unbearable
that we crave relief from our embarrassment" (263).

According to Guthke, the dark comic protagonist is consciously created with

sympathy and pity. He is one "whose life-long illusion is shattered … whose
characteristic theatricality creeps into his lamentation … who easily transitions from
one illusion to the other" (158). By the end of the play, he "no longer has any doubt
in his mind as to the reality he must face, but he is unable to live up to the ideal"

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(162). The audience feels sympathy for the character since the character's life
appears to fall apart suddenly causing the protagonist to break down emotionally.
Eventually the tragicomic character emerges broken; the world has turned its back
on him and he has ultimately failed himself (165). However, for Orr, the spectator
will not empathize with tragicomic characters because they are never really
ourselves: "whatever we see in these strange personas we do not recognize as
something inhering in ourselves …. Our failure to see anything normal in them
makes us normal. We lose sight of our own doubles, of those traces of resemblance
buried beneath the play of the culturally impoverished"(8). It can be argued that
being made "normal" through the abnormality viewed on stage produces sympathy
for the characters who seek, but cannot find their own sense of normality. This
discovery forms a strong perception of what is dark about this form of comedy.

Pirandello and all of the previous critics seemingly lay groundwork for
analyzing the dark comedy of David Mamet. The work of Mamet will be evaluated
using the principles suggested by Pirandello and the experts: contradiction,
opposition, skepticism, pity and sympathy. Just as theories of dark comedy are
relevant, so is the discussion of the development of Mamet as a playwright. Mamet
was chosen for this study since he has contributed to define the late twentieth century
concept of dark comedy. The dark comedy plays of Mamet contain most of the
features discussed above concerning the ingredients in such plays and their dark
comedy protagonists. This study will focus on one of Mamet's major plays which
will allow the reader to perceive the development of the dark comedy genre
particular to his dramatic works. An examination of this play will focus on those
characteristics which identify Mamet's plays as late twentieth century dark comedies
distinguishable from other American plays of corresponding themes but distinctive
tone and style.

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 In her essay "The Comic Rhythm", Susanne Langer seems to point out what
could be Mamet's own definition of comedy: "The feeling of comedy is a feeling of
heightened vitality, challenged wit and will, engaged in great game of chance. The
real antagonist is the world" (139). All these elements can be identified in his play
as Mamet uses language, incongruity, superiority and dehumanization to elicit
humor. Mamet's banter is quick-paced, witty, absurd, surprising, and full of non
sequiturs and juxtapositions, all of which are ingredient of verbal humor as classified
by Benjamin Lehmann in "Comedy and Laughter" (178). Mamet also uses
obscenities to bring out humor. "It is the nature of comedy to be erotic, risqué and
sensuous if not sensual, impious and even wicked. This assures it a spontaneous
emotional interest, yet a dangerous one" (Langer 139). The aggressive use of
obscene language in some plays allows Mamet to keep his audience at a distance (a
dangerous interest) while testing their humanity (an emotional interest) and the idea
of distance is essential to comedy. Thus laughter accompanied by the absence of
feeling which creates distance. In dark comedy the audience will feel distance but at
the same time will feel "strangely involved" (The Dark Comedy 260). The humor in
dark comedy may appeal to our intelligence, but it is never completely detached
from our emotions.

Mamet presents a type of incongruity that causes laughter, "a feeling short of
an already agreed upon standard" (Corrigan 6), or what things are compared to what
they ought to be. Mamet's characters often espouse higher ideals or goals, but their
greed, envy or impatience drive them to take shortcuts with results that are often
both disastrous and ludicrous. However, incongruity is only funny if the character
or situation observed does not too closely resemble the spectator or his own life
experiences. Mamet has a strange ability to draw portraits in a manner reminding us
of the faults of others we know while we may not see such things in ourselves. As

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with his use of obscenity, Mamet holds the audience at just enough distance to lessen
emotional connection with the characters.

The feeling of distance is improved by Mamet's reliance on a comedic theory

expressed by Langer: "Our pleasure in comic theatre lies in watching people to
whom we feel superior" (132). It is a way for the audience to gain more self-
assurance. Knowing that we are smarter, more secure, and superior to the hopeless
characters on stage enables the spectator to laugh without remorse and this is a key
to Mamet's comedy. The previously comedic elements combine in Mamet's plays to
reveal characters whose faults are clearly displayed through their words. The
deceptive actions they take to over these faults, which are seen as such by the
audience almost from the opening curtain, predetermine comedic outcomes.

