MA Eng 413 Semester IV

Directorate of Distance Education
UNIVERSITY OF JAMMU
JAMMU
STUDY MATERIAL
For
M.A. ENGLISH
(SEMESTER – IV)
COURSE CODE : ENG-413 LESSON No. 1-24 Unit-I, II, III, IV, V & VI
AMERICAN LITERATURE - II
2019 ONWARDS
Course Co-ordinator : Teachers Incharge :

Prof. Anupama Vohra Mr. Stanzin Shakya
Dr. Jasleen Kaur
http:/www.distanceeducationju.in
Printed and published on behalf of Directorate of Distance Education, University of
Jammu, Jammu by the Director, DDE, University of Jammu, Jammu
M.A. ENGLISH - IV SEMESTER
AMERICAN LITERATURE - II
Lesson Writers : Proof Reading :

Dr. Manisha Gangahar Prof. Anupama Vohra
(Lesson No. 14 - 18)
c Directorate of Distance Education, University of Jammu, Jammu, 2019.
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WELCOME MESSAGE
Dear Distance Learners,

Welcome to PG English Semester IV! This is the last semester so you are
earnestly advised to study hard, visit the library, prepare notes to score a good
percentage to make up the deficiency of low percentage in the first three semesters.
And also those desirous of cracking NET / SET/ SLET need to make an extra effort
to read in detail all the prescribed texts and other secondary material.
Wish you grand success!
Prof. Anupama Vohra

P.G. English Coordinator
1
UNIVERSITY OF JAMMU
DETAILED SYLLABUS OF M.A. ENGLISH SEMESTER-IV
Course Code : ENG-413 Duration of Examination-3 hrs.

Title of the Course : American Literature-II Total Marks : 100
Credit : 6 (a) Semester Examination : 80
(b) Sessional Assessment : 20
Detailed Syllabus for the examinations to be held in May 2020, 2021 & 2022
Objective :
The objective of the course is to acquaint the students with modern American Drama
and Novel, especially the various genres and strands like the Jewish American Novel,
the Black American Novel and the Novel of the American South. The students will also
acquaint themselves with the technical innovations exercised in 20th century American
Drama, like expressionism, stage direction, dialogue delivery etc. besides character and
scene depiction.
UNIT - I
Tennessee Williams : The Glass Menagerie
UNIT - II
Eugene O' Neill : The Hairy Ape
UNIT - III
Arthur Miller : Death of a Salesman
UNIT - IV
Ralph Ellison : The Invisible Man
UNIT - V
John Steinbeck : The Grapes of Wrath
UNIT - VI
Bernard Malamud : The Assistant
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Mode of Examination
The paper will be divided into sections A, B and C M.M. = 80
SECTION : A Multiple Choice Questions
Q.No. 1 will be an objective type question covering the entire syllabus. Twelve objectives,
two from each unit, with four options each will be set and the candidate will be required
to write the correct option and not specify by putting a tick mark (). Any ten out of
twelve are to be attempted. Each objective will be for one mark. (10×1=10)
SECTION : B Short Answer Questions
Section B comprises short answer type questions covering the entire syllabus. Four
questions will be set and the candidate will be required to attempt any two questions
in 80-100 words.
Each answer will be evaluated for 5 marks. (5×2=10)
SECTION : C Long Answer Questions
Section C comprises long answer type questions from the entire syllabus. Six questions
one from each unit, will be set and the candidate will be required to attempt any five
questions in about 300-350 words. Each answer will be evaluated for 12 marks.
(5×12=60)
Suggested Readings
Travis Bogard Contour in Time : The Plays of Eugene O’Neill.

C.W.E. Bigsby A Critical Introduction to Twentieth Century
American Drama Vol I 1900-1740
C.W.E. Bigsby A Critical Introduction to Twentieth Century
American Drama Vol. 2
Allan Downer Fifty Years of American Drama
Doris Flak Eugene O’Neill : The Man and the work
Leo Marx The Machine in the Garden
Joseph Wood Krutch American Drama Since 1981
Malcom, Bradbury The Modern American Novel.
Ron Mott Ram Inner Landscapes : The Theatre of Sam Shepard
Morris Dickstein Gates of Eden : Amercian Culture in the Sixties.
Helen Weinaerg Kafka Model Incontemporang American
Ihab Hassan Modernism in the Plural Challenge and Perspectives
John Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Orville Prescott In my Opinion
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COURSE CODE : ENG-413 AMERICAN LITERATURE–II
LIST OF CONTENTS
Page No.
Unit-I THE GLASS MENAGERIE (Tennessee Williams) 5–44
Lesson No. 1 - 4
Unit-II THE HAIRY APE (Eugene O’Neill) 45–88

Lesson No. 5 - 8
Unit-III DEATH OF A SALESMAN (Arthur Miller) 89–142

Lesson No. 9 - 13
Unit-IV THE INVISIBLE MAN (Ralph Ellison) 143–195

Lesson No. 14 - 18
(Dr. Manisha Gangahar)
Assistant Professor
S.D. College, Chandigarh
Unit-V THE GRAPES OF WRATH (John Steinbeck) 196-211

Lesson No.19
Unit-VI THE ASSISTANT (Bernard Malamud) 212–256

Lesson No. 20 - 24
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M.A. ENGLISH (SEMESTER-IV)
COURSE CODE : ENG-413 LESSON NO. 1
AMERICAN LITERATURE-II UNIT-I
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND THE MYTH OF

THE SOUTH
STRUCTURE
1.1 Objectives
1.2 Introduction : Tennessee Williams.
1.3 Tennessee Williams as a playwright
1.4 Myth of the South
1.5 Let us Sum Up.
1.6 Examination Oriented Questions
1.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of the lesson is to familiarize the learner with the life and works
of Tennessee Williams. He is the playwright of the south whose plays not only project
the south in its true colours but also provide us with the critique of the myth. The lesson
also introduces you with the Myth of the South.
1.2 INTRODUCTION: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Tennessee Williams is considered the greatest Southern playwright and one of

the greatest playwrights in the history of American drama. Before him, O’Neill, Elma
More, Thornton Wilder distinguished themselves as playwrights of the Expressionistic
5
drama. But after World War II, William Inge, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and
Edward Albee broke fresh ground in the American dramatic art. Their plays were partly
realistic bordering on fantasy and partly symbolic. Tennessee Williams particularly excelled
in depicting the old aristocratic culture and its replacement by gross mercantile values.
He is one of the few important writers, the south has ever produced. His best plays are
those based on his own life, so in order to understand his plays it is important to know
about his life.
Tennessee Williams’ earlier name was Thomas Lanier Williams. He was born to
Cornelius Coffin Williams and Edwine Dakin, nearly three years after the birth of a sister
Rose in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1911. His father was a shoe salesman
and an emotionally absent father. His mother was the daughter of a Southern Episcopal
Minister and had lived the adolescence and young womanhood as a special southern
belle. Both Tom and Rose spent the earlier years of their life in Mississippi Delta area
with their grandfather to the crossroads and nearby farms where the sick and lonely
awaited them. They always made a lengthy stop at a certain house where Laura Young,
a thin woman greeted them with a sad patient smile. Then one day they did not go there,
and when he asked why, his grandfather told him Laura was dead. But Tom never
forgot the wistful fragile face of Laura. It was she who served an inspiration for the
heroine of his first full length play Battle of Angels, some twenty five years later.
At the five years of age Tom suffered a severe case of Diphtheria, which left
him with weak kidneys and paralyzed legs. For two years his legs remained useless. Just
at the time when he was recovering and regaining some strength in his legs, his father
received a permanent post, the family had to move to the city to live. The new house
was in an uninteresting, treeless part of town neither a poor nor a rich neighbourhood
but incredibly dull, completely colourless. This change from a small provincial town to
a big city was very difficult for William’s mother, both Tom and Laura also did not like
the house and St. Louis. Both of them were used to having the run of the towns where
their grandfather was the minister and now they were lost in the vast turmoil of a teeming
city, where no one knew or cared who they were.
Tom could not even adjust himself in the Eugene Field Public School. He felt
terrified and lost in the welter of shouting pupils. The boys teased him because of his
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southern accent. He went through most of the eight grades in sheer terror. He was
particularly scared of public school boys, public school teachers and public school
principal.
The dominant presence of their father also proved a serious problem to Tom
and his sister. He had been practically a stranger to them till they moved to St. Louis.
Now he was constantly directing their everyday lives, commenting on their manners,
tastes and every move they made. Quarrels between Tennessee William’s father and
mother became almost a daily occurrence.
The constant nagging of her father pushed Rose on the path of madness. She
kept aloof from others, passing her time in the company of collection of glass animals
of different sizes and shapes. Williams had his sister, Rose, in mind when he depicted
the character of Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. The dominating presence of
their father also proved a serious problem to Tom and his sister. Tom grew up in a
southern atmosphere even though the family was much of the time in St. Louis.
In 1929, Williams enrolled in the University of Missouri. After two years he

dropped out of School, compelled to do so by his father, and took job in the warehouse
of the same company for which his father worked. He was an employee there for ten
months, despising the job but working at the warehouse throughout the day and writing
late into the night. The strain was too much, and Williams had a nervous breakdown.
He recovered at the home of his grandparents and during these years, he continued to
write. He recorded his resentment against this horrible period of his life through the
angry utterances of Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. Finally in 1938, Williams
graduated from the University of Lowa. He then moved to New Orleans, where he
changed his name to Tennessee. In New Orleans, he came into close contact with
prostitutes, homosexuals and dope addicts who provided him a glimpse of the vast
suffering humanity, the people who lived a frenzied existence. This experience also
enriched Williams’ vision of life that later found expression in his full length plays.
1.3 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AS A PLAYWRIGHT
Tennessee Williams’ career as a playwright began in earnest in 1935, during the

summer he spent in Memphis. He had written plays earlier when he was at the University
7
of Missouri. But the production of Cairo! Shanghai ! Bombay! in collaboration with
Dorothy Shapiro by a small summer theatre seems to have given him the immediate
inspiration to come out with more plays. His second play to be produced was The
Magic Tower, which was done in 1936. His next plays Candles to the Sun, Fugitive
Kind and Not About Nightingales were performed in 1938.
In 1938, Tennessee Williams ceased to be simply a local playwright. He won

a Group Theater Prize for his one act plays which were later published as American
Blues (1948). His full length play Battle of Angels (later rewritten as Orpheus Descending)
and professionally produced play, failed miserably. It depicted repressed sexuality in a
southern community. He continued to struggle and the year 1945 brought a turning point
in his life and carrer, he carved out a permanent place for himself in the history of American
drama with the long running Broadway Production of The Glass Menagerie and A Street
Car Named Desire (1947). The play, A Streetcar Named Desire won him a Pulitzer
Prize and the Drama critics Award. The play was a surrealistic emotional tragedy which
depicted the frustrations, mental and moral breakdown of its protagonist, a southern belle.
These years were some of Williams most productive years. His plays were a
great success in the United States and abroad and he was able to write works that were
well received by critics and popular audiences: Summer and Smoke (1948) was full
of religious and sexual symbols. The Rose Tatoo (1951) was a folk comedy which
depicted the vitality, loneliness and mental suffering of the people. Camino Real (1953)
was melancholic allegorical play lacking proper characterization, Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof (1955), which won, Tennessee Williams a Pulitzer Prize again. His later plays were
Orpheus Descending (1957) a new version of Battle of Angels; Suddenly Last
Summer (1957); Period of Adjustment (1960); The Night of Iguana (1961) and
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1963)
In all Williams’ plays, he gave American theatre goers unforgettable characters,

and a series of powerful portraits of the human condition. He was deeply interested in
what he called ‘Poetic Realism’, the use of everyday objects, which, seen repeatedly
and in a right context, become imbued with symbolic meaning.
His most memorable characters are women, faded belles such as Amanda
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Wingfield, Alina Winemiller and Blanche Dur Bois, whose old fashioned manners and
charm suggests a wishful recollection of privileged antebellum life. The current conflict
in Williams between animal promiscuity and lady like fastidiousness between the physical
and the spiritual needs, overlays the conflict between the painful present and the ideal
past. Roger Boxill has described Williams as “an elegiac writer, a poet of Nostalgia,
who laments the loss of a past idealized in the memory. As the leading dramatist of the
Southern Renaissance in American letters, he draws on the myth of the old south’’.
South, his family and the writers he grew with became William’s primary source of
inspirations for his works.
1.4 MYTH OF THE SOUTH
Like Lillian Hellman, in most of William’s plays the theme of old versus the New
South seems to be dominating one. Tennessee Williams lived at a time when south was
still smouldering under the crushing defect suffered during the Civil war and the spreading
of modernism added fuel to the crumbled culture. It was the time of disillusionment, the
loss of ideals, unemployment and cut-throat competition.
The subject of the Southern myth is the fate of the ruined homeland. By extending
the meaning of ‘myth’ it can be used to refer to any imaginative but serious attempt to
account for the things as they are. In short, the myth of the South consists of the
justifications imaginatively created by southern after their defeat in the Civil War. They
felt to have lost a distinct, superior, patriarchal and gentlemanly culture by the attack of
the upstarts. In this myth, the southerns glamorized the culture of big plantations with
negro slaves to serve the superior whites and detested the civilization of industrialized
North.
South was a rich land with springs, mild winters and summers and fertile land
for abundant harvest. The pioneers possessed strength, courage, ambition and a
determination to succeed through any means. As the guiding principle of American
culture has always been cross materialism, the pioneers grabbed the land from the native
innocent Indian inhabitant through unlawful means. This was the first sin they committed.
Then slavery became their instrument to make the land flourish. Thus along with the
attempt to own the land, the whites committed the second sin of employing slaves to
9
till it. Slavery, without doubt, is a rejection of brotherhood for petty material gains.
The contradiction at the bottom of the Southern society sprang from the reality
of the status of southern farmers and their pretensions. The pioneers who colonized the
southern states were capitalists who were bent upon making a fast buck through
investments in land, but once having set up the plantations, they thought of themselves
as feudal aristocrats in a patriarchal society. The Northern States on the other hand, due
to comparative lightness and infertility of the land, were more suitable for industrial
developments. Consequently, the interests of the industrialized North diverged from
those of the South.
The South being a part and parcel of American culture, suffered from the
contradictions between agrarian and industrial policies of the Union. The south was an
agrarian society, which was against industrialization. On the other hand, the Northern
America was rapidly developing into an industrialized area. The Southern cherished the
idea of feudal aristocracy of Europe. But in reality the basis of feudal elations, natural
submission to the superiors in the European fashion was lacking. They lacked the serf
master relationship which encouraged natural obedience. On the contrary, the Southern
imported the negroes from Africa to serve as slaves under inhuman conditions. In other
words, They were only interested in increasing their production and profit, unmindful of
any human values. But, yet, the Southerns were proud of their culture, which they
regarded as gentlemanly, patriarchal and superior to the cross-culture of the North,
which was based on cash payments. The modernism of the North, conflicted with
traditionalism of the South.
The impact of Industrialization of North was immense, ‘‘In the sphere of

agriculture, modern industry has a more revolutionary effect than elsewhere, for the
reason, that it annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and replaces him
by the wage labourer’’. Unfortunately, though the plantations of the South were managed
on commercial basis, the idea of wage labourer could not be digested by the southerns.
The reason being the slave supplied cheap labour as compared to that of wage labourer.
Thus, for profits slaves were exploited. So the difference between the industrial exploitation
that the Southern gentlemanly culture opposed and their own presumably agrarian
society, was only apparent and not real. The difference between the North and South
10
on the issue of distribution of federal resources led to a serious conflict between them.
The conflict grew over homesteads, tariff, internal improvement and political power in
the Union. This conflict culminated in the historic Civil War of 1860-64. The Southerns
were provoked into the war that was impossible to win. The North won the war
because of its superiority in standing the pressure of the war and the comparatively
more efficient organization of economy in industry as compared with agriculture.
The crushing defeat of the South rang the death bell of the culture of the
plantations. The reconstruction period released the forces of corruption, which were
already present in the South. The carpet beggars swarmed over it and a new era of
exploitation came into existence. But the Southern psyche suffered a shock of having
been uprooted by the upstarts. They felt to have lost a superior culture. They forgot the
inhumanity and exploitations of the lost culture. Instead they devoted their energies to
the glorification of the past. The Southern Myth came into being. Yet, subconsciously
they were all suffering from a sense of guilt or sin as they had imported negroes from
Africa to serve as slaves under inhuman condition.
Thus the Southern writers began to defend and represent the way of life which
had become a legend of the community. The Southern Renaissance of the 1920’s made
the Southern writers look for new grounds and provided them with a culture which
reminded them of their past, its imagined glory and inherited heritage. Thus Williams’
plays project the south in its true colours. The society which is depicted, is on the brink
of a social change marked by the intrusion of the new South.
1.5 LET US SUM UP
Tennessee Williams is one of the Southern writers of America. His perception

of reality is saturated with the values, the images and the attitudes which constitute the
southern myth. He became a name immediately after the extraordinarily enthusiastic
reception of The Glass Manageire in New York City in March, 1945. He, who was
born in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911, spent about his first twelve years there; and he
returned on occasion after he had decided to become a writer. He continues the
Southern myth in deploring the loss of an old aristocratic culture and its replacement by
gross mercantile values. He shows sympathy for the decaying aristocrats whom at times
11
he places in incredible situations. But Williams not only writes from within the tradition
but also provides us with a critique of the myth. As Porter has said, ‘‘Tennessee
Williams writes his plays out of the matrix of this tradition. He not only uses the
plantation myth as an artistic point of departure,...the attitudes, which shape his drama
derive from his background, his education and his temperament.”
1.6 EXAMINATION ORIENTED QUESTIONS
1. Discuss Tennessee Williams as a playwright of South.
2. What is the myth of the South? Do you think Tennessee Williams plays
are the critique of the myth?
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The Glass Menagerie : A Critical Study