Mamet's American Buffalo is his first major success. He explained

"American Buffalo is partly about the relationship between language and behavior
but it's also about loyalty and responsibility, about the relationship between money
and business and violence" (qtd. in Welzsteon 11). The play depicts lower-class
characters looking for a way to make some serious money. This indicates that Mamet
was committed to social issues and to reinvent the American theatre. He expresses
the human condition and exhibit a clash of tears and laughter. Klein comments on
the play saying: "American Buffalo is about futility; it is about the grind of
capitalism, the American dream, the glory-less struggle to make something of
yourself and the anonymity of failure" ( Klein, online: 1).

American Buffalo is a play about three con men, Teach, Don and Bobby, who
pursue their version of the American Dream. They are as Terry Teachout " have no
past or future, only the unremittingly bleak present, though they manage to entertain
us because of the manic energy with which they do their frenzied dances of death"
(Teachout, online: 6). Teach describes Don, the dark comic protagonist, as someone

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who seeks friendships with junkies and is a joke on the street. He calls him "a man
who has to buy his friends" (101), suggesting a loner isolated from a broader
community. Don operates a junk shop in a dilapidated section of town. Mamet
creates this horrible environment for a man who refuses to truly recognize his
surroundings; thereby evoking facets of disrecognition, a key component in Orr's
definition of dark comedy. Don is dull, easily confused and trusts his so-called
friends who continuously disappoint and betray him. That small group of friends try
to manipulate and cheat him out of money, but Don continues to trust them because
they are the only friends he can get; it is better than being alone. What he wants, a
reliable friendship, is out of reach and he clearly does not understand himself or the
world around him sufficiently to venture beyond his current situation. Teach
confirms this point: "You live in a world of your own Don" (80). Don is weak, half-
hearted, insignificant, forgotten and cannot connect to society. He is also under the
illusion that he can get something for nothing. He is always looking for new ways to
make money, and he sets his sights on robbing a coin collector who recently came
into his shop and bought a buffalo nickel for $90. After he sells it, he becomes
convinced that it is worth much more and makes a deal with Bobby, his young
protégé, to rob the coin collector when Bobby confirms that the man is out of town.
Don does not see right from wrong and considers this endeavor acceptable.

When Don's friend Teach, learns of the prospective robbery, he convinces

Don to take Bobby, "the junkie", off the job and to use him as the replacement.
Mamet's characters' use of obscenities creates distance, and their misuse of language
and non-sequiturs produces humor that make the audience feel superior:

Teach: Far from it. All I'm saying, the job is beyond him. Where's the shame
in this? This is not jacks, we get to go home we give everything back. Huh?
You want this fucked up? Pause. All that I'm saying, there's the least chance

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 something might fuck up, you'd get the law down, you would take the shot,
and couldn't find the coins, whatever: if you see the shame in this? You take
care of him, fine. (Now this is loyalty). But Bobby's got his own best interests,
too. And you cannot afford (and simply as a business proposition) you cannot
afford to take the chance. (Pause. Teach picks up a strange object). What is
this?

--------------------------------------------

Don: It's a thing that they stick in dead pigs keep their legs apart all the Blood
runs out. ( American Buffalo 35)

Don agrees with Teach's request to replace Bobby. Don lies to his protégé by
telling him the job is off to take his friendship with Teach intact. Meanwhile, he
pushes Teach to include their cohort Fletcher in the robbery since he is an expert at
breaking into homes and opening safes. Teach becomes extremely offended by this
suggestion, but eventually relents when he realizes that Don will not do the job
without Fletcher.

Despite the serious nature of the story in American Buffalo, humor is

everywhere in the play. The contradiction is evident in the characters' actions and
words, which particularly leads the audience to a feeling superiority over them,
whether it is the hypocrisy, or blindness of the characters. However, Mamet does not
allow the audience to settle on such a feeling so simply. He interjects comic,
sometimes non-sensical, discussions with serious and ordinary interruptions.

The beginning dialogue consists of Don scolding Bobby for being careless
about staking out their potential victim. Don even warns Bob, "things are not always
what they seem to be" (8). The dialogue soon shifts to a lighter conversation about
card playing and then back to a lecture on skill, talent and taking care of oneself.

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The humor is heightened when Don gives Bobby advice on eating right. The quick
banter added Don's own feeling of superiority and careless use of language further
enhances the audience's elevated position, which produces laughter. The dialogue
also supports Bergson's tenet that in laughter we always seem to find a way to
humiliate or correct our neighbor (477). It is humorous in this case because Bob, the
inferior, challenges Don, his superior, and makes him look foolish. Soon Teach
walks in and disrupts the humor he is upset at their friend Ruthie. He is angry that
his tragic outburst turns ludicrous, especially at the end of his rage when he remarks,
"The only way to teach these people is to kill them" (11). It seems out of character
for him to say this, at least at this point in the play, which causes the audience to
laugh. The spectators feel superior and smarter than Teach so they are able to place
judgment on him and laugh at his ignorance. The play progresses in a similar
manner, alternating from tragic to humorous almost rhythmically. The humor is
especially highlighted in bantering between Don and Teach. Mamet uses wit and
urgency to emphasize the absurdity of each situation:

Teach: You want to tell me what this thing is?

Don: (Pause) The thing?

Teach: Yeah. (Pause.) What is it?

Don: Nothing.

Teach: No? What is it, jewelry?

Don: No. It's nothing. You Know?

Teach: Yeah. (Pause.) Yeah. No. I don't know. (Pause.) Who am I, a

policeman….I'm making conversation, huh?

Don: Yeah.

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 Teach: Huh? (26).

The feeling of the opposite is solidified as the audience members fully

recognize themselves as superior to all three characters with the aid Mamet's use of
comedic elements to create distance.

In American Buffalo, as the robbery approaches, tension increases between

the characters. As Don and Teach question Bobby about how he obtained a newly
acquired buffalo nickel, the humorous bantering turns sour. Bobby does not give
them a straight answer, so men do not know if he bought or stole the nickel. They
do not even consider the fact that he could have stolen it from the targeted coin
collector. At this point, the audience begins to wonder who is fooling who, and
consider the possibility that two grown men are being tricked by a teenage junkie.
This reinforces the idea of contradiction since the viewer becomes skeptical about
who is played. It also causes the spectator to pity the protagonist since "the dumb
kid" seems to be shrewder than criminals. Don finally gives Bobby some money so
he will leave the shop and verbal humor returns as Don and Teach try to locate
Fletcher and discuss his value in the robbery. It intensifies when they decide to find
out if their potential robbery victim is at home. Both men are portrayed as comic
fools until Teach reveals to Don that Fletcher has cheated Don out of a lot of money
over the years because he regularly cheats at cards. Don is skeptical but eventually
is convinced that Fletcher may not be a friend after all. Humor is still present through
Mamet's witty repartee, however, when Teach tries to convince Don to let him take
a gun on the robbery:

Don: What's that?

Teach: What?

Don: That.

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 Teach: This "gun"?

Don: Yes.

Teach: What does it look like?

Don: A gun.

Teach: It is a gun.

Don: (rises and crosses to center.) I don't like it.

Teach: Don't look at it.

Don: I'm serious.

Teach: So am I. (84)

Bobby returns and tells the men that Fletcher was mugged and is in Masonic
hospital. Don calls the hospital and learns that Bobby is lying; another friend has
betrayed him. Bobby tries to tell them that he named the wrong hospital, but Teach
explodes and injures Bobby with a nearby object. Don does nothing until he learns
that Bobby was indeed telling the truth after calling the other possible hospital. Don
is confused, disoriented and disappointed on his ability to trust his so-called friends.
He is further estranged from the world and has become a victim of himself and
society, since he will remain poor in a dead-end job. The audience member is now
fully convinced that Don is pathetic, and cannot help but feel sorry for him. They
feel his pain while questioning their own ability to trust, but see humor in how
ridiculous Don appears. The temptation is to say "I told you so", because the
spectator would not have trusted the type of people Don calls friends, but they know,
secretly, of their own experiences with deceptions and mislaid trust.