STRUCTURE
2.1 Objectives
2.2 Introduction to the play
2.3 Summary of the play with critical comments
2.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of the lesson is to introduce the play to you and to give you a
detailed summary with critical comments.
2.2 INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAY
The Glass Menageire is Williams’ first successful play, by which, he acquired

the status of a dramatist of national stature. The play is largely based on Tennessee
Williams’ personal experience within his own family constellation experience which was
both compassionate and tragic: the events that drove the spirited and lively Rose into
a mad and withdrawn girl, playing with her collection of miniature glass animals, and that
particular period of life when the young writer spent a dismal and disdainful life under
his father at the International Shoe Company, had haunted his mind persistently. The
play, however, must not be dubbed as an autobiographical outburst as it would be an
injustice to the creative talent of the playwright. Rooted in American life, The Glass
13
Menagerie reconstructs the impoverishment of the Americans, especially the vast middle
class, at the time of Great Depression of the 1920’s when world wide economic
disaster ruined the American economy, effecting the general thinking of the people and
different institutions of the nation.
2.3 SUMMARY OF THE PLAY
Tom Wingfield is both a narrator and a character of the play. He dressed as a

merchant sailor, enters from the alley and sets the psychological stage. He gives the
social background to the play and introduces all the characters.
The vibrations of the soft music take the audience to the thirties through the
memory of Tom. Wingfield apartment is described. Amanda and Laura are seated at a
drop leaf table. Amanda calls Tom and asks him to join them at the table. As they begin
to eat, their gestures are enacted in a sort of pantomime. Soon Amanda begins to
lecture Tom regarding the right method of eating. Tom in sheer disgust at the constant
instigating of his mother regarding the right method of eating, withdraws from the table
on the pretext of going to get a cigarette, while Amanda goes to bring the dessert bowl.
She tells Laura to stay ‘‘fresh and pretty’’ for gentlemen callers. But when Laura says
that she is not going to receive any, Amanda says that they come when they are least
expected and starts narrating an incident in Blue Mountains. Both Tom and Laura know
what’s coming but are ready to hear it again. Amanda is absorbed in the days of her
girlhood. She tells her children that one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain, she received
seventeen gentlemen callers. In those days girls knew how to talk and Amanda was also
well versed in the art of conversation. Her gentlemen callers were all gentlemen of the
Mississippi Delta - planters and sons of planters. Laura gets up to clear the table but
Amanda tells her to study her typewriter chart and shorthand a little. She thinks that it
is time for the gentlemen callers to start arriving. But Laura says that they are not going
to receive any because she is not popular like her mother was in Blue Mountain. The
scene dims out with Glass Menagerie music as Laura says ‘‘Mother’s afraid I’m going
to be an old maid’’.
Critical Comments
The play is a domestic play dramatizing the effect of displacement on a family,
14
which has been brought up in the tradition of the South. The family consists of Amanda,
an erstwhile Southern belle who was the daughter of an aristocratic family of planters
and her two children Tom and Laura. Tom is a narrator as well as a character in the
action of the domestic play. He takes us back to the period of the depression of the
thirties. It was a climacteric period. Williams used it for bringing out the crisis in the lives
of the characters of this play.
Scene II
The second scene opens with the image of blue roses lighted on the screen.
Laura is seated in the delicate ivory chair at the small claw-foot table. She is washing
and polishing her collection of glass, which is the most highly prized treasure of life. She
wears a kimono of soft violet material. As the footsteps of Amanda are heard, Laura
quickly hides her bowl of glass ornaments and begins to stare blankly at diagram of the
typewriter. Amanda enters with a look ‘‘that is grim and hopeless and a little absurd’’.
She is in her full dress outfits that she usually wears to the D.A.R. Laura asks her
mother how was the D.A.R. meeting. But Amanda tells her that she had not the courage
to go to the D.A.R. Then she removes the diagram of the typewriter keyboard and the
chart of the Gregg Alphabet and tears them in two pieces one by one. As Laura asks
her mother why she did that Amanda tells her that before going to D.A.R. meeting she
stopped at Rubicam’s Business College to enquire about Laura’s progress from her
teachers. But the teachers reported that Laura has not been attending school. After one
period of extreme nervousness, during which she vomitted publicly, Laura admits that
she has been going out everyday as though to school but visiting instead the museums
and flower galleries. Amanda is flabbergasted at Laura, thus depriving herself of a
future. She cannot imagine what she would do with a grown up daugther who doesn’t
have any self-confidence to strike out new paths of living. She tried her best to make
out of Laura a self-reliant being, but Laura seems to be out of line with everything that
her mother could think for her.
Amanda is deeply disappointed that Laura has given up a business career, just,
because it gives her ‘‘nervous indigestion’’. Since she cannot learn to be independent,
there is nothing but dependency all their lives. Amanda cannot visualize a more humiliating
picture of the degradation of a southern lady than eating her bread in humility by dependence
15
on relatives who are not very cordial. She knew such examples from her own observation
in the southern society. The spinsters who don’t occupy a position become humiliating
dependents of a grudging ‘‘sister’s husband or brother’s wife’’.
Amanda, in sheer desperation asks Laura if she has ever liked a boy. Laura
replies that there’s a boy she liked once whose name is Jim and whose picture appears
in the school “Annual bearing a silver cup that was awarded to him in debating. He used
to call Laura Blue Roses”, because once when she had an attack of pleurosis, Jim
asked her what was the matter with her and she said it was pleurosis, but he thought
that she said ‘‘Blue Roses’’! Ever since then, he called her that.
The future of Amanda’s first initiative regarding her daughter creates frustration
in her. But, she the former southern belle has a second aspect to her character.
Practical exigencies have taught the southern woman that her true element is the
family, where she presides as the mistress of the household. She, therefore, asks
Laura whether she had ever cared for any young man and that is the career which
now she plans for her daughters’ ‘‘girls that aren’t cut out for business careers usually
wind up married to some nice man’’, and she decides that that’s what Laura will do.
Critical Comments
We find various symbols in this scene. Glass Menagerie is the most important
symbol which offers Laura escape into a fragile, unreal world of beauty where there are
no leg braces and no business school classes. Typewriter keyboard chart represented
to Amanda a hope of a secure future for her daughter. Both the delicate ivory chair and
claw foot table where Laura is seated represent her psychic and physical condition.
Even her dress of soft violet material shows that the fabric of her life is woven of the
softest material. The Jewel Box, a beautiful building in the botanical gardens of St. Louis
Forest Park, the little penguins at the zoo, the movies and the topical flowers are
symbolically connected with the glass menagerie that Laura has collected, delicate
exotic, beautiful.
The D.A.R. is Amanda’s last connection with the kind of society that she
frequented as a girl, the last reminder to the world at large that she is a lady, no matter
to what economic depths she may have sunk.
16
Scene III
Tom, the narrator then describes how, after the fiasco at Rubicom’s Business
College, the idea of getting a gentleman caller for Laura possessed Amanda ‘‘Like some
archetype of the universal unconscious the image of the gentleman caller haunted our
small apartment”. Amanda being a ‘‘woman of action as well as words’’ decided to
raise money needed ‘‘to properly feather the nest and plume the bird’’. In a brilliant
commentary on the vainglorious romanticism of the women of the south, Tom narrates
how Amanda roped in subscribers to The Home-Maker’s Companion, a magazine for
matrons of the type that features the serialized sublimations of the ladies of letters.
Amanda enters with a telephone, trying to trap a prospective subscriber, using all her
quite and readiness of wit. The prospective subscriber is one Ida Scott, whose sinus
condition makes her a ‘Christian martyr’ and as something burns in the kitchens, she
leaves the phone snapping the connection.
As there is a dim out, another part of the scene of encounter between Amanda
and Tom begins. Tom is working in a Continental Shoemakers at $ 65 a month. He
finds himself caught in a trap from which he wishes to escape. Amanda and Tom quarrel
over D.H. Lawrence’s book, which she took back to the library because she won’t
allow such filth brought into her house. In this outburst, she reveals the typical attitude
of the Southern women to the treatment of sex in fiction. She also tells Tom that she
doesn’t believe in him when he says that he spends his time at the movies. In a bitter
and fanciful speech, he tells her that he really spends his time in opium dens, dens of
vice and criminal’s hangouts, where he is a hired assassin. He is carrying a tommy gun
in a violin case and is called killer Wingfield.
All hidden contempt for his mother now comes to the surface and he explodes
with all the fury calling her witch. As he prepares to leave menagerie, Laura cries out
his coal strikes Laura’s glass. Amanda demands an apology.
Critical Comments
The scene shows that Tom is bitter about having to work in a shoe warehouse
to support his mother and sister. He does not want to desert them, but the job is so
uninspiring that he thinks it may drive him crazy. Amanda’s over protectiveness causes
17
Tom to lash out blindly, hurting, unintentionally both her and his sister. All these three
characters are shown living in three different worlds of theirs, which are not the real
world.
Scene IV
At five in the morning Tom enters the house. He tells Laura about a magic
show. Then Tom hears his mother saying ‘‘Rise and Shine’’ and he answers that he
will rise but not shine. Laura appeals to him not to make Mother nervous and
beseeches him to ‘‘make up with her, apologize and speak to her!’’. Amanda calls
for Laura and reminds her to do what she had told her namely to bring butter from
the market and tell them to charge it. Laura however doesn’t like the attitude and
expression of the grocer when he is asked to charge things. But Amanda tells her that
the expression on grocer’s face won’t harm her. As Laura hurries to go out, she slips
and catches the worried attention of both Tom and Amanda. She says she is all right
and goes.
After a severe inner struggle Tom apologizes, Amanda bursts into tears. She
says that she has confidence in Tom whom she does not want to fall down or fail. Tom
promises to try and Amanda assures him: ‘‘Try and you will succeed’’. She asks him
never to be drunkard again and advises him to eat something with coffee, But Tom
insists that he only wants black coffee, Amanda tells him that it is not good for him. She
is afraid that Tom is taking after his father’s ways. She is unable to understand why Tom
is restless and why does he go to the movies so much. Tom tells his mother that he goes
to the movies to get adventure which his work does not provide. He prefers instincts
but Amanda says that instincts belong to animals and as a Christian adult he should think
of superior things-things of mind and the spirit.
Tom wants to leave for his work place but Amanda detains him and tells him
to find out some eligible young man at the warehouse, who does not drink, for Laura.
Tom leaves in disgust but promises to do something about it.
Critical Comments
Amada’s condemning instinct and urging Tom to prefer mind and spirit
characterize her in Christian terms. Tom’s speeches indicate his feeling of confinement
18
and that he will not stay in the Wingfield’s apartment for long.
Scene V
Scene five begins with screen legend ‘‘ANNUNCIATION’’, which indicates

that there is going to be the announcement of a probable visit by the long awaited
gentleman caller. Tom goes out to smoke, Amanda gently tells him that if he didn’t
smoke, he could save enough to give him ‘‘a night school course in accounting’’! But
Tom doesn’t bother about it and prefers to smoke. Then he assumes the role of narrator
and tells the audience about the Paradise Dance Hall across the alley from the Wingfield
apartment where people come to dance. He says, ‘‘This was the compensation for lives
that passed like mine without any change or adventure’’.
Amanda comes out on the fire escape landing and wishes ‘‘Success and
Happiness’’ for her children seeing the little Silver Slipper of a moon, Tom tells
this other that his guess was that she wished for a gentleman caller and then to
her great excitement tells her that they are going to have a gentleman caller. He
has asked him to dinner and he is coming tomorow. Amanda feels that she is left
with little time to make necessary preparations for the big event. Tom does not
want her to make a fuss over it. Amanda learns from Tom that the name of the
gentleman caller is O’Connor. She wants to make sure that he doesn’t drink as
she has had a bitter experience with Tom’s father. So she doesn’t want a drunkard
for her daughter.
Tom tells Amanda that James D O’Connor is a shipping clerk at the Warehouse
and getting eighty five dollars a month. He also informs her that O’Connor is really going
in for self improvement. Amanda is happy. She calls Laura and forces her to wish for
happiness and good fortune.
Critical Comments
The name of the dance hall-Paradise has symbolic significance along with that
of the glass sphere that reflects rainbow colours. Both are reminders of beautiful ideals
and point up the great distance that man has fallen from beauty. The “Little silver
slipper’’ of a moon, on which Amanda makes wishes, and on which Laura, also, is
forced to wish, proves out to be nothing, but an image of their alienated condition.
19
Scene VI
The gentleman caller whom Tom invites is Jim O’Connor, an Irish young man.
He is Tom’s colleague whom both Tom and Laura have known since their school days.
In High school Jim was a hero. He had tremendous Irish good nature and vitality. He
was a star in basket ball, captain of the debating club, who sang the male lead in the
annual light operas. Tom remembers that in school he was extremely popular. He was
shooting with such velocity through his adolescence that you would logically expect him
to arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty’’. But completely
devoted to the fake dream of American success, even six years after he left the high
school, he was holding a job that was not much better than Tom’s. He further elaborates
about him, ‘‘He is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a
world of reality that we were somehow set apart from’’.
Down at the warehouse, Jim calls him Shakespeare because of Tom’s secret
practice of retiring to a cabinet of the washing room to work on poems when business
was slack in the warehouse’.
In the apartment Amanda is dressing Laura, who objects to being a trap for
young men. Her mother once again reviews the way young men were properly entrapped
by eligible girls in the aristocracy of the old south, when she was brought up. When
Laura finds that the gentleman caller is Jim O’Connor, she says she cannot possibly
appear because he was the same boy she used to like. But at her mother’s insistence,
she answers the door and admits Jim and Tom. Tom introduces Jim and Laura to each
other. Jim finds Laura’s hand cold and when she explains that she has been playing the
victrola, he tells her: ‘‘Must have been playing classical music on it! You ought to play
a hot swing music to warm you up! She begs excuse of him and runs away like a
frightened deer.”
Jim tries to persuade Tom to take the course in public speaking, which will
fit them for ‘‘executive positions’’. Then he tells Tom that Mr. Mandoza of the
warehouse had spoken to him about Tom and warned him that if he didn’t wake up
he was going to be out of job. Tom replies that he himself is planning to change. He
tells that he has become a member of the Union of Merchant Seamen and there his
inclination lies.
20
Amanda appears and begins to shower praises on Laura. She also turns to her
own past-all vestige of gracious living having departed now! ‘‘Well in the South we had
so many servants. Gone, gone, gone’’. Tom brings the information that supper is ready
but Laura is not feeling well and will not be able to join them at the table. But on
continuous insistence of Amanda she comes to the table but faints. She is taken to the
sofa into the living room by Tom. Supper begins with Tom saying grace.
Critical Comments
Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller, is shown as the exampler, the model of the
American Dream, which is made up of the images of success. But his actual position
in the warehouse shows that the American dream which is a cluster of images that
propagates the greatness, the vigor, and the potential of the American way of life, is not
the actual way, in which the Americans live but a commercial advertisement used as a
soporific to divert the people from a realization of the miseries of their actual existence.
Scene VII
After the dinner has been finished, the lights go out. Amanda thinking that the
fuse has burnt out, asks Jim if he could tell a burnt out switch. He finds that fuses are
okay. Amanda realizes that Tom might have not paid the light bill. We as well as Jim
know that Tom had paid the amount of light bill to the Union of Merchant Seamen to
become a member. Amanda is put in good humour by Jim who says that Shakespeare
(Tom) probably has written a poem on that light bill and may be the poem will win a
ten dollar prize. Amanda gives Jim a candelabrum and some wine to give Laura and
coax is her to drink a little wine.
Jim enters Laura’s world. Both Jim and Laura sit together on the floor with the
candelabrum between them. The warmth of Jim’s lively nature melts her shyness. She
asks him if he has kept up with singing. She also reminds him of their school days when
he used to call her Blue Roses and gives the whole reason of his saying so. Jim
remembers that Laura was a shy girl, having no friend to accompany her. He also senses
inferiority complex in her. He knows that he himself has not made much progress but
he has not lost hope.
Jim takes interest in Laura’s glass menagerie. Laura shows him a unicorn, the
21
oldest in her collection. He notices that Laura has love for those who are extinct in the
modern world. When Jim and Laura start dancing, they bump into the table and the
horn of the unicorn is broken. Laura, who is impressed by Jim’s outlook of life, is not
hurt by the breaking of the horn. Later when Jim discloses that he is engaged to Betty
and they are soon going to be married, Laura presents him the unicorn as a souvenir.
Laura’s dream of love and married life shatters. Not only Laura’s but Amanda’s dream
is also broken.
Tom tries an escape from his surroundings. But this escape doesn’t change his
fate. After losing his job for writing a poem on the lid of a shoe box, he left St Louis
and followed his father’s footsteps, ‘‘attempting to find in motion what was lost in
space. I travelled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leves’’. But
the haunting memories of past always pursued him. The family responsibilities come in
his way.
Critical Comments
The scene further throws light on the character of Jim, who appears to believe
in all the propaganda of the success myth. He tells Tom that he is taking a course in
the public speaking and Radio Engineering in the night. The warehouse is not a prison
for him, but a rung on the ladder towards success. His knowledge of himself that he
is not a successful man shows the irony of the success myth which has not spared him
even. But he is sure that his signature will increase in value someday.
Laura’s love for a unicorn and her father’s worn out phonograph records shows
her apathy with all that is new in the modern world. Jim’s breaking of the horn of
unicorn is symbolically his breaking the uniqueness of Laura’s illusionary world. But
Laura is not hurt by the breaking of the horn, may be she has made up her mind to live
outside her world of illusionary world.
After the departure of Jim, Amanda has perhaps grown after all this experience.
She comforts Laura, Tom says, ‘‘Now that we cannot hear the mother’s speech, her
silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty’’. Tom’s lost speech declares the
over all failure. ‘‘For now a days the world is lit by lighting. Blow out your candles,
Laura and so good bye...(She blows the candles out)’’.
22
Tom’s final words suggest not only the fruitlessness of his endeavor for fulfillment
but they also convey his realization that he cannot break the family bonds which tie him.
These bonds lessen the gravity of his otherwise alienated condition in a world, which
is lit by lighting and not candles. We are reminded of Amanda’s appeal to Tom, ‘‘In
these trying times we live in, all that we have is to cling to each other...’’Williams
emphasizes the need for understanding among individuals, who are victims of non-
recognition and failure in the capitalistic society.
1. Discuss the plot of the play The Glass Menagerie.
2. Trace the autobiographical elements in the play The Glass Menagerie.
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23
THE CHARACTERS
STRUCTURE
3.1 Objectives
3.2 Amanda Wingfield
3.3 Tom Wingfield
3.4 Laura Wingfield
3.5 Jim O’ Connor
3.6 Contrast between Jim and Tom.
3.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to study all important characters of the play The
Glass Menagerie.
3.2 AMANDA WINGFIELD
Amanda Wingfield is a middle aged woman, a deserted wife and mother of two
children-a son Tom and daughter Laura. She, who once as Southern belle, was the
darling of her small town’s social scene, is now living in a small apartment in St. Louis.
She dreams of her past and of her daughter’s future, but seems unwilling to recognize
24
certain harsh realities of the present. She is a loving mother, but her demands can make
life difficult for Laura and unbearable for Tom. As Williams suggested in the description
of his characters, Amanda Wingfield is “a little woman of great but confused vitality
clinging frantically to another time and place...she is not paranoiac but her life is paranoia.
There is much to admire in Amanda, and as much to love and pity as there is to laugh
at. Certainly, she has endurance and a kind of heroism, and though her foolishness
makes her unwittingly cruel at times, there is tenderness in her slight person.”
What makes Amanda grotesque is the stark contrast between her internal and
external environment. Though she lives in a poor neighbourhood hardly making her ends
meet at the mercy of her son’s earning of a pittance, she insists on observing the ritual
of the aristocracy, grace must be said properly at the table and her son and daughter
must behave as if they were living in their aristocratic mansion. As her daughter Laura
offers her help with serving the dessert at the table she says, “No sister, no sister-you
be the lady this time and I’ll be the darky...Resume your seat, little sister-I want you
to stay fresh and pretty for gentlemen callers.”
Thus she invokes the life of the aristocratic south. She still imagines herself to
be the same southern belle who led a life of culture, refinement and knightly courtesy.
She tells her daughter, after they have partaken of a frugal breakfast, about her life in
south. She was a southern belle living in a particoed house in a place called Blue
Mountains: “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain your mother received–seventeen!
Gentlemen callers! Why sometimes there haven’t chairs enough to accommodate them
all. We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs from the Parish house.”
Amanda as a southern belle cannot accept her defeat lightly and she refuses
to admit Laura’s shyness and her crippled leg. Although she insists that Laura not refer
to herself as a cripple, that she speaks only of a little physical defect and distract
attention from it by developing charm and vivacity, she is not entirely blind to the
situation. When she discovers that her daughter has been playing truant from Rubicams
Business School where she had admitted her to enter into a professional career, she
knows what can happen to a southern girl without a home of her own. “I’ve seen such
pitiful cases in the South-barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage
of sisters’ husband or brother’s wife! Stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room–
25
encouraged by one in law to visit another–like birdlike women without any nest-eating
the crust of humility all their life!”
Amanda, the former southern belle, has a second aspect to her character. Practical
exigencies have taught the southern woman that her true element is the family, where she
presides as the mistress of the household. She, therefore, asks Tom to look for a gentleman
caller for Laura at his workplace. When from his limited acquaintance he invites to dinner
a warehouse friend, her hopes skyrocket. Tom tries to make his mother be a little realistic.
But refusing to listen, Amanda with grin feminine energy, works to change Laura into a
pretty trap. On the ill fated evening she makes Laura so sick that she cannot eat dinner.
She also isolates Laura and Jim but only to discover that this young man is already
engaged and is going to marry very soon. Then she forgets all her silly lies and sees the
humiliating position of herself and Laura for what it is. She accuses Tom of allowing them
to make fools of themselves and of his being selfish and thoughtless. While accusing him
she lacks the charm she talks so much about.
Amanda tries hard to care for her children and to see that they do the right
thing. While her motives are laudable, her responses to them, are unfortunately,
overzealous and limited by her own view of what the right thing is. Laura and Tom can
never be what Amanda wants them to be, but her stubborn attempts to direct them
reveal her great energy and her strong will. She is a heroic woman. She does not give
up trying to find happiness and genuine sincerity for her family in the face of perhaps
greater obstacles than she ought to have face.
Amanda is too much a prisoner of her fantasies to sense reality inherent in a

particular situation. Though fully aware of the circumstances that surround her, she does
not stop her efforts to bring back the glorious days of her past. Tischler finds that,
“Amanda represents the ideals of the old south, the Puritan tradition and a kind of
meaningless conformity that destroys the individual without the consequence of enriching
the world.”
3.3 TOM WINGFIELD
Tom Wingfield is the son of Amanda and the narrator of the play. The whole
play is seen through the mind of Tom. He is a young man caught in a trap from which
26
he wishes to escape. He is poet with a job in warehouse which he does not like and
so is desperately unhappy.
Tom represents some of the most important characteristics of the southern hero.
The qualities of the southern myth that impinged, accordingly to Cash are, “romanticism,
a penchant for violence, an uneasy balance of Puritanism and hedonism.”
It has been suggested that Tom represents Tennessee Williams himself. It is said
that the predicament of Tom is similar to that of the dramatist when he was of that age.
The shoe factory job, the poetry writing, the cramped living quarters and the very close
relationship with the sister are all echoes of Williams’ own experience. Like his creator
he is an itinerant dreamer.
Tom has no love for his job. The office of the Continental shoemakers, with its
“celotax interior and fluorescent tubes” suffocates him. That is why he is restless and
so he goes to the movies so much. Since his own work does not provide any adventure,
he goes to the movies to get a sense of it. His love of adventure is highlighted by the
screen image of ‘sailing vessel with Jolly Roger.”
Tom has a strong sense of responsibility to the family, but it is constantly

struggling with his sense of responsibility to himself. He knows that he is the only bread
winner of the family and understands Laura’s condition but can not offer any genuine
help to his mother and sister. The conflict between his feelings of responsibility to his
family and to himself troubles him throughout the play. He suffers through the petty
annoyances at home, the boredom of his job, and the frustration which bound him in
both places until he can take no more from either and leaves.
Tom is caught in the web of his family and is fully aware of his plight. He knows
that his job in the shoe company will stifle him and the anguish he feels in the presence
of his mother will soon tear him apart. He knows that one day he will have to commit
the cruelest act of his life, abandoning mother and sister. Jim tries to persuade him to
take the course in public speaking and radio engineering which will fit them for executive
positions. But Tom has something else in his mind to do. He tells Jim that he is planning
to change his job and wants to have a future which does not include the warehouse and
the night course in public speaking and radio engineering. He has become a member
27
of the Union of Merchant Seamen and his inclination lies there. He believes that by
joining the Union of Merchant Seamen, he will experience change and adventure and
escape the painful views and pretensions of others.
Tom, in the role of a Narrator, speaks a good deal about truth and illusion and
reality and dreams, but Tom the protagonist in the story, possesses the romantic soul
of a dreamer. Despite the perception, it shows as Narrator he has as much trouble
facing his situation as does his mother. Though he loves and sympathizes with his mother
and sister, he cannot accept their future. The world will not accept them and he has to
make his stand. He is disgusted with his mother for her poses and apparent refusal to
cope with reality, and yet, he too, escapes daily from the oppression of his life by seeing
the narcotism of the cinema. Finally, he tries an escape from his surrounding by leaving
Saint Louis and following his father’s footsteps when he lost his job for writing a poem
on the lid of a shoe box.
But his escape from a trap, a situation which is plainly unendurable does not
bring him anything challenging, positive and heroic. He is a part of the dilemma of his
family and he cannot break completely free. Wherever he may go and whatever he may
do, he will always be more faithful than he intended to be. His final words suggest not
only fruitlessness of his endeavour for fulfillment, but they also convey his realization that
he cannot break the family bonds which tie him. These bonds lessen the gravity of his
otherwise alienated condition in a world which is lit by lighting and not candles.
3.4 LAURA WINGFIELD
Laura Wingfield is the daughter of Amanda and sister of Tom. She is shy,
withdrawn, delicate and as fragile as the little glass ornaments and phonograph records
which are her escape. At the opening of the play, the author describes her that “an
illness in childhood has left her crippled, one leg slightly shorter than the other, and held
in a brace. This defect need not be more than suggested on the stage. Stemming from
this, Laura’s separation increases till she is like a piece of her own glass collection, too
exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf.”
Of all the characters in the play, Laura is the farthest removed from the real
world, the world of practicality and fact. Although her physical deformity is slight, she
28
has grown accustomed to her abnormality since childhood. She is so conscious of it that
she used to feel as if the whole world is looking at her and this made her retreat into
herself. This is the source of her painful self consciousness.
Laura has withdrawn so far that she is actually unable to cope with the world
that lies beyond the phonograph and her collection of glass animals. She is unable to
adapt herself to the modern scene of electro-dynamics, she lives in a world of candlelight
and fantasy. Amanda has admitted her to Rubicam’s Business School to learn short
hand and typing so that she can enter into a professional career. But Amanda discovers
that her daughter has been playing truant and instead visiting the art museum and bird
houses at the zoo, penguins and Jewel box with tropical flowers. These were the
avenues that provided Laura with refreshing diversions from the monotony and horror
of learning short hand and typing. She couldn’t effect a compromise with the shallow
dreams of a business culture. She sought to identify herself with some higher sports in
human culture.
Laura is kind hearted and she is sensitive both to her mother’s strengths and
weaknesses, and to Tom’s hopes and frustration. She tries to lessen the sense of frustration
that Tom feels when he thinks of staying home and taking care of the family. She tries to
stop Tom from embarrassing the mother when Amanda retells the already familiar stories of
good times in Blue Mountains. She also advises Tom to apologise after the quarrel between
Amanda and Tom when Amanda vows not to speak to him till he apologizes.
Laura, when is asked by her mother whether she had ever cared for any
youngman, replies that there’s a boy she liked once. His name is Jim, a high school hero,
who used to call Laura “Blue Roses.” She is identified with blue roses, which are not
found in nature and like these flowers Laura cannot exist in a real world. Tom invites
a colleague of his to dinner on the instigation of Amanda to find a gentleman caller for
Laura. He is the same Jim who is Laura’s is ideal since her school days. Jim finds
Laura’s hands very cold and that she is a shy girl, he suggests her to always play hot
swing music because they can warm her hands, which are cold because of playing the
victrola.
Jim enters Laura’s life and a faint glimmer of hope appears for her in her scene
with Jim but it is snuffed out abruptly. Jim senses inferiority complex in Laura. He urges
29
her to forget her crippled leg and the brace she wears. He tells her that no one ever
noticed it. Her imagination has magnified her trouble when she ought to forget it and
think of herself as superior in some way.
Laura responds to the encouragement, and shows him her precious glass
collection. She shows him a unicorn the oldest in her collection. He noticed Laura’s love
for those, who are extinct in the modern world. Her love for the unicorn and her father’s
worn out phonograph records shows her apathy with all that is new in the modern
world. But when Jim and Laura start dancing, they suddenly bump into the table and
the horn of the unicorn is broken. Symbolically, Jim has broken the uniqueness of
Laura’s illusionary world. But Laura, who is impressed by Jim’s outlook of life is not
hurt by the breaking up of the horn. May be Laura has made up her mind to live outside
her world of illusions which consists of unicorn and other glass animals. But her dream
of love and married life shatters when Jim tells her that he is engaged to Betty, and they
are soon going to be married. Laura, who has lived a whole life time of romance with
her dream-lover, is shocked. She presents him the unicorn as a souvenir.
Through her timidity, her suffering from the friction between Tom and Amanda,
and her retreat into the world of dreams, Laura evokes genuine sympathy. She is the
appealing one of those who must be cared for, loved and understood. She suffers from
a painful sense of loneliness, from the first scene to the last, her mother makes her feel
her lack of popularity with men and her inability to cope with any kind of social life.
3.5 JIM O’CONNOR
Jim O’Connor is an Irish Youngman who has tremendous Irish good nature and
vitality. He is Tom’s colleague whom both Tom and Laura have known since their
school days. In high school, he was a hero. He was a star in basket ball, captain of
the debating club, who sang the male lead in the annual light operas. Tom remembers
that in the school he was extremely popular. He was shooting with such velocity through
his adolescence that you would logically expect him to arrive at nothing short of the
White House by the time he was thirty”. But completely devoted to the fake dream of
American success, even six years after he left the high school, he was holding a job that
was not much better than Tom’s. Williams in the dramatic personae of the play describes
30
Jim as “a nice, ordinary young man”. He further elaborates about him, “He is the most
realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world of reality” from which the
other characters are somehow separated.
Jim is optimistic and thoroughly committed to a belief in “progress”. But he is

nagged by self doubts, that are hidden beneath the self confidence he exudes. He
displays his liveliness in the remarks he makes. He suggests Laura to always play hot
swing music, because that can warm her hands which are cold because of playing the
victorola. Jim goes to night school for self improvement. There he learns radio-
engineering and public speaking. He wants Tom to take a course in public speaking
which takes one to executive positions. Tom, who is a poet, seeking adventure and
experience but trapped by circumstances into an unexciting and experience where only
alcohol and the movies offer excitement, Jim O’Connor is dull and unimaginative. Tom
rejects the values, which Jim religiously cherishes.
The sensitive creatures like Laura and Tom notice the corruption that lies on
earth and their understanding of this corruption limits them to their individual worlds. But
for Jim the world is a wonderful place to live in. Jim is awed by the future made in
chewing gum. The warehouse is not a prison for him, but a rung on the ladder toward
success. He lectures on the future material progress of America: “....all that remains is
for steam...knowledge-zzzp! Money-zzzp! Power! That is the cycle democracy is built
on!”
Jim tells Laura that she is suffering from inferiority complex and suggests her to
think to herself as superior in some way. He knows that, he himself though being
progressive young man, has not made much progress. But for him, however, problems
exist simply to be overcome. He has the supreme confidence that nothing can be thrown
in his way that he cannot surmount and he does not realize that all people are not made
the way he is and that all people cannot look at things the way he does. He is sure that
his signature will increase in value someday. His optimistic approach towards life is
really appreciable. He says “I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.”
Jim represented everything that Amanda longed for. Although he gives the
impression of great self confidence, he is in fact rather deeply disturbed that he has not
31
accomplished what he thinks he should have by this time.
Jim enters Laura’s world and even dances with her and clumsily caused the horn
to break off Laura’s prized unicorn-the one thing that made the animal unique. But
Laura is not hurt by the breaking of horn which symbolically represents her desire to
enter the normal world like an ordinary person. He kisses her and then realizes that
Laura is falling in love with him. This he cannot face because Laura has made him aware
of his own insecurity. He tells her that he is engaged and that he will not call again Laura
who has been holding the glass unicorn in her hand, gives it to him for a souvenir. This
shows that finally she retreats to her own world of illusions. Jim cannot preserve his
illusions about his being gifted and have Laura too. He needs a relationship in which his
self-confidence can be secure which is not possible with Laura.
To conclude, we can say that Jim is not really so much different from the
Wingfields. Like them, he must be protected by illusion from a harsh world that prevents
individual fulfillment. He is simpler than they are, however, and his illusions represent
bourgeois values.
3.6 CONTRAST BETWEEN JIM AND TOM
Jim O’Connor and Tom Wingfield are working in the warehouse. The contrast
between the two is evident whereas the writer describes Jim O’Connor as an emissary
from a world of reality, Tom is a poet and possesses the romantic soul of a dreamer.
He is extremely bitter about having to work in a shoe warehouse to support his mother
and sister. To him, the job is so uninspiring that he thinks it may drive him crazy. He
is conscious of the fact that this job is not the one he ultimately wants and that he is
wasting his life in that “celotax interior with fluorescent tubes.” His writing poems
represents his desire to escape from a very tiring life. He daily escapes from the
oppression of his life by seeking the narcotism of the cinema. Since his own work does
not provide any adventure, he goes to the movies to get a sense of it. But towards the
end of the play he tells Jim that he is now tired of movies also because the movies and
the glamorous people in them just deceive people. He also tells Jim that he has become
the member of the union of merchant seamen because he yearns for a life of purpose
and meaning, which is unluckily impossible in this society.
32
Unlike Tom, Jim is an extrovert who is very much a part of the world around
him. He is completely devoted to the fake dream of American success. He was holding
a job in the warehouse that was not much better than Tom’s. The warehouse is not a
prison for him, but a rung on the ladder towards success. To him, the world is a
wonderful place to live in. He is awed by the future made in chewing gum and lectures
on the future material progress of America. He goes to night school for self-improvement
where he learns radio engineering and public speaking. He knows that, though being a
progressive young man, hasn’t made much progress. But he is not discouraged. He is
optimistic and is sure that his signature will increase in value someday.
Jim, the optimistic American extrovert tries to convert the poetic introvert Tom
to his way of thinking. But to Tom, Jim O’Connor is dull and unimaginative and he
rejects the values which Jim religiously cherishes. Tom knows that Jim’s goal is financial
and social success which he cannot accept it for himself. Jim does not even know what
Tom’s goal is and would not recognize it as valid even if he knew it.
Thus we find that whereas Jim O’Connor is described as the most realistic
character in the play, Tom is a poet and a dreamer, who yearns for a life of purpose
and money.
1. “Amanda is the only character in the play who tries to make a compromise
between illusion and reality”. Discuss.
2. “Tom is a sensitive young man trapped by unpleasant circumstances that stifle