After Don learns that Bobby told the truth about Fletcher in American
Buffalo, he agrees to take him to the hospital. Bobby reveals that he lied about seeing

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the man they were going to rob leave his house with a suitcase that morning, which
he told Don before the hoist was even considered. This could have caused the entire
robbery to blow up in their faces, but with Bobby's past record we do not know if he
has lied yet again. Learning of this news, Teach loses control again and destroys
Don's junk shop. Don has truly learned the type of "friends" he attracts, but when
Teach asks him if he is mad, Don says no. He even forgives Bobby for his lie. As
Guthke suggests regarding dark comic protagonists, Don did not know reality in the
beginning, discovered it by the end of the play, but willingly went back to his
illusion. Don decides to carry on the fantasy that these men are his friends because
he would rather be betrayed than be alone. There is no peace or honor in the end,
and even though Don is humiliated, he puts his mask on again so life can go on as
usual. He is a diminished hero who no longer knows who he is. He has decided to
live out his life in masquerade. Lawson Taitte explains that: "The characters in
American Buffalo keep reminding each other that business and friendship is
friendship. By the end of the play, the lines have become blurry indeed. There's a
lesson here someplace, but it would take a stronger interpretation to hint what that
might be" (Lawson, online: 1).

It is obvious that American Buffalo contains numerous elements which

clearly distinguish it as a dark comedy. First, it reflects the voice of modern times.
It also contains several fundamentals of contradiction – a mixture of comic and tragic
moments, play and disrecognition, distortion of language, and the feeling of the
opposite. Lastly it creates skepticism – the audience is not clear about who is telling
the truth. As for character, several incongruities exist: clown vs. businessman, hiding
one's tragic side through clever intrigue (although in Don's it is not very clever), a
diminished character who no longer knows who he is, and hiding oneself in
masquerade. Don is a man of no importance, is portrayed as a duel character,

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possesses the duller elements of the personality, and desires to clear his conscience
in the end (at least to Bobby). We feel pity and sympathy for him since his life
remains stagnant and he emerges broken. We feel for and criticize him
simultaneously, yet his lack of intelligence and desire to steal for personal gain
weakens this argument. Mamet's character seems more tragic than tragicomic in the
end. In American Buffalo, the situation of the characters is more playful than life
threatening, which causes the humor to surface more easily than the tragedy. Mamet
employs some aspects of dark comedy in his play: contradiction, opposition and
skepticism; as well as aspects needed to produce a dark comedy protagonist:
incongruity, humanness, and pity and sympathy.

The element of contradiction in Mamet's play is through his use of playfulness

and disrecognition. His play contains game playing; a robbery, and cat and mouse
games, respectively, and the protagonist refuses to recognize his true surroundings
or has a breakdown of perception with the other characters in the play. A feeling of
the opposite surfaces as well, when humor and tragedy are employed as Mamet sees
fit. Opposite viewpoints are displayed before the audience between the main
character, and in Don's case within the characters themselves. Wrestling matches
and differences of opinion are found in American Buffalo, sometimes leaving the
audience at a loss for whom to believe. Skepticism results in the play as well, as the
spectator decides who is lying and who is telling the truth.

In respect to character, Mamet's play contains several elements of incongruity.

His protagonist attempts to hide his tragic side through clever intrigue and is exposed
in the end. He also reaches ridiculous proportion and his downfall is inevitable. Don
loses control and power by the end of the play having nowhere or no one whom to
rely. The observer feels pity and sympathy for him despite his ludicrous outburst.
The protagonist is injured by his fellow man and despite what he may deserve; the

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audience cannot remain unattached as they watch the man fall apart before their eyes.
The protagonist also possesses several qualities of humanness. He is ridiculous yet
worthwhile and emerges pathetic in the end. Don also possesses the duller elements
of the personality, is working to make ends meet, and represents the universal
Everyman.

American Buffalo allows the audience to experience an aesthetic distance

while at the same time emotionally involved. The distance is mostly caused by
Mamet's use or intentional misuse of language, which also gives the spectator a
feeling of superiority. The play uses more swearing and misused words, which
lessens how deeply we feel for Don, Teach and Bobby. Elyse Sommer comments on
Mamet's language: "The power of the playwright's characters stems from the way
they reveal themselves through language that conveys its meaning as much from
what is being withheld as from the words actually spoken" ( Sommer, online: 2).

Mamet also uses varying degrees of verbal wit, incongruity, superiority and
dehumanization to produce humor in his plays. incongruity surfaces when Mamet
shows us "what things are" to "what they ought to be" (Styan, Comedy: Meaning
and Form 230). His protagonist has a socially accepted position … an entrepreneur
… yet soon his actions and words contradict one's expectations of him and humor
results. Superiority creates distance, and this detachment allows the audience to
judge their neighbor and laugh at his faults. Since the protagonist is beneath the
onlooker, it is safe to point out his ignorance and correct him. This leads to
dehumanization, which allows the spectator to somewhat caricature the protagonist
making it easier to laugh at his ridiculous behavior.