him”. Discuss.
3. Discuss Jim O’Connor as “an emissary from a world of reality.”
4. Laura Wingfield, according to the author, is like “a piece of her own glass
collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf”. Discuss the character
of Laura Wingfield in the light of above statement.
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IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF THE PLAY
STRUCTURE
4.1 Objectives
4.2 The Glass Menagerie as a Memory Play
4.3 Symbols used in The Glass Menagerie
4.4 Annotations
4.5 Short Answer Questions
4.7 Suggested Reading
4.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of the lesson is to analyze the various aspects of the play The
Glass Menagerie. It is also an attempt to aware you how to analyze the given passages
critically and attempt short answer questions.
4.2 The Glass Menagerie AS A MEMORY PLAY
Tennessee Williams matured as an artist during the time when drama itself was
in transition. For almost a century, the picture frame stage had dominated the American
theatre and realistic or naturalistic sets were treated as actual rooms with only one wall
removed so that the audience can see in. However, in 1930 the American theatre began
to do what other literary genres had already done that is to enter into the field of
34
abstractions, impressionism and expressionism.
When Williams sought to write The Glass Menagerie, he neglected the idea of
casting it in a realistic mould. Since he wished to present the play as memory (and many
of its autobiographical elements do make it a part of writer’s memory) he wrote
suggestively rather than literary. Since incidents are altogether omitted, some are minimized
and some others are exaggerated. There is no stern logical sequence since the events
are narrated as they are remembered and not necessarily as they occur. The entire play
is presented as a memory of Tom, the son and the narrator.
In the beginning of the play Tom says: “The play is memory. Being a memory,
it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory everything seems to
happen to music.”
Even in his “Production Notes” Tennessee Williams says that, “Being a memory
play, The Glass Menagerie can be presented with unusual freedom of conventions.
Because of its considerably delicate and tenuous material, atmospheric touches and
subtleties of direction play an important part. Expressionism and other unconventional
technique in drama have only one valid aim; that is a closer approach to truth.” This is in
accordance with William Faulkner’s assertion that a work may contain the “truth of
heart”. Writing a memory play, William does not shy away from his responsibility to
present the truth. He says, “Every reader should know now a days the unimportance of
the photographic in art; that truth, life and reality is an organize thing which poetic
imagination can present in essence only through transformation.” He employs a host of
devices like screen, plastic theatre, dim lighting, music and expressionism to render The
Glass Menagerie as a memory play.
In writing this play, Williams borrowed heavily from the German expressionists
like Piscator and Brecht especially the ‘epic’ form of Bretch. Like him, he favoured the
use of screen as a symbol of consciousness. He says that “in every scene there is a point
(or reversal) which is structurally the most important and a phrase or legend flashes
across the screen would serve to heighten it.” It heightens the effect of “what is merely
allusion in the writing”. Besides its structural appeal, it also serves to heighten the
intensity of the emotions. He has successfully used this device in this play. For example,
in the scene in which Jim meets Laura and remembers her as a girl whom he nicknamed
35
blue roses when she was suffering from pleurosis, the phrase ‘Blue Roses’ is flashed
across the screen and audience along with Laura became aware of the fact that though
blue is beautiful, it is the wrong colour for the roses. Also the stage setting is plastic and
transparent and when lighted from the back appears opaque.
In keeping with the atmosphere of a memory or dream the stage is dimly lit.
Shafts of focused light are used on the characters sometimes in contradictions to what
apparently appears the center of attraction. For example, in the quarrel scene in which
Laura plays no part, the clearest pool of light is on her. Similarly in the supper scene,
the light is focused upon her when she sits separately on sofa. The light on Laura has
a peculiar pristine clarity as is seen in the portraits of religious saints or Madonnas. They
resemble the paintings of El Greco. In keeping with their atmosphere, the character is
lighted against a relatively dusky background.
In memory everything seems to happen to music. A single recurring tune, “The

Glass Menagerie” is used to intensify the emotional appeal of the play. Since it is primarily
Laura’s music, it is the clearest when she is in focus. Regarding the music of the play, the
writer says that it appears like circus music not when you are on ground or in the
immediate vicinity of the parade, but when you are at some distance and most probably
thinking of something else and the music seems to continue interminably and seems of
weave in and out of your preoccupied thoughts. This music is the most delicate, most
beautiful and perhaps the “saddest”. Williams says that “when you look at a piece of
delicately spun glass, you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be
broken”. Both of these ideas should be woven into the recurring time, which dips in and
out of the play” maintaining a mood of emotions and nostalgia, so essential for a memory
play.
Williams, in this play followed the dicta of expressionism which heightened the
effect of the play as a memory play. He describes the Wingfield apartment as “one of the
vast hive like conglomerations of cellular living units which flower as warty growth in the
over crowded urban centers of lower middle class population.” “They”, says the writer,
“are symptomatic of the impulse of this largest and fundamentally enslave section of
American society to resist fluidity and differentiation and to exist as one of interfused mass
of automatism,” of all the characters only Tom seems to be aware of this grotesque
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uniformity and since the entire play is taking place in his memory, he is apt to exaggerate.
Even the fire escape is symbolic with a touch of ‘poetic truth’ for all these huge buildings
seem to be always burning with slow implacable fires of human desperation. The alley,
the Paradise dance hall etc. all are symbolic of something or other in Tom’s memory.
The plot, the characterization, the setting all serve to form a static drama–a
device or technique used by Williams, in his other plays too including the rewrite of The
Battle of Angles. Every dramatic device in this play contributes to rendering it as a
memory play–a technique used by the Swedish dramatist, August Strindberg who wrote
in a preface to one of his plays. “Time and Space do not exist...A single consciousness
holds sway over the audience... that of a dreamer.”
4.3 SYMBOLS USED IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE
Tennessee Williams in the “Production Notes” has called The Glass Menagerie
a ‘memory’ play and regarded expressionism and other unconventional dramatic devices
used in the play as the closer approach to truth. He thought that the photographic
representation of reality in art is least significant and wanted it to be replaced by the
‘plastic art,’ if theatre was to revive as a part of contemporary social culture. Williams
was of the opinion that a great drama is one which, with the help of imagination,
transforms reality into the poetic truth as felt and experienced by the characters
themselves. This dramatic objective has been achieved with greater emphasis on images
and symbols.
The symbols play a significant role in underlining the play’s meaning and Williams
uses various symbols quite effectively. Tom is the narrator of the play and also a
character in it. He is a poet and the whole play is seen through his memory. He has a
poet’s weakness for symbols and uses some characters as symbols.
In the beginning of the play, Laura Wingfield is shown preoccupied with the
glass animals which gives the title of the play. Williams himself describes the glass as
very beautiful but which can easily be broken. So the glass must be protected from
harshness of reality. Laura’s, childhood illness has left her crippled, one leg slightly
shorter than the other. Stemming from this defect, Laura’s separation increases till she
is like a piece of her own glass collection too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf.
37
She is shown seated in the “delicate ivory chair” at the small “claw-foot table” wearing
a kimono of soft violet material, washing and polishing her collection of glass.” All these
things, the chair, the table, the dress material and the glass animals are used symbolically
to depict the fragile character of Laura. The “delicate ivory chair” represents the fragile
foothold that Laura has on the soft structure of her life, the “claw-foot table” represents
her physical handicap and the dress material shows that the fabric of her life is woven
of the softest material. She like her glass menagerie is sweet, brittle and dream like who
is unable to face the harsh world reality.
Jim used to call Laura “Blue Roses” because once after many day’s absence
from the school, Jim had asked her the reason of her absence. She told him that she
had pleurosis. But Jim thought that she said “Blue Roses”. Unconsciously, perhaps, Jim
had given Laura a name that suited her completely. Blue Roses are not appealing to
ordinary people. Laura, too, a sensitive soul, is ‘awkward’ for others.
At the outset of the play we are introduced immediately to the heart of the
dramatic situation when Amanda tells her children about her life in the south. She was a
southern belle living in a place called Blue Mountains, where on one Sunday afternoon she
received seventeen gentlemen callers. The Blue Mountains is Amanda’s illusion, the gentle,
beautiful life she led as a girl. It represents gentility, culture and all the value that she
cherishes. It is her retreat the only source of beauty in her otherwise drab present life.
Amanda, who mentally lives in large planter’s mansion in the south, is at present
living in an apartment house in a slum area in a city. The dramatist describes the Wingfield
apartment in the beginning of the play as “one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of
cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in over crowded urban centers of lower
middle-class population.” The apartment is entered by “a fire-escape, a structure, whose
name is a touch of accidental poetic truth-for all these huge buildings are always burning
with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation.” Their only escape is the fire
escape which serves as an exit from the apartment. It is in ironic contrast to the particoed
house of Amanda’s youth since it is narrow and ugly.
Tom as a narrator introduces all the characters of the play to the audience. He
says that fifth character of the play does not appear except in the larger than life size
photograph over the mantel. This is his father Mr. Wingfield who represents to Amanda
38
her tragic mistake, her marriage to him, who was handsome and charming but
irresponsible. To Tom, he represents the adventure that he misses in his own life. Mr.
Wingfield left the family and went away to see the world and Tom is determined to do
the same.
Jim, the fourth character of the play, is also used as a symbol. Tom says that
since he has a poet’s weakness for symbols he is using Jim’s character as a symbol of
someone, who is long delayed but always expected something that we live for.
Tom is working in a shoe company in warehouse at 65 dollars a month, the job

he does not like but has to do to support him and his family. To him the warehouse
represents the grinding drabness of corporate indifference. The movies and liquor are
Tom’s only escape from the otherwise mundane life that he must lead. He identifies with
heroes of the movies he sees and it is through their exploits that he has the only
adventure that he experiences vicariously. He becomes the member of the Union of
Merchant Seamen to escape from the drab existence at the warehouse and the Wingfield
apartment. But in the end of the play, we find that even the Merchant Marine offered
no escape from his responsibility to his family, especially his responsibility to Laura-the
memory haunts him wherever he goes.
Laura is admitted in the Rubicam’s Business College to learn short hand and
typing. But she stops going there, instead she goes to the art museum, bird houses at
the zoo and the jewel box with the tropical flower. The college represents the modern
age of electrodynamics whereas the places, which she visits represent some higher spots
in human culture.
In her glass menagerie there is a unicorn, which is a mythological animal,
which does not exist in the real world. It represents Laura herself because of its
uniqueness. But accidentally Jim breaks its horn, which is symbolically breaking the
uniqueness of Laura’s illusionary world. Laura’s not feeling upset symbolizes her
attempt to put aside her fantasy world for the real one. But when she finds that Jim
is engaged, she gives him the unicorn as a souvenir, which symbolizes her retreat
into her own fragile world.
Thus every link with the dream-like life is shattered. The illusive or allusive
images used in abundance by Williams, vanish one by one. The “Little silver slipper” of
39
a moon, on which Amanda makes wishes, and on which Laura, also, is forced to wish,
proves out to be nothing, but an image of their alienated condition. There is much of
Christian symbolism, which has been used in the play to describe various situations.
Amanda is often characterized in Christian terms. He tells Jim that as a girl, she could
cook only angel food cake. She uses Christian terms very often in the play. She
condemns instinct and urges Tom to prefer mind and spirit.
In the “Annunciation scene”, on knowing that the gentleman caller’s name is
O’Connor she says “that of course means fish, tomorrow is Friday !” Fish is considered
to be the traditional symbol of Christ. Actually Amanda wants Jim to be a Christ like
saviour in their lives. Laura is certainly, in Jim’s company, lit inwardly with alter candles.
But very soon when Jim tells her of his love with Betty, we are informed that the “holy
candles in the alter of Laura’s face have been sniffed out”. After dinner, when the lights
go off, Amanda jokes, “where was Moses when the lights went off.” Then she answers
herself, “in the dark”. And after Jim’s departure, Amanda and Laura are in the dark.
After all this experience Amanda has perhaps grown wiser. Tom’s last speech declares
the over-all failure.
4.4 ANNOTATIONS
(a) One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain your mother received-seventeen!

gentlemen callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t chairs enough to
accommodate them all. We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding
chairs from the Parish house.
These lines are spoken by Amanda in the beginning of the play The Glass
Menegerie Amanda, the mother of Tom and Laura, and former southern
belle is living in an apartment house in a slum area in a city. But she
mentally lives in large planter’s mansion in the south and repeatedly tells
her children the story of her gentlemen callers in Blue Mountains. This
story tells us about Amanda, that once as southern belle, she was the
darling of her small town’s social scene, but is now an abandoned wife
and single mother living in a small apartment in St. Louis. She dreams of
her past and ignores the present reality. She imposes the role of the
40
potential southern belle on Laura and brings out all the fear and panic in
Laura’s psyche. These lines show that Amanda is a woman of dreams.
Blue Mountain and gentlemen callers help her escape the ugliness of her
present environment.
(b) A well-cooked meal has lots of delicate flavours that have to be held in
the mouth for appreciation.
Amanda and Laura are seated at a drop leaf table. Amanda calls Tom and
asks him to join them at the table. As they eat, Amanda begins to lecture
Tom regarding the right method of eating. She tells him to eat food
leisurely and enjoy it because the cooked meal has lots of delicate
flavours and to appreciate these, one has to chew it properly. By chewing
one not only will enjoy the flavour of food but also give salivary glands
a chance to function. But Tom in sheer disgust at the sickening reference
to salivary glands, mastication and animals secretion, withdraws from the
table on the pretext of going to get a cigarette.
This line throws light on the character of Amanda. Though she lives in poor
neighborhood hardly making her ends meet at the mercy of her son’s earning
of a pittance, she insists on observing the ritual of the aristocracy, grace must
be said properly at the table and her son and daughter must behave as if they
were living in their aristocratic mansion. In this way, she invokes the life of the
aristocratic south. She still imagines herself to be the same southern belle who
led a life of culture, refinement and knightly courtesy.
(c) I’m planning to change. I’m right at the point of committing myself to a
future that doesn’t include the warehouse and Mr. Mendoza or even a
night school course in public speaking.
These lines are spoken by Tom to Jim O’Connor, who goes to night
school for self-improvement. There he learns radio engineering and public
speaking. Jim tries to persuade Tom to take a course in public speaking,
which takes one to executive positions. He also tells Tom that Mr.
Mendoza of the warehouse had spoken to him about Tom and warned
41
him that if he didn’t wake up he was going to be out of job. Tom replies
that he himself is planning to change. His future place does not include
warehouse, Mr. Mendoza or a course in public speaking. He has already
become a member of the Union of Merchant Seamen and his inclination
lies there.
These lines show that Tom is a sensitive creature, who yearns for a life
of purpose and meaning, which is unluckily impossible in his society.
4.5 SHORT-ANSWER QUESTIONS
i. Significance of the title The Glass Menagerie
Laura’s preoccupation with the glass animals gives the title of the play.
The character of Laura is based on Tennessee Williams’ sister Rose who
never liked St. Louis, the uninteresting treeless town where she shifted
along with her parents and brother from the village of her grandfather.
Both the writer and Rose were lost in vast turmoil of the teeming city
when she reached adolescence, she left for bike rides and making fames
but kept up one childhood interest of her collection of glass animals of
different sizes, some miniature, some not very small, which she had begun
in Mississippi. When her father objected loudly to everything she did, she
used to shut herself up in her room to mope fingering the glass animals for
comfort.
Laura has also a collection of glass animals. Whereas, her mother wants her
to learn short hand and typing, Laura is shown washing and polishing these
animals. These animals are used as the dominant symbol in the play.
Tennessee Williams in the production notes says that glass is something
which is beautiful but is broken easily. Like it Laura is also beautiful but very
fragile. According to the author, Laura “is like a piece of her own glass
collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf.”
Laura is very sensitive and does not like the modern world of electra-
dynamics. She lives in a world of candlelight and fantasy. A faint glimmer
42
of hope appears for Laura in her scene with Jim that she will meet the real
world and enter the mainstream of life but it sniffed out abruptly. By the
end of the play, it is sensed that Laura will continue to live in a world of
her own, world of her glass menagerie.
ii. Why is Laura called “Blue Roses”.
Laura in the second scene of the play tells her mother that in high school
there was a boy, whose name was Jim and who was a hero and who won
silver cup in debating. She liked him. He used to call Laura “Blue Roses”
because once when she had an attack of pleurosis, Jim asked her what
was the matter with her and she, said that she was suffering from ‘pleurosis’.
Jim thought that she said “Blue Roses”. Ever since then he called her that
unconsciously, perhaps, Jim had given Laura a name that suited her
completely. Blue Roses are not appealing to ordinary people. Laura, too
a sensitive soul, is ‘awkward’ for other. Moreover, blue roses are not
found in nature. Like them, Laura cannot exist in a real world.
iii. Importance of Unicorn in the play.
Laura has a collection of glass animals and she lives in her own world with
glass figures and phonograph records because she is shy, over delicate
and fragile. In her collection of animals there is a unicorn, which is
mythological animal. Like the blue roses, the unicorn does not exist in the
real world. Because it is unique, it has enjoyed a special place among the
animals in Laura’s glass Menagerie. Her love for the unicorn shows her
apathy with all that is new in the modern world. Its horn is broken by Jim.
Symbolically, it represents Jim’s breaking of the uniqueness of Laura’s
illusionary world. But Laura is not hurt by the breaking of the horn.
Because she is impressed by Jim’s outlook of life. Her calmness symbolizes
her attempt to put aside her fantasy world for the real one. When she
finds out that Jim is engaged, she gives him the unicorn for a souvenir
which symbolizes her retreat into her own fragile world. Since the unicorn
is no longer “special, it does not hold the special place among her animals
that it once did and so she gives it to Jim.
43
1. Discuss The Glass Menagerie as a memory play.
2. What role do symbols play in the play The Glass Menagerie.
3. The play The Menagerie reflects how difficult it is for culture to flourish
in modern America. Discuss.
4. Write a short note on Amanda as a southern belle.
5. “Jim embodies in himself the philosophy of the American success myth”.

Discuss.
6. Critically comment on the ending of the play.
7. Discuss briefly the scene when Laura meets her hero of school days.
4.7 SUGGESTED READING
Cash, W.J. The Mind of the South. New York : Vintage, 1941.
Cortela, P. Donald, “Tennessee Williams’ Fugitive Kind”, Modern Drama, Vol.

XI, May 1972, No.1
Falk. L, Signi Tennesee Williams, New York, Twayne Publishers, 1961.
Glum, Me JM, “Tennessee William’s Women’ Illusion and Reality, Sexuality and
Love’, Tennessee Williams : A Tribute. University of Mississippi, 1977.
Griffin, Alice, Understanding Tennessee Williams. Columbia University of South

Caroline Press, 1995.
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44
COURSE CODE : ENG-413 LESSON No. 5
AMERICAN LITERATURE-II UNIT-II
THE HAIRY APE

Development of American Drama and Eugene O’Neill
STRUCTURE
5.1 Objectives
5.2 Development of American Drama
5.3 Eugene O’ Neill
5.4 Major Plays of Eugene O’Neill
5.5 O’Neill as a Dramatist
5.1 OBJECTIVES
This lesson proposes the development of the American drama from its beginning
to the emergence of modern American drama in the 1920s. This lesson is designed to
equip the learner to approach the 20th century American drama with perspective of
dramatic history, art and ideas.
5.2. DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN DRAMA
Drama is a gift, which is not granted to all cultures and in all times. Ancient
Greece, Elizabethan England, remote India, Japan and perhaps Egypt are the civilizations,
45
where drama has developed at various times. But it appears that in the twentieth
century, America too has been included in those civilizations where the dramatic art has
grown and flourished.
Up to the first world war, the playhouses of United States, although active and
yielding profit had failed to produce any theatrical literature of importance. However, it
was noticed in the period before the war that a premonition of something notable was
coming up.
The American drama of the nineteenth century was a bastard art form but its
popular manifestation had a good deal of vitality. The negro ministrel show, for example,
had developed by 1850 into a formalized three part amusement that retained its verve
for a generation or so. The burlesque performance that emerged a little later was likewise
loosely organized in three parts, each with its characteristic routines and vulgarities. The
legitimate theatre, however, produced very few plays of permanent interest. It was an
age when the actor and the producer counted for more than the playwright. The big names
were those of men like Edwin Forrest or the Anglo American Booths, Jeffersons,
Southerns and Barrymores, or the actor-manager play-doctor, David Belasco. But the
play itself was not the thing. Often it was imported from Europe. It seems typical that
Our American Cousin, the play at which Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated in 1865
had been written by an Englishman, Tom Taylor. Often a successful play was an
adaptation of a novel-Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Gilded Age are instances - and so
not written in terms of the stage, where an author like W.D. Howells wrote directly for
the theatre, he brought no startling novelty to the medium. The public demanded melodrama
lavishly staged. It liked large casts, romantic plots and spectacular effects. Though it
applauded patriotic sentiments, it did not insist on seeing American plays. The absence
before 1891 of an adequate international copy right put native playwrights at an added
disadvantage. From 1890 to 1914 love of surface reaction is evident in American theatre.
David Belasco becomes the grand master of authentic surface realism. Thus in 1881,
the year of Ibsen’s Ghosts, the American theatre as represented by the La Belle Russe,
a play concocted by Belasco out of the two written by other authors. Though Belascoism
became rapidly outmoded, it forms one of the foundation stones of the modern American
theatre.
46
In 1900 or thereabouts, there was little indication that the United States would
make important contribution to world theatre. There were some signs of life in the early
years of the twentieth century. The opening of the New Theatre at Chicago in 1906 and
of similarly named venture three years later in New York marked a welcome though
abortive attempt to encourage experimental drama. In 1905, George Pierce Baker was
able to start the course in play writing that later grew into the famous 47 workshop at
Harvard. The poet dramatist William Vaughan Moody was beginning The Great Divide
(1906) and The Faith Healer (1909) to feel his way toward adult theatre. Though he
died in 1910, something of his sensitive and intelligent approach was evident in two plays
of that year. One, by his former pupil, Tosephine Peabody, was The Piper, a verse drama
on the theme of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. The other, by Moody’s friend Percy
Mackaye, was The Scarecrow, a dramatization of Hawthorne’s fantastic story Feathertop.
But the awakening of the American theatre was not accomplished through
poetic drama or through adaptations like Mackayes. It was not enough merely to
emphasize the role of the playwright; there had to be a decisive break with the theatrical
conventions of the commercial theatre. By the start of World War-I, the necessary
conditions for such a break were present. The Little Theatre Movement had got
underway; throughout America small groups of amateurs were eager to try out new
plays. In 1915, a number of artists and writers who made up a summer colony at
Provincetown, Massachusetts, banded together to amuse themselves under the name of
the Provincetown Players. Their first stage was the porch of a building. Next summer
the young playwright Eugene O’Neill came to Provincetown and was soon one of the
leaders of the group.
Allardyce Nicoll in The World Drama says “without a doubt among the dramatists
who first arouse during these decades, the author who most impresses upon us with a
sense of power and dramatic genius is Eugene O’Neill and in his writings we have a
kind of vast symbol of the power of the American stage”.
O’Neill was the son of James O’Neill, a great successful actor of the old
school. His father had been for years holding audience spell bound with portrayal of the
hero in The Count of Monte Cristo. This was one of the reigns of sensationalism and
melodrama which had become the fashion of genuine drama. The first necessity was to
47
establish an Ibsen like realism, in place of the theatrical conventions that dominated the
American theatre.
Eugene O’Neill filled the bill of all these requirements. In the winter of 1913-
14, he wrote five plays under the title of ‘Thirst’. He had earlier dropped out from
Provinceton University and done a lot of tramping, beach combing and sailoring during
which he had come in contact with all varieties of persons and types of characters. The
result was that when the Provincetown players whom he joined in 1915 presented his
play in off Broadway production, he introduced a new theme with an authentic Rhythm
of colloquial American speech. The play itself announced the discovery of long expected
American dramatist. Instead of the elaborate drawing room scenes the set is located on
the forecastle of a ship. The characters were not romantic and melodramatic heroes but
ordinary seamen speaking the language, which the audience heard around them.
The Provincetown players were able to keep their existence during 1917-18 in
spite the war. By 1920, they were sufficiently developed and presented many of O’ Neill’s
plays. By 1925, they had produced not less than 47 plays by 47 different authors almost
all Americans. In addition to this, there were the theatre Guilds who by 1925 had built
their own Guilt theatre and had presented many experimental plays including O’Neill’s
Marco Millions (1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and Ah wilderness (1933).
The variety of techniques and theatrical devices introduced by

O’ Neill is really astounding. Along with Ibsen - like realism of plays such as Bound
East for Cardiff (1916) and The Moon of the Caribbeas (1918), Desire Under the
Elms and Anne Christe (1921), he introduced expressionistic devices in plays like
Hairy Ape and Marco Millions. Though Beyond the Horizon and Desire Under the
Elms were realistic and naturalistic plays but The Emperor Jones (1920) produced in
the same year brought Brecht into the picture along with Ibsen and this although when
he wrote it, O’ Neill says that he had never heard of expressionism. Tomtom beat in
the background almost throughout the play; there are several sets intended not to be
life but to create a mood, and at the end of one scene the walls of the forest fold in,
the cast includes a group of little formless Fears as well as number of shadowy Negro
figures. In the Great God Brown, O’ Neill introduces masks a device taken from Greek
dramas. In Lazarus Laughed there are choruses, masked to represent seven stages of
48
life and seven different types of person, each type clad in a distinctive colour, so that
there are forty nine combinations of period and type. In Strange Interludes, there is
the use of aside to reveal the inner thoughts of characters simultaneously with the
conversation that goes on between the characters. But the most ambitious creation of
O’ Neill was the trilogy under American circumstances. The three parts of trilogy are
Home Coming, Hunted and Haunted corresponding to the three plays in the Greek
myth.
From 1934 onwards, O’ Neill retired to his study till the Iceman Cometh was
performed 12 years later. A year later, he wrote A Moon for the Misbegotten but by
then O’ Neill was faced with serious illness culminated by death in 1953.
As America’s foremost playwright, he did a great deal to establish the modes

of the modern theatre in the United States. His work illustrates, therefore some of the
main trends in modern American drama. One of its most striking features is the combination
of deliberately drab prose, realism and of boldly inventive expressionist technique. It is
as though Henry Ibsen and Bertold Brecht had come together in the same person. Yet
with all his strength O’ Neill had certain shortcomings. The most glaring one is his lack
of adequately grand and impressive language. At the climax of the scene of his tragical
plays like Mourning Becomes Electra, he has to substitute signs of explanation instead
of redolent and sonorous language. His characters splutter in insignificant colloquialism
so he cannot be compared with the greatest in the world drama like Shakespeare,
Sophocles etc.
There were a large number of dramatists in the 20’s who took forward O’
Neill’s work, but hardly anyone of them added any new note. There were, however,
one whom we should notice. Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine impresses us with its
expressionistic. Its principal character is a dull little accountant known as Mr. Zero.
Some other characters are known by numbers only. Executed for the murder of his
employer, he finds himself working on adding machine in the Elysian Fields only to be
returned to earth again at the end of the play, to undergo another miserable cycle of
existence, and then another to another, until he will eventually become the completely
soulless slave of his machine.
The Great depression of the 1930s made a tremendous impact on the American
49
dramas. In a moment, the priorities underwent cataclysmic change. The American society
seemed to be undergoing a sea churning. New themes and new perspectives came up
and new forms of drama like Agitprop and the living newspaper were created.
The federal theatre was established to help the unemployed dramatists and
technicians of the American theatre. The American establishment now denies any merit
in the products of the 1930s because the dramatic productions were frankly hostile to
American capitalism. However, one great writer emerged from this experimentation.
Clifford Odets was a dramatist in his own right who appeals even today, particularly
with his plays Waiting For Lefty and Awake and Singh both produced in 1935.
Two of the most prominent playwrights in the American theatre, since the war
is Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Both of them developed two different types
of drama and yet noted by Porter they have much in common.
5.3 EUGENE O’ NEILL
Eugene Gladstone O’ Neill was born on October 16, 1988 in a hotel room in
the very heart of New York theatrical district applauded and derided as “Broadway”.
He was the son of the matinee idol and successful actor-manager James O’ Neill, who
amassed a fortune touring in a melodrama based on Alexander Dumas’ famous romantic
novel “The Count of Monte Cristo.” The playwright, who took so many successful
liberties with dramatic form was entirely at home in the theatre and later also acted in
his father’s theatrical company. But it earlier became distressingly evident to his parent
that the young O’ Neill was a rebel, who would be more inclined to revolt against the
romantic tradition than to preserve it. O’ Neill was born into a tragically disturbed family
(his mother suffered from drug addiction and his elder brother was a confirmed alcoholic)
and had an unstable childhood, touring the United States with his parents and receiving
an irregular education in a different private boarding schools. Encouraged by his
irresponsible actor brother James, he was undirected into Bohemian life of the theatrical
world at a tender age.
Having spent his early educational years in Catholic schools, O’ Neill studied
for four years at the Betts Academy at Stamford from 1902 to 1906. From there, he
went to Princeton and joined the University to study law to take his B. Lilt. After a year
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at Princeton University, he was suspended in 1907 for a student pranks. In 1909, he
entered into a secret marriage which later dissolved that same year he went prospecting
for gold in Hondures, Central America, with a mining engineer. Having contracted
expedition, he returned to his parents and joined his father’s company as an actor and
assistant manager for a brief period.
Growing restless again, he shipped to Buenos Aires on a Norwegian Vessel and

found employment for a time with American Companies located in the area—an electric
company, a packing plant, the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Tired of clerical
employment, he took a job on a cattle boat, tending mules while voyaging from Buenos
Aires to South Africa. Living at Jummy The Priest’s, a disreputable tavern he picked
up occassional jobs and then sailed to Southampton as an able seaman on an American
ship.
After joining his father’s company again and playing a small part in Monte
Cristo, followed by several months of intemperate living, he went to New London
in Connecticut, where the family had its summer home, and joined the staff of the
local newspaper, the New London Telegraph as a reporter. He had begun to publish
humorous poetry in a column of that newspaper when his journalistic career was
abruptly terminated by a blow, O’ Neill could only consider ironic fate. In 1912, his
health undermined by his profligate mode of life, he succumbed to tuberculosis and
had to be hospitalized. A term of six months in a senatoriam, however, proved to be
doubly beneficial, it arrested the disease and made an avid reader and introspective
artist of O’ Neill. He read widely during his convalescence falling under the influence
of the Greek tragic poets and Strindberg. He began to write plays in 1913 and in
1914 enrolled in a course in playwriting given at Harvard University by the famous
professor George Pierce Baker.
The next year he moved to Greenwich Village, then regarded as the progressive
“Left Bank” of New York, and in 1916 joined an avant garde group of writers and
artists who had established an amateur theatrical company. Their first season in the
summer of 1915 had been presented on an abandoned wharf in the artist’s colony of
Provincetown, on cape cod, Massachusetts, and they came to call themselves the
provincetown players. O’ Neill began to write short plays for them and soon became
51
their foremost playwright as one of their directors when they moved to a small theatre
in Greenwich village on Maedougal Street, where theatrical experiments continued to
be unfolded long after the dissolution of this company. O’ Neill and his associated also
ran a second enterprise, the Greenwich village theatre from 1913 to 1927.
O’ Neill was awarded Pulitzer Prizes for Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie,
Strange Interlude and Long Day’s Journey into Night. He received the highest
international recognition in the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
5.4 MAJOR PLAYS OF EUGENE O’ NEILL
O’ Neill, the dramatist, particularly the modern dramatist, emerges, partly in

his restlessness with the theatre, and partly in his feverish desire to use the medium
of drama to understand himself. Though sufficiently well educated in Catholic boarding
schools, and at Princeton and Harvard Universities for brief periods, O’ Neill taught
himself more than he has ever taught. His convalescence at a Connecticut sanatorium
in 1913 for tuberculosis was a crucial period in his life and career. Illness and an
attempt at suicide, drove him into a life of solitude and deep learning. It is during
this period, O’ Neill reads avidly August Strindberg, Henry Ibsen, Frederick Nietzsche
and Arthur Schopenhauer, a reading that shaped his thought and dramatic art. In
fact, O’ Neill’s early plays like Servitude (1914), The Web (1914), Before the
Breakfast (1916), The Moon of the Caribbees (1918) presenting atmospheric
realism.
O’ Neill is a voluminous writer who has left behind him a large body of One-
Act Plays, as well as large number of full length plays. Of his larger plays Beyond the
Horizon, Anna Christie, The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, Desire Under the
Elms, The Great God Brown, Lazarus Laughed, Strange Interlude, Mourning
Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night, are the
greatest.
5.5 O’ NEILL AS A DRAMATIST
Eugene O’ Neill is one of the greatest dramatists of America. His first dramas
were about the experiences of sailors or the lives of sailors which he had himself
52
experienced. He started with slice-of-life dramas, dealing with the miseries, delusions
and obsessions of men adrift in the world. His early short plays, collected under the title
of S.S. Glencairn, were about the sea-faring life. In this S.S. Glencairn cycle of sea
pieces are Bound East for Cardiff, In the Zone The Long Voyage Home and The
Moon of the Caribbees. These are realistic type of plays, which present slices of life
and deal with the actual experiences as O’ Neill has undergone as a sailor. These plays
are strongly Marxist in orientation and show the lives of the poorer section of society
i.e. sailors and inhabitants of those islands where the uncivilized tribes live. These also
show that how this poorer section is exploited by the capitalists of American society as
represented by the ship owners and the captains of the ships.
O’ Neill’s reputation is enhanced by with a number of independent pieces like