Ultimately, humor takes place when the protagonist's true character is

revealed. He has gained power through some means of conning others, so he is
stripped of his dignity and control and is faced with reality; the viewer finds

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her/himself laughing as he slips back into his illusionary world. Mamet's ability to
create situation and characters paralleling, and in some cases preceding, societal
changes expands the significance of his work beyond the personal or inward
examinations evident in most dark comedies.

As has been typical of the genre's evolution, Mamet's style evolved and
changed over time to such degrees that it can be argued that his more recent work
contains few dark comedy elements. This indicates that the history of the genre is
one of changing presentations and focus. It could also be argued that the
temperament and style of dark comedy changes to fit the times. Comedy and drama
change topically whereas dark comedies change in mood … the style is lighter or
darker depending on the mood of the larger audience, i.e. the country. This may
explain why changes and periods of greater popularity for dark comedy come in fits
and starts rather than a straight line.

Dark comedy is an exercise in self-examination, but at the audience's leisure.

Audience members are allowed to find pieces of themselves while watching the
interplay of comedy and tragedy. When the tone becomes darker, the less one is
allowed, or wants, to see her/himself. Similarly, in dark times, people look for an
escape from harsher realities. Many do not want to see a direct reflection as found
in a straight drama since it may be too close to real life. Dark comedy supplies the
same truth, but at a safe distance through the opposite of the reflection. It provides
an ideal escape for audiences seeking to stay in touch with an uncertain and changing
world without meeting it head on. Each finds her/his own truth after analyzing
her/his distorted reflection in the characters and actions on stage.

Dark comedies are rooted in a time. Mamet's dark comedies may have
resonated with the audiences in the last quarter of the twentieth century because of
their disillusionment with events around them, but all hold relevance for audiences

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any time. The themes of greed and covetousness in Mamet's American Buffalo have
been employed in all genres; but his use of language and character types make them
uniquely new form of dark comedy. One of Mamet's signature devices is his
employment of profanity in his dark comedies to create unbalance and thus humor
in the audience. Base language also serves to create enough distance between the
play's portrayals and the audience to dull the reflection of the opposite. His
characters are drawn from a class of people, often much different from his audience,
who think that they are smarter, better or more deserving than they actually are. They
also represent people of questionable character: American Buffalo's small time
thieves. Despite his failing, Mamet is able to engender sympathy for the protagonist
in his play. Coupled with comic elements, this sympathy draws the audience into a
story about people with whom it may have little in common and shows them some
truths universal to all. The significance of Mamet's form of comedy exists in its use
of language, depiction of the Everyman and its timelessness. The change in tone
from brighter to darker in the work of Mamet permits audiences to find depictions
and characters adaptable to any mood. Thus Mamet's work represents a new
direction for dark comedies.

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 Worked Cited

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Guthke, Karl S. Modern tragicomedy: An Introduction into the Nature of the

Genre. New York: Random House, 1966.

Hirst, David L. The Critical Idiom: Tragicomedy. New York: Methuen & Co. ltd.,
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Kane, Leslie. Ed. David Mamet in Conversation. Ann Arbor: The University of
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Klein, Andrew Sargus. "David Mamet's American Buffalo".

www.splicetoday.com/writing/david-mamet-s-american-buffalo. June
24, 2010. Accessed on 15/7/2010.

Langer, Susan. "The Comic Rhythm". Comedy: Meaning and Form. Ed. Robert
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Lehmann, Benjamin. "Comedy and Laughter". Comedy: Meaning and Form. Ed.
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Orr, John. Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture. Ann Arbor: The University of
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Pirandello, Luigi. On Humor. Trans. Antonio Illiano and Daniel P. Testa. Chapel
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Sommer, Elyse. "An Overview of David Mamet's career".

www.curtainup.com/mamet.html 2008. Accessed on 12/10/ 2010.

Styan, J. L. The Dark Comedy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968.

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Taitte, Lawson. "Theater review: David Mamet's 'American Buffalo' play buffaloes
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www.dallanews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/0604dnentbuffalo.
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 Years’ Work

Name:

Code:

Subject:

Grade:

In your own point of view, which of these American works do you like best? Why?

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