Ile, The Rope, Where the Cross is Made, which exemplified O’ Neill’s taste for tragic
irony, his characteristic concern with destructive obsessiveness and his fascination with
the sea as a mystery and a seduction, as a symbol of the malignity of fate.
The same interests soon appeared in a richer and more complicated context
when O’ Neill began to write his early full length plays. He gave his sense of tragic irony
full scope in the first of these Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie and Desire Under
the Elms are the saturnine dreams of fate and frustration.
The plays that followed Desire Under the Elms represents O’ Neill’s strivings
to enrich the American drama with styles radically different from the naturalistic–
namely the romantic, the symbolist and the expressionistic. The Emperor Jones and
The Hairy Ape are expressionistic plays, but O’ Neill’s expressionism is based on
reality. The plays do not have the complete formlessness of the expressionistic plays
of the contemporary German and Scandinavian dramatists. There is no total decay of
plot and character. There is realism in the delineation both of setting and character.
In All God’s Chillum Got Wings, O’ Neill introduces the theme of Negro-
white relationship with a contrasted street scene. A Congo mask on the wall of a room
has a special relevance and the walls keep closing to heighten the oppressive emotions
of the couple who live within them. In The Great God Brown, the principal characters
wear masks, which are removed from time to time and even transferred from one
53
person to another. In Lazarus Laughed there are choruses, masked to represent
seven stages of life and seven different types of person, each clad in a distribution
colour, so that there are forty nine combinations of period and type.
O’ Neill, in the trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra, seeks an extra dimension

of significance by retelling the Greek legend in American circumstances. The end of
the civil war is equated with the downfall of Troy. Agamemnon is recognizable as
Brigadier Ezra Mammon, Clytemnestra as Mammon’s wife, their son Orin as Orestes,
their daughter Lavinia as Electra, and so no. Their particoed New England house in
an appropriately classical setting and the local transfolk serve as a chorus.
Thus we find that O’ Neill was a tireless experimenter who experimented with
a variety of dramatic forms and modes. Even when he succeeded in one form or style,
he moved on to another one and this experimentation continued from the beginning of
his career upto the very end when he has working in his father’s company and doing
some part in The Count of Monte Creisto, he found this story of Alexander Dumas
novel as romantic and unrealistic. So he was dissatisfied with the nature of romantic
drama and experimented various dramatic techniques like naturalism, realism,
expressionism, symbolism, use of masks etc.
O’ Neill, the great dramatist of twentieth century American theatre is a

serious and generally sincere artist in drama. He has never compromised with box
office demands but has won his success tempering with his artistic conscience. He
has greatly widened the range of American theatre.
1. Trace out the growth of modern American Drama with special reference
to O’ Neill, Miller and Tennessee Williams.
2. Discuss O’ Neill as a dramatist.
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54
COURSE CODE : ENG-413 LESSON No. 6
THE HAIRY APE

The Story and a Critical Analysis of the Play
STRUCTURE
6.1 Objectives
6.2 Genesis of the Play
6.3 Scene wise summary of the play with critical comments
6.4 Glossary
6.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to discuss the genesis of the play and to provide
the summary of the play with critical comments.
6.2 THE GENESIS OF THE PLAY The Hairy Ape

The germinal idea of the play The Hairy Ape was suggested to O’ Neill by
an actual event in his life which left a deep impression on his mind. Before he
started writing The Hairy Ape, O’ Neill wrote a short story. Then later on he based
this play on that story. This short story, from which, The Hairy Ape developed was
drawn from an experience which provided background for some of his later plays
also. As a young seaman (1911), O’ Neill lived for a period at Jimmy the Priest’s
a dilapidated flophouse–saloon on the New York waterfront, where he met an
55
Irishman Driscoll.
The play was an attempt to account for the unexplained suicide of Driscoll, a
man proud of his animal superiority, a man, who was in complete accord with the world,
and content in his understanding of life. In his note to The Hairy Ape in the Wilderness
edition, O’ Neill describes the genesis of the play :
It was at Jimmy the Priest’s that I knew Driscoll, a Liverpool Irishman who was
a stoker on a transatlantic liner. Shortly afterwards I learnt that he committed suicide
by jumping overboard in mid-ocean. Why?
The search for an explanation of why Driscoll, proud of his animal superiority
and in complete harmony with his limited conception of the universe, should kill himself
provided the germ of the idea first for the short story and then for the play The Hairy
Ape.
O Neill himself experienced the hardships of ordinary seamen and stokers on

a luxury liner, the S.S. New York of the American line in 1908. He later projected his
resentment onto ‘Yank’, the burly stoker of The Hairy Ape, whose self pride starts to
crumble after the society heiress calls him a filthy beast.
6.3 SUMMARY OF THE PLAY
The Hairy Ape was written in 1921 and first produced by the Provincetown
players on March 9, 1922 in New York. The action of the play moves forward rapidly
through eight, short, abrupt scenes. Its central figure Yank is a stoker on a transatlantic
liner.
Scene I
The scene is laid in the fireman’s forecastle of a ship, which sails across the
Atlantic. The ship sailed from New York only an hour ago. There is a crowd of stokers
in a small room. The men are nearly drunk. They shout, curse, laugh and sing and
produce a loud incoherent noise, like the roar of defiance of a wild beast in a cage. The
ceiling is low, and so they cannot stand upright. Tiers of narrow street bunks bring out
the traits of modern industrialized society. O’ Neill’s stage setting directions are explicit.
He emphasizes that the treatment of this scene or of any other scene in the play should
56
by no means be naturalistic. The effect sought after is a cramped space in the bowels
of a ship imprisoned by white steel.
The men in the Stockhole resemble the pictures of Neanderthal man. The
Neanderthal man signifies the middle stage in the development of a human being from
an ape. The men represent all the civilized white races and though there is slight
differentiation in colour of hair, skin, eyes, they are all alike. They are all hairy chested,
with long arms of tremendous power, and low receding brows above their small, fierce,
resentful eyes. Yank, the central figure of the play, is seated in the foreground. He is
broader, fiercer, more true, more powerful, more sure of himself than the rest.
They are drinking, singing, talking and jesting. There is only an incoherent noise
Yank orders them angrily not to make that hideous noise and asks for a drink. Several
bottles are offered to him, which shows that all other men respect his superior physical
strength.
They, then turn to an Irishman, Paddy by name, with a wizened monkey-like

face and ask him to sing a whiskey song. Paddy sings drunkenly, which irritates Yank
and he angrily orders them to stop all noise because he is trying to think. The others
repeat the word with amused mockery and burst into loud laughter. They are pleased
that think rhymes with drink an sing out in a chorus!
“Drink, don’t think

Drink, don’t think!”
Paddy again starts singing a romantic chanty but Yank stops him by saying that
Home is hell, and he ran away from his house when he was a kid. Long, very drunk
stoker, agrees with Yank that ship is their home, but that home of theirs is a hell. They
condemned and suffer in it all their lives. He blames the hardships of the stoker’s life
on the greediness of the capitalist class which has forgotten the Biblical injunctions
regarding the equality of all human beings. Yank rejects Long’s idea on the basis that
it is the one that suits the weak and the timid.
Paddy is a devotee of the sea, chanties, with a romantic nostalgic for the bygone
days of old clippers with tall masts floating on imaginary golden sea. He represents the
57
romantic escapist who evades the present with a desire to go back to an imaginary
feudal, patriarchal past in which man was in harmony with nature and his labour. He is
extremely dissatisfied with the present industrial age where men are reduced to the
status of automatons, flesh and blood wheel of the engines. Man losing harmony with
nature is caged by steel from a sight of the sky like bloody apes in the zoo.
Yank can feel no sympathy for Paddy, as according to him, the later sticks to
an illusion that is dead. As depicted by O’ Neill Yank is a twentieth century proletarian
Everyman. From the very first scene of the play he appears to be dominant figure, a
symbol of a worker’s illusion that he can identify with his work in the capitalist society.
He cherishes the illusion of belonging and being at the center of things. He is intensely
alive in the present and discards Paddy’s desire of going back to a past age of feudal
relations. He identifies the strength of the steel with his own brutal strength.
Critical Comments
O’ Neill uses a blend of realism and symbolic representation from the

outside of the play. An important symbol in the first scene is the ship, which has,
since times immemorial, been a symbol of man’s sojourn in the universe. The ship
may, therefore, be taken as microcosm, i.e. a small universe that symbolically
represents the larger one the macrocosm. The forecastle in the ship is sharply
divided from the quarter deck. The former is the place, where the common sailors
live, while the latter are the preserver of the higher powers, i.e. the officers. O. Neill
emphasizes that the treatment of this scene should by no means be naturalistic. The
effect sought after is cramped space in the bowels of a ship imprisoned by white
steel. The expressionistic technique helps in creating the impression of men imprisoned
by steel as if in cage.
The workers are all physically strong but mentally retarded. Their low, receding
brows show their lack of intellect. Their reduction to the beastly order is further emphasized
by the fact that thinking has become an act alien to them in their normal condition of
work. This has sociological implication because the division of society into the class of
exploiters and the exploited resulted in the separation of thought from work.
The ceiling crushes down upon the men’s heads which accentuates the natural
stooping posture resulting in the over development of their back and shoulder muscles.
58
This condition is symbolic of man in the modern capitalist society, which does not allow
human personality and individuality to grow unhampered.
Scene Two
The scene takes place two days after the opening scene. O’ Neill takes us
to the deck of the ship and introduces us to Mildred and her aunt, who represent
the capitalist class of American society. Mildred is a young lady of twenty. She has
a pale, pretty face marred by a self-conscious expression of disdainful superiority.
She is conscious of her weaknesses. She lacks vitality and integrity. Her aunt is a
fat old lady, pompous and proud. From the very beginning, it is clear that there is
not much love and affection between the two and Mildred likes to cross and tease her
aunt.
Mildred wants to make a sociological study of the condition of poorer section

of American society. She has already studied their living conditions in the East End of
New York and now she is voyaging to make her, ‘‘slumming inter-national.’’ She wants
to help the other half of the world but does not know how. She feels that all her vitality
was burnt out in the stock, before she was born. She herself says that she is a waste
product in Bessemer process- the process of making steel or the process of
dehumanization ushered in by the industrial growth of America. She inherits wealth but
not energy.
On the ship also, she wants to study the conditions of the poor stokers and so
is determined to go down to the stokehold. She is waiting for the engineer of the ship
to escort her there. Her aunt warns her that the heat and dirt would be frightful but she
is determined to go. She has already obtained the permission of the captain of the ship
for the visit by simply informing her that her father, the chairman of the Board of
Directors of the Nazareth Steel Co. had told her that there would be no difficulty about
the visit.
Second Engineer comes there and warns her that it would be terribly hot and
dark with oil and coal dust and tells her to change the white dress. But Mildred does
not mind spoiling her pure white dress. When Fourth Engineer comes, she is ready to
go. She insults her aunt who is wrathful but helpless before her more ready-witted niece.
59
Critical Comments
After dramatizing the social consciousness of the workers, O’ Neill introduces

us to Mildred and her aunt who represent the American upper class society. Mildred’s
weakness is the weakness of her whole class. They have turned into money making
machines and lack all vitality and strength. Mildred’s wish to see how the other half lives
is purely leisure activity of the aristocratic class and the specimen of its humanitarian
emotionalism. The scene also brings out the artificiality and emptiness of the American
upper class society.
Scene Three
The scene is set in the stoke-hole. Before Mildred descends in the Stokehole
to satisfy her curiosity, the atmosphere there is heightened by fusing several scenic
means of expression: lightening, noises and collective action. As the curtain rises we see
a line of men, stripped to the waist, before the furnace doors. They use the shovels to
throw open the furnace. They work for sometime and then the furnace doors are shut
as the men rest for a moment. The engineer’s whistle sounds from time to time reminding
them that they must continue to feed the fire. Yank who loves his work, who has a feeling
of belonging to it encourages the stokers to put in hard work. However, when the whistle
keeps sounding incessantly, he brandishes his shovel over his head and pounds his chest
with one hand ‘‘gorilla like’’. He also loses his temper and bursts out angrily.
It is just at this moment that Mildred enters the stokehole. On seeking the
stokers, she shivers with fright in spite of the blazing heat. Seeing her before them, other
stokers are dumb founded. But Yank, who has not seen her, goes on with his cursing,
shouting and brandishing. When he turns his face towards her, he glares into her eyes
and she is terrified by his ‘‘abysmal brutality’’. As she looks at his gorilla face, as his
eyes bore into hers, she utters a low, choking cry and shirks away from him, putting
both hands up before her eyes to shut out the sight of his face, to protect her own. This
startles Yank to a reaction Mildred calls him ‘‘the filthy beast’’ and the engineer takes
her quickly out of the door when she faints.
Yank feels insulted in the very pride. He roars ‘God damn Yuh! And hurls his
shovel at the door which has just closed.
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Critical Comments
The most significant event in the play is Yank’s confrontation with Mildred. In
this scene, two different worlds clash. The description of the stokers in rows compares
them with (i) Galley slaves (ii) chained gorillas, and (iii) machines. Mildred is dressed
in white which is in dramatic contrast to the smoky surrounding. Yank infuriates on
hearing the whistling sound because in a world ruled by the dogma of individuality, his
ego is hurt by extraneous interference and regulation by a force whose nature he fails
to comprehend.
The violence and brutality, which is the outcome of Yank’s confrontation with
Mildred is an inevitable result of the class conflict. Mildred owns steel and is protected
by it because when Yank tries to hit her with his shovel, the door is closed behind her,
imprisoning Yank, as it were, in his cage. His throwing of shovel depicts as protest
against the capitalist class.
Scene Four
The scene is the same as the one, with which the play opened, but Yank is now
a changed man while the others still drink, joke, laugh and talk as before, Yank sits in
the attitude of Rodin’s The Thinker. Yank, who possesses tremendous physical strength,
starts becoming conscious of his alienation which rises out of the material conditions of
society. The crux of Yank’s problem in the play is, previously, he believed that he
belonged to steel, but after being insulted by Mildred, he becomes furiously bewildred.
He wants to take personal revenge on Mildred. As he tries to think, his fellow stokers
mock him because thinking appears to them to be something unusual. Long tells Yank
that they cannot bear this insult and suggests that they should go to law or to government.
But Yank contemptuously condemns his view of seeking help from these institutions.
Paddy says that Yank has fallen in love with Mildred. Others, however, mock the idea
of love because love is not meant for the workers in the capitalistic society. Workers
are denied all cultural benefits.
Yank takes the insult in a purely personal way. His idea of himself as a man who
belongs does not immediately give rise to class consciousness and awareness of conflict
between the different classes in American society. He is possessed by an ungovernable
61
rage against Mildred as he feels that she has insulted him in a very special place.
Therefore, he seeks to take revenge on her but finds himself impotent as she is protected
by the strength of the very steel that he considered his own special virtue.
Critical Comments :
The scene depicts the affect on Yank of the encounter with Mildred in scene
III. Yank is suggested to take help from the institution like law or government which
he condemns. All the bodies like law, governments and democracy are controlled by
the capitalist class and they pay no heed to the poor people. Here O’ Neill makes
a bitter satire on the American political institutions. Yank also rejects the idea of
joining the salvation Army. Infact, the motive of the people behind such organizations
is not to help the workers but to divert their attention from the idea of revolution.
Scene Five
The scene takes place three weeks later on a fine Sunday morning on the Fifth
Avenue, the locality where the rich people live. Yank, with the help of shipmate Long,
reaches Fifth Avenue in order to seek revenge on Mildred but here, he confronts a
world that breathes materialism, artificiality and aimlessness. The street is neat and clean
and the shops well stocked. The jeweller’s shop and the furrier’s shop are specially
mentioned as reflecting wealth, pomp and glitter of the commercialized America. The
general effect is of a background of magnificence cheapened and made grotesque by
commercialism, a background in tawdry disharmony with the clear light and sunshine,
on the street itself.
Yank is eager to find out Mildred. Long tells him that there is a whole mob like
Mildred and that being a Sunday they have gone to church. Yank recalls his own early
life that as a child he used to go to church because his parents asked him to go though
they themselves never went. They also used to punish him. So he ran away from his
home and became a stoker.
While waiting for the church goers to come, both Yank and Long look at the
shops of jewellery and furs. They see the tags of prices attached to the items displayed
in the show cases. They pay with their blood for all the costly stuff that they see in the
shops there. Yet they do not belong to that place, they are the proletarians and so they
62
are regarded as trespassers. The monkey fur is sold for two thousand dollars. Long
says bitterly that the capitalists would not pay so much for a hairy ape’s skin, not even
for the whole living ape. This manifests that capitalism develops relations of men with
things rather than with men.
Long warns Yank to keep his temper in control as they have to impress their
demands through peaceful means i.e. votes. But Yank says that ‘‘vote is a joke’’. He
still feels that he is the embodiment of force and calls Long as coward.
In the meanwhile, the crowd of well-dressed men and women comes out of the
church. Yank lurches into some of them. Long warns him to be careful but when Yank
refuses to listen to his advice, he leaves him telling him not to blame him if he is involved
in trouble.
Yank tries to attract the attention of these people but they are completely
indifferent to Yank. He tries to insult some ladies by passing vicious remarks but nobody
pays attention to him. They all answer with mechanical, affected politeness, ‘‘I beg your
pardon’’, and move on. At last, he is arrested by the police when he makes a person
lose his bus. He tries to fight, but is clubbed to the pavement, arrested and taken away.
Critical Comments
The scene provides criticism of contemporary society. Yank telling Long that he
ran away from his home when he was a kid expressed the idea of the debunking of
American family. Home has become a hell for the people of working class. The
mechanical, artificial nature of the life of the rich is also satirized. O’ Neill gives us the
impression of everything changing into machine in the growing capitalism. Capitalists
have passion for possessiveness and mercenary nature. They retaliate only when somebody
interferes with their property. In the capitalistic ethics, time is money and so loss of time
becomes an attack on property. Once property is attacked, the whole repressive
machinery of the state comes into notion.
Scene Six
Scene six is laid in prison. There are rows and rows of cells stretching from one
end to the other. Yank is seen in one of the cells sitting in the attitude of Rodin’s The
Thiner.
63
He is vaguely conscious of his condition in the capitalistic society. Previously, he
nourished the illusion that he belonged to steel but now steel has become a prison for
him. He thinks himself to be an animal in a cage at the zoo. His thought also converges
on the idea that he is a hairy ape.
Yank’s fellow prisoners want to know what has landed him in jail. But
Yank says that nobody can understand him except he himself. Even judge required
thirty days to think it over. Yank recollects the moments of his encounter with
Mildred and reiterates his wish to take revenge on her. At this point, one of the
prisoner advised him to join the I.W.W. meaning ‘‘Industrial Workers of the
World’’, which is a body of tough men. To support his view, he reads a portion
of Senator Queen’s speech published in the newspaper. The fellow prisoner reads
out the Senator’s view on IWW. ‘‘They plot with fire on one hand and dynamite
in the other. They stop not before muder to gain their ends.’’ Yank is delighted.
He will join IWW. With its help, he would wreck the vengeance on Douglas, the
father of Mildred who insulted him, and whose steel now keeps him in a cage,
like a hairy ape.
Critical Comments:
The beginning of the scene is a satire on the legal system of American

society. People who are honest and maladjusted are kept in prison whether they
have committed any crime or not. Yank is not a criminal but he is kept in prison
for a full month.
The speech of Senator Queen is a satire on democracy, on American way of

living and on American dream. The American constitution promises to give Honour,
Liberty, Justice and happiness to all the citizens but in actual life, workingmen do not
get even one of these things. There is no equality and freedom. Yank and Mildred both
are human beings but they are not equal.
The slow growth of consciousness in Yank’s mind is symbolically depicted by

O’Neill by showing his hero sitting in the posture of Rodin’s ‘‘The Thinker’’. Now for
the first time, Yank starts realizing that he is shattered and he feels alienated from his
work. He realizes that the power, which he thought was his own, was not his, but
Mildred’s Father’s. Previously, steel has represented steamers, engines, buildings. Now
64
face to face with reality, he sees what steel actually is-cages, cells, locks, bolts and bars.
It is Mildred’s father who has made this steel cage of prison for him. This manifests that
the instruments of men’s liberty have become man’s fetters.
Scene Seven
About a month later, we find Yank in the office of IWW. The secretary is in his
seat and eight or ten men, iron workers, and the like are grouped about the table playing
checkers. Yank enters continuously but is taken aback by the commonplace of the room
and men in it. The secretary is glad to know that Yank wants to join the organization
and the workers of the liner are also rising.
Taking the required membership fee from Yank, the secretary tells him that he
should collect some pamphlets lying in the office and distribute them among other
working men. But Yank is waiting for something else. He thinks I.W.W. to be an
underground organization of anarchists as Senator Queen has spoken about it. He tells
the secretary that he would be of great use to the society for he can shoot folk, if so
required. He would blow things up for them. he would use dynamite and blow the
steelworks, the steel trust of Dougals and others like him who keep them in cages and
exploit them and thrive on their labour.
This arouses the suspicion of the Secretary. He fears that some detective agency
must have sent Yank to spy on I.W.W. or he may be an agent provocateur. He also calls
Yank a brainless ape. Yank is aroused by the word but is thrown out of the office by the
Secretary and his men. He lands sprawling in the middle of the narrow cobbled street.
Critical Comments
Yank has now realized that he does not belong in this society dominated by the
capitalists. His feeling of alienation has deepened. He is infuriated but does not know
to whom his anger should be directed. His rejection by I.W.W. completes the process
of his alienation. His consciousness has not developed to the extent of realizing that the
working class movement has reached a stage where individual terrorist acts are not
sufficient. His rejection from I.W.W. is due to the fact that his consciousness has not
reached the level where he can understand the meaning and uses of an organized
struggle.
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Scene Eight
In the final scene of the play, we find Yank in the monkey house at the zoo. One
spot of clear light falls on the front of one cage so that the interior can be seen. On this
cage, there is a sign from which the word ‘gorilla’ stands out prominently. The gigantic
animal himself is seen squatting on his haunches on a bench in much the same attitude
as Rodin’s ‘‘The Thinker’’. Yank enters from the left.
On seeing the gorilla, Yank laughs bitterly and says, ‘‘welcome to your city,
huh? Hail, Hail de gang’s all here’’. The animal force which he sought in I.W.W. men
is made captive here. He is happy to meet the creature who can challenge the whole
world. On seeing the gorilla caged in the zoo, he is reminded of Paddys’ view that
once when man lived in close communion with nature, be belonged. At this stage,
thinking becomes hard for him. The gorilla and his kind may still dream of their past
jungle life and in this way they belong but men do not. Yank feels he has neither past
to remember nor future to dream, it is only present in which he is condemned to live.
To Yank, it appears that the gorilla is better than him also in the sense that the
animal has not the faculty of thinking. Yank opens the cage door with an iron file and
asks the gorilla to step out and shake hands. He also says that he will take the animal
for a walk down Fifth Avenue where they will knock down the band of Mildred. The
gorilla scrambles gingerly in his cage, goes to Yank and stands looking at him. With a
spring, he wraps his huge arms around Yank in a murderous hug. There is a cracking
snap of crushed ribs, a gasping cry, still knocking from Yank. The gorilla lets the crushed
body slip to the floor, he stands over it uncertainly, then picks it up, throws it in the cage,
shuts the door and shuffles off menacingly in the darkness. After a while Yank moves,
groaning opening his eyes and there is silence. He mutters painfully that even the gorilla
did not think that the former belonged. Bewildred and in deep agony he asks, ‘‘Christ,
where do I get off at? Where do I fit in?’’ As he dies in the cage, O’Neill comments
that now, perhaps, ‘‘The Hairy Ape at last belongs.”
Critical Comments
The scene is long monologue of Yank. Here Yank reaches the nadir of his
despair. Man cannot live alone. He needs his past and his future, however, delusory, for
he is otherwise incurably lonely. The peculiar quality of The Hairy Ape is that in this
66
play the author traces man’s loneliness in modern society to his social milieu. O’Neill
said that Yank in The Hairy Ape was not a stoker but an every man who fails from
innocent certainty to complex incertitude, or as the play puts it, ‘‘to not belonging’’, the
ultimate human frustration and humiliation and the essence of loneliness’’.
6.4 GLOSSARY
Genesis - Origin, mode of formation

Dilapidated - in ruin
Neanderthal Man A stage of development between the Ape and
homosapiens according to the theory of evolution
Chanty - A song formerly sung by sailors in time to their

work on a sailing ship.
a) Write a brief note on the genesis of the play The Hairy Ape.
b) Discuss the plot of The Hairy Ape.
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IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF THE PLAY

STRUCTURE
7.1 Objectives
7.2 Alienation and Quest for Identity
7.3 Title of the play The Hairy Ape
7.4 Expressionism in The Hairy Ape
7.5 Let Us Sum Up
7.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to study the important aspects of the play The
Hairy Ape. The lesson examines the problem of identity and analyses the problem in
terms of the limitations of the human situation and also in terms of the human inability
to accept the limitations of his situation.
7.2 ALIENATION AND QUEST FOR IDENTITY
The theme of the play The Hairy Ape is the fore-runner of much that is
significant in O’Neill’s later plays, and in fact, in the American literature of the twentieth
century, particularly drama i.e. the predicament of man in the modern capitalistic society.
O’Neill in the play delineates the human condition which is blessed with an endless
creativity by virtue of which he creates structures : God, religion, society, capitalism and
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socialism etc. but none of them can subsume him totally. Greater the structures of
creativity, as in the civilization in the 20th century, greater is the alienation of man from
his fellow beings, from the very accomplishments of his civilization, and also from
himself. More than anything else, self-alienation characterizes the human situation of the
20th century. O’Neill, envisaging The Hairy Ape as a modern counterpart of Greek
tragedy, writes about the play :
The subject here is the same ancient one that always was and
always will be the one subject for drama, and that is man and his
struggle with his own fate. The struggle used to be with Gods, but
is now with himself, his own past his attempt to “belong”.
Alienation or loss of identity is the basic theme of most of O’Neill’s major plays.
Alienated from their immediate environment, feeling lonely and isolated and unhappy, his
character constantly search for identity, for belongingness, and disintegrate and decay,
when they fail to achieve such identity.
In The Hairy Ape, in the figure of Yank, O’Neill shows how the best
worker in the modern American society finds himself inexorably cut off from his
community and degrades himself to the condition of beast. Yank, in the beginning
of the play, is shown quite confident and proud of his superior strength. He is
depicted as a symbol of a worker’s illusion that he can identify with his work in the
capitalistic society. He cherishes the illusion of belonging and being at the centre of
the things. He identifies the strength of the steel with his own brutal strength. He
is in perfect harmony with his work, and proud of the fact that he can eat smoke
and coal and make the ship run at twenty-five knots an hour. He does not seek any
escape into a romantic past of Paddy’s dream or Long’s dream of bringing equality
through constitutional means.
But Yank’s sense of security, his sense of belongingness is soon shattered as he

is confronted with Mildred Doughals who looks at him as if he were a hairy ape and
who calls him a filthy beast. Yank, who possesses tremendous physical strength starts
becoming conscious of his alienation which arises out of the material conditions of
society. According to Marxism “It is man’s nature to realize himself in work, but the
possibility of doing so is denied to him by the economic system. Thus the key problem
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is alienated labour under capitalism; workers have little control over the working process;
the product of labour is expropriated by others to be used against the worker; and the
worker himself becomes a commodity in the labour market.” The same view is expressed
by Christopher Caudwell in his book Illusion and Reality, where he says : “The
characteristic of capitalist economy is that it apparently sweeps away all directly coercive
relations between men - and seems to substitute for them the coercive relation of men
to a thing - the state upheld right to property.”
This is the crux of Yank’s problem in the play. Previously, he believed that he
belonged to steel but after being insulted by Mildred he began to wonder about his
identity. Mildred’s insulting remark makes him unsure of himself. Paddy also reminds
him that Mildred looked at him as if he were a “hairy ape escaped from the zoo” which
raises an agonizing doubt about himself.
Though Yank swears revenge on her, he is fearfully aware that there is another
world, another set of values defining him and the world of ships, engines and steel where
he is pre-eminent and his set of values, of strength, hard work and productivity may
mean nothing. Even when Paddy tells him that he is foolish in paying so much attention
to Mildred, who is trifling, Yank is painfully aware, not so much of Mildred but of what
she has done to him and what has happened to him through her.
Even after three weeks, when Long brings him to the Fifth Avenue, Yank’s
obsession with what Mildred had done to him not only remains but becomes acute.
Long wants peaceful action against the capitalist class but Yank chooses beastly action.
He bumps into a gentleman, accosts a lady and stops a fat man from getting into the
bus. The policeman is called and Yank is arrested.
In the prison, O’Neill presents Yank’s increasing self-depredation not only of

himself as an individual but of all the values of much cherished identity of the new
industrial culture. The steel bars of the prison cell represent Mildred, her father and their
attempts to degrade him. So his next step upon release from prison, is vengeance upon
her father’s steel mills and social structure they represent. He joins industrial workers
of the world (IWW) in the hope that they are industrial wreckers of the world, as they
were accused of. He is promptly thrown out as a fool or spy.
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Yank’s rejection by I.W.W. completes the process of his alienation. His
consciousness has not developed to the extent of realizing that the working class movement
has reached a stage, where individual terrorist acts are not sufficient. He, therefore,
determines to exclude himself from society altogether. His consciousness has made him
aware that man is nothing but beast. He, therefore, tries to seek fellowship with the
gorilla.
In the zoo, Yank reaches the nadir of his despair. Man cannot live alone. He
needs his past and his future, however, delusory, for he is otherwise incurably lonely.
The peculiar quality of the play The Hairy Ape is that in this play, the author traces
man’s loneliness in modern society to his social milieu. O’Neill said that Yank in The
Hairy Ape was not a stoker but an every man who falls from innocent certainty to
complex incertitude, or as the play puts it, “to not belonging”, the ultimate human
frustration and humiliation and the essence of loneliness.
Search for identity becomes an obsession with him and ultimately, it takes Yank
to the zoo. There he stands face to face with gorilla in its cage, talks to it as to a brother
because he thinks that they both belong to the same club, the “club of the hairy apes”.
He shakes hands with it and sets it free. But the gorilla crushes him to death. And
perhaps, the Hairy Ape, O’Neill says, at last “belongs”.
No doubt, in the modern capitalistic society, the people of the working class
have been reduced to an animal like existence. And sometimes they want to go to the
past, to an earlier stage than human. Present civilization may have destroyed humanity,
but this problem cannot be solved by going back. That is why Yank in his attempt to
belong in the past, is killed by the gorilla.
The play dramatizes that there is no personal slavery in the capitalistic system
but there is slavery to things. As Christopher Caudwell says that the very condition of
bourgeois economy demand that social relations be veiled by the free market and by
the forms of the commodity production, so that relations between men are disguised to
relations between things. Free competition leads to more and more slavery. The labourer,
instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the
conditions of existence of his own class.
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Inspired by the social problems inherent in an industrial revolution, Yank (the
Hairy Ape) tries to ‘think’, tries to assert himself, tries finally to regain, as O’Neill puts
it, ‘the harmony which he used to have as an animal’, and finds that he does not belong.
He does not ‘fit in’ any where.
7.3 TITLE OF THE PLAY “The Hairy Ape”
The play ‘The Hairy Ape’ was written for the stage in 1921. But in 1917, a
short story with the same title was written concerning the stoker who finally joins the
I.W.W. O’Neill submitted the short story for publication, but it was rejected and he
later destroyed it. This short story was O’Neill’s attempt to account for the unexplained
suicide of an Irishman, Driscoll who was in complete harmony with his limited conception
of the universe. He did so by making it the inevitable outcome of a hopeless search for
self, the theme of The Hairy Ape, unfolding in virtually every line of dialogue and every
turn of action.
The title The Hairy Ape refers to Yank, the central figure in the play, and his
quest for identity or “belongingness”. An ape is the very embodiment of physical
strength and primitive simplicity. It has little brains but very strong muscles. It is
incapable of thought and knows only the use of physical force by which it can cause
great destruction. O’Neill in the very beginning of the play portrays Yank having all
the qualities of an ape. He is hairy chested with long arms of tremendous power. He
is broader, fiercer and more powerful than the other stokers. All the stokers in the
stokehole resemble the pictures of Neanderthal man. The Neanderthal man signifies
the middle stage in the development of a human being from an ape. So the position
of Yank and other stokers is in between the beast and the human. Their low receding
brows show their lack of intellect. Yank has great capacity for work for long hours
unfatigued, and can inhale smoke and coal unaffected and like the hairy ape he has
immense physical strength.
From the very first scene of the play, Yank is depicted as a highly developed
individual who cherishes the illusion of belonging and being at the centre of the things.
However, his confident sense of belongings is soon shattered. Mildred comes down into
the forecastle at a time when Yank is murderously flourishing his shovel above his head,
hurling abusive words at the owner of the whistle and pounding his chest with the other
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hand, “gorilla like”. The impact of his “abysmal brutality, naked and shameless” is so
much to her that she puts her both hands before her eyes to escape the sight of Yank
and calls him “a filthy beast.”
Paddy reminds him that Mildred looked at him as if he were “a hairy ape
escaped from the zoo” and throughout the play Yank broods over these words “hairy
ape” used for him. It raises an agonizing doubt about himself. He takes the insult in a
purely personal way. He does not shave or clean himself afterwards and comes to look
like the hairy ape. He also starts behaving like an hairy ape.
His desire for revenge carries him to the Fifth Avenue. Both Yank and Long
look at the shops of jewellery and furs and the tags of prices attached to the items
displaced in the show cases. Yank is filled with queer excitement that the monkey’s fur
is sold for two thousand dollars. Long says bitterly that the capitalists would not pay
so much for a hairy ape’s skin, not even for the whole living ape. Yank becomes furious
and thinks that Long means to insult him. He starts behaving senselessly and thoughtlessly
like a hairy ape and does not listen to Long’s advice that they should use the constitutional
means. He starts striking the men and women to provoke them to a fight but is caught
by the police and is sent to jail.
In the prison, he imagines that he is hairy ape imprisoned in the cage. Here
he comes to know about IWW and wants to come out of prison. He in order to
escape uses his muscle power to bend the bars of the cell, thus behaving like an
ape.
Yank joins the IWW in the hope that they are industrial wreckers of the world
and his purpose in joining IWW is to blow up the factories. The secretary calls him a
‘brainless ape’ and throws him out of the office.
From IWW, Yank lands himself in a zoo. He, the hairy ape, is rejected by
civilized society. He has been rapidly disintegrating. So he thinks that he, as an Hairy
ape, naturally belongs to the brotherhood of the apes. He goes to the cage in which
gorilla is made captive. Thinking that the gorilla can challenge the whole world Yank
opens the cage. He says that he will take the animal for a walk down Fifth Avenue
where they will knock down the band of Mildred. But the gorilla wraps his arms around
him and crushes him to death. It throws the body into the cage and shuffles off meaningly
73
in the darkness. Then with passionate despair Yank says, “Ladies and gents, step
forward and take a slant at de one and only-(his voice weakening)- one and original-
Hairy Ape from the wilds of” - He slips in a heap on the floor and dies. And perhaps,
the Hairy Ape, O’Neil says, at last belongs.”
O’ Neil has given the play The Hairy Ape the sub title “A Comedy of Ancient
and Modern life.” Yank represents the Everyman of modern capitalistic society. He is
the modern hairy ape whereas gorilla is the ancient biological ancestor of man. Yank
psychologically retraces the stages of men’s evolution till he seems himself as a hairy
ape. When modern hairy ape tries to go back to the past, to an earlier stage than human
so that he can belong in the past, he is killed by the gorilla.
In short, we can say that both the title The Hairy Ape and the sub-title “A
Comedy of Ancient and Modern life” are apt because they suggest the theme of the
play.
7.4 EXPRESSIONISM IN The Hairy Ape
Basically, expressionism is a revolt against the dehumanization of man by man

and society. It believes in expressiveness of the cognitive and emotive process. It
presents the essentials of things instead of things themselves. Normal consciousness is
dissolved and the dense core of one’s passion is climaxed. All naturalistic details and
logical transitions between things are eliminated. The expressionistic perception concretizes
itself in the formation of certain images and these images just stop at expressing the
intensity of the perception or emotion, and never evolve themselves symbolically.
In drama and theatre, expressionism involves an emotive concentration in words,

dialogues, scenes and other individual parts eroding the structural unity and ethos of the
plays. It was anti-literary in that it tried to destroy the elaborate structure of Latin
Grammar of the European languages to facilitate the thrust of human urges through a
sort of telegraphic style of writing one peak of emotion with another. As dramatic art,
expressionism aims at freeing drama of the Aristotelian absolutes of plot, language and
character. As theoretical art, expressionism attempted to destroy representational stage
reality and theatrical illusion. Initially, expressionism arose in post war Germany-George
Kaiser’s Morn to Midnight (1920), Earnest Toller’s Man and the Masses (1920)
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attempted a revolution to free man from slavery to the established system of values.
Extreme expressionism was a product of post war Germany, with its broken
social order, with its unrest and militant humanism, the roots of the style, closely
associated with a new view of the world, were in Wedekind and Strindberg. Elsewhere,
the movement gained some foothold in the Soviet Union, in France, Italy and America,
practically none in England. As a result, there are several schools of nationally modified
expressionism even called by different names. Consequently, most definitions of
expressionism are presented without excessive self confidence. Infact expressionism
is usually defined in negative terms, as a departure from realism, as anti-naturalism.
A key word is ‘distortion’ and a key figure is Strindberg; the two plays taken as
models in a great many countries are Elt dromspel (A Drama Play) and Till Damaskus
(To Damascus). Louis Broussard writes when introducing expression in his American
Drama :
Strindberg abandoned the photography of realism, the dramatic

sequence events, for a stream of consciousness in terms of
stage symbols whereby the surface of life becomes disjoined,
scattered, as in a dream, to suggest the inner reality which lies
beneath that surface. Not concerned with externals, the dramatist
explores the idea; the source of conduct; until reality becomes
a sub consciousness and character mere abstractions. Scenes
are often brief; they sometimes succeed one another without
time sequence; they have neither order nor unity and they
suggest, as they alternate between reality and fantasy, between
objective action and analysis, the disorderly, disconnected
features of a psychoanalysis.
The passage has certain overtones which make it appropriate as a definition of

the American version of expressionism rather than of this style in total. It is phrased
more in terms of the individual than in terms of society; infact, Broussard goes on to
say on the same page that Hauptmann, Kaiser, Toller, and Capek added to this basic
Strindbergian expressionism “social and economic issues.”
Eugene O’ Neill’s two plays The Emperior Jones and The Hairy Ape are
75
expressionistic and there are expressionistic elements in a group of others most notably
in Welded, All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The Great God Brown. O’ Neill confessed
Strindberg’s influence but denied having received any stimuli from the Germans : “The
point is that The Hairy Ape is a direct descendant of Jones, written long before I had
ever heard of expressionism, and its form needs no explanation but this.”
Yet in an interview O’ Neill made a remark, which could lead to a different

conclusion : “the real contribution of the expressionist has been in the dynamic qualities
of his plays-They express something in modern life better than did the old plays. I have
something of this method in The Hairy Ape.” In the same interview, O’ Neill marks an
important distinction :
Expressionism denies the value of characterization....I personally

do not believe that an idea can be readily put over to an audience
except through characters....the real contribution of the expressionist
has been in the dynamic qualities of his lays. They express something
in modern life better than did the old plays. I have something of this
method in The Hairy Ape. But the character Yank remains a man
and everyone recognizes him as such.
The Hairy Ape is developed in the direction of expressionism, yet never

reached full fledged German style. To O’Neill, the play seemed to run “the whole
gamut from extreme naturalism to extreme expressionism - with more of the latter than
the former”.
The Hairy Ape lacks the long realistic opening scene of The Emperor Jones.
Through twenty nine short lines, mostly ejaculations of a word or two, assigned to
“voices”, O’Neill gives us a picture of three typical elements in the life of stokers :
drinking, telling stories about women, and fighting, collective stage action is present, by
way of implication, in these barren sentences. Then the focus is transferred from the
chorus to the individual, to Yank, who seems “broader, fiercer, more turbulent, more
powerful, more sure of himself than the rest.”
With this description, O’ Neill connects himself with expressionism : his hero is
a representative of group of people. He also says that the “treatment of this scene, or
any other scene in the play, should by no means be naturalistic.” The character of this
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group as an unspecified mass is preserved throughout the play, by letting the speeches
remain assigned only to “voices”. The roles are later inherited by groups of churchgoers,
of prisoners and at long last, of apes. There are no red herrings in The Hairy Ape, the
focus is on a girl and three stokers. The rest of actors are not granted an opportunity
to create three - dimensional character portraits - not at least by O’ Neill.
Until scene-V, Yank is presented in naturalistic strength, not withstanding Long

and Paddy’s critical comments on his individualism, while the first scene and the other
stokers are rendered totally expressionistic in their dehumanized existence. The scene
presents images of a cage or a prison and Yank’s self-confidence is the only liberating
image. Scene III further reinforces this image through ‘dim lighting’, tumult of noise
and the gorilla appearance of the blackened faces of the stokers. In scene V, the
crowd is hurt by Mildred’s remark. He is furious yet controlled. On the Fifth Avenue,
Yank’s controlled fury explodes expressionistically in revolt against people on the
avenue. The violence is not against the people as such but against the image forced
on him. The sight of the monkey fur in the furriers aggravates his rage as if the skin
in the window is a personal insult. Intensely raging with anger, Yank bounces back
against Mildred. Here, Yank is in total flight from himself, a state of characterlessness.
In scene VI, in the prison in Blackwell island, Yank dissolves his character into a
revolt against the world of steel which once represented him but now appears to
represent Mildred and her father. In the next scene, Yank seeks an expressionistic
destruction of the world of steel through I.W.W. Frustrated, Yank chooses to accept,
expressionistically, the identity of gorilla and in a similar expressionistic gesture embraces
gorilla to his death. But this frustrating death that does not give him a sense of
belonging, either to the world of steel or to the world of gorilla, Yank admits the
naturalistic impossibility of a human identity in the world. In recognizing this fact and
also in recognizing the inescapability of the tragic expressionistic revolt, he re-emerges
as a human character, a mature and a thoughtful one that he was not at the beginning
of the play. As a play The Hairy Ape structures a continual human revolt against a
fixative situation.
O’ Neill’s early plays are realistic, in the plays of his middle period, he uses
expressionistic methods without completely abandoning his earlier realism. Though he
has used the speed technique of the German expressionists, “he has not telescoped time
77
and place.” The action does not move backward and forward in time, nor does it range
far and wide in space but follows a continuous forward movement, each scene being
a well defined stage in the psychological retracing in Yank’s consciousness of the various
stages in human evolution. O’ Neill has skillfully avoided the extremes of expressionism
and maintained the coherence and integrity characteristic of a realistic play.
7.5 LET US SUM UP
O’ Neill’s The Hairy Ape may be taken as a paradigm of the patterns that is
recurrent in his whole work as a dramatist. The theme of the play is the fore runner of
much that is significant in O’ Neill’s later plays, and in fact, in the American literature
of the twentieth century, particularly drama - i.e. the predicament of man in the modern
capitalistic society. The play enacts the plight of a man who finds himself alienated from
his social connections that give meaning to existence. It depicts the process whereby a
man is alienated from his society. In the figure of Yank, the hairy ape of the play O’Neill
shows how the best worker in the modern American society finds himself inexorably cut
off from his community and degrades himself to the condition of a beast.
1. Illustrate the title of the play The Hairy Ape : A Comedy of Ancient and
Modern Life.
2. Critically comment on O’ Neill’s use of expressionism in The Hairy Ape.
3. Discuss the theme of alienation and quest for identity in the play The
Hairy Ape.
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THE CHARACTERS AND ANNOTATIONS

STRUCTURE
8.1 Objectives
8.2 Yank
8.3 Long
8.4 Paddy
8.5 Mildred Douglas
8.6 Short Answer Questions
8.6.1 Significance of Yank’s confrontation with Mildred
8.6.2 Use of interior monologue in the play
8.7 Annotations
8.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to study all the important characters in the play.
The lesson will also acquaint you with some short answer questions and annotated
passages.
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8.2 YANK
Yank is the central character in the play The Hairy Ape. He is a stoker in a
ship of transatlantic liner. He is a highly accentuated human being compared to the rest
of stokers. He seems “broader, fiercer, more turbulent more powerful, more sure of
himself than the rest.” He “represents to them a self expression, the very last word in
what they are, that most highly developed individual.”
Yank, as depicted by O’ Neill, is a twentieth century proletarian everyman.

From the very first scene of the play, he appears to be a dominant figure, a symbol
of a worker’s illusion that he can identify with his work in the capitalistic society.
He cherishes the illusion of belonging and being at the centre of the things. He is
intensely alive in the present and discards Paddy’s desire of going back to a past
age of feudal relations. “I’m living”, he says, “I’m part of de-engines...Dey’ re
speed...twenty five knots a hour... dat belongs!” he identifies the strength of steel
with his own brutal strength. He says, “I’m smoke and express trains and
steamers...And I’m what makes iron into steel; steel, dat stands for de whole ting!
I’m steel-steel-steel”.
Yank’s position is given definition and context by the attitudes of two of his
companions- Long and Paddy. Yank has a sense of belonging to the ship. Ship is house
for him. For others, it is a sinking ship, a hell. They are not born into it, but, Long would
say, are dragged into it by the capitalist class. Yank rejects Long’s Marxist division into
the exploiters and the exploited. He considers the people on the upper deck, the upper
strata of society, as just a “baggage’. They don’t belong to the stockehole whereas the
stokers belong. Long is sarcastic about their belonging to the ship. Paddy joins Long’s
sarcasm. For him, belonging was a thing of the past when they were sailors and
belonged to the sea.
Yank is quite content and at ease, quite happy and self-confident because he
has a sense of belongingness a sense of identity. But this sense of security, this sense
of belongingness, is soon shattered by Mildred, the daughter of the president of Nazareth
Steel and Chairman of Board of Directors, who comes down to the stokehole to look
down upon the stokers as on wild beast in a zoo. She calls Yank a ‘filthy beast’ and
looks upon him as if he were an hairy ape. Yank feels insulted in the very heart of his
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pride; his sense of belonging is gone. He takes the insult in a purely personal way.
In the fifth avenue, Yank confronts a world that breathes materialism, artificiality
and aimlessness–though Yank is not provoked by the affluence and the reckless spending
of the affluent class at the expense of the starving poor, yet he is insulted by the
expensive monkey fur on display in a shop’s window. The animal skin on display, at
once, objectifies Mildred’s charge of his being a beast.
In the prison, he realizes that he is not steel and steam, which make the ship
go, but the slave of those, who own ship. Previously steel has represented steamers,
engines, buildings, now face to face with reality, he sees what steel actually is-cages,
cells, locks, bolts and bars. Steel that was once home for Yank, becomes an enemy.
Yank has tremendous strength so he wants to choose the beastly action. He

lacks the brain and so his consciousness has not developed to the extent of realizing
that the working class movement has reached a stage where individual terrorist acts
are not sufficient. By using his physical power, he wants to be fire and melt steel.
That’s why he comes to join I.W.W. but is rejected by it because his consciousness
has not reached the level where he can understand the meaning and uses of an
organized struggle.
Finally, he determines to exclude himself from society altogether. His consciousness

has made him aware that man is nothing but a beast. He, therefore, tries to seek
fellowship with the gorilla in the zoo but is killed by it. His death is a frightful symbol
of the decay and disintegration of spiritual values in a mechanized materialized age.
To conclude we can say that Yank is Everyman, for what happens to Yank in
the play is happening to millions in the modern world. Yank is typical of the isolated
proletariat in an unvarnished and industrialized civilization found all the world over. He
is both an individual and type, who continue to be brutalized by machinery and industry.
He has not only become a machine, he has also lost faith in himself. Thus, there is
gradual regression in his personality.
8.3 LONG
Long is a fellow stoker of Yank, who preaches a sort of Christian socialism. He

blames the hardships of the stoker’s life and greediness of the capitalist class, which has
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forgotten the Biblical injunctions regarding the equality of all human beings. He agrees
with Yank that the ship is their home, but that home of theirs is a hell. They are
condemned to live and suffer in it all their lives. And it is all doing of the rich passengers
who travel first class and stay in the best cabins on the upper deck of the ship. He
exclaims fiercely, “They dragged us down till we’re only wage slaves in the bowels of
a bloody ship, sweating, burning ‘up eatin’ coal-dust! Hit’s them’s ter blame–the damned
capitalist class.” For him the structure of society is rotten and the cause of this rottenness
is the economic system. Since the basic evil is capitalism, the workers, according to
Long, must be educated to a knowledge of the economic structure of society. As he
tells Yank, “I want to awaken yer bloody class consciously. Then yer’ll see it ‘s ‘er class
yer’ve got to fight, nor’er alone”. Long wants to fight with legal means strictly.
He tells Yank, “Remember force defects itself. It ain’t our weapon-we must impress our
demands through peaceful means the votes of the on marching proletarians of the
bloody world”.
Thus Long is a radical, a revolutionary, and through him O’Neill has portrayed
the class–antagonism in American social life.
8.4 PADDY
Paddy, another fellow stoker of Yank, is an old wizened Irishman. He is

devotee of the sea-chanties, with a romantic nostalgia for the by gone days of old
clippers with tall masts floating on imaginary golden seas. He represents the romantic
escapist who evades the present with a desire to go back to an imaginary feudal,
patriarchal past in which man was in harmony with nature and his labour. He says :
Oh, to be back in the fine days of my youth ochone!

Oh, there was fine beautiful ships them days– Clipper with tall
masts touching the sky-fine strong men in them-men that was sons
of the sea as if ’t was the mother that bore them... ’T was them
days men belonged to ships, not now. Twas them days a ship was
the part of the sea, and a man was part of a ship, and the sea
joined all together and made it one.
Paddy is extremely dissatisfied with the present industrial age, where men are
reduced to the status of automatons “flesh and blood wheel of the engines”. Man losing
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harmony with nature is “cages by steel from a sight of the sky like bloody apes in the
zoo.” This remark of Paddy throws light on the significance of the title.
Thus, through Paddy, O’Neill has voiced his own condemnation of the ugliness
and soulness of contemporary civilization.
8.5 MILDRED DOUGLAS
Mildred Douglas is a young girl of twenty. She is the only daughter of the
president of Nazareth Steel and Chairman of Board of Directors. She is pretty but her
face is marred by a “self-conscious air of superiority.” She seems exhausted and anaemic
and there is a look of artificiality about her. She is conscious of her weaknesses. She
lacks vitality and integrity. She bemoans her female inanities. She herself says that she
is a waste product in the Bessemer process, the process of making steel or the process
of dehumanization-ushered in by the industrial growth of America. She inherits wealth
but not energy. She wants to make a sociological study of the condition of poor section
of American society. However, she knows that she does not have the energy that her
grandfather as a puddler had, which down the generations get burnt away in the
affluence they had come to possess. Even her earnest desire to see the world of vitality
and integrity, she is aware, sounds ridiculous like a leopard complaining of its spots.
Mildred is accompanied by her aunt, who is a fat old lady, pompous and proud.
From their talk, it becomes clear that there is not much love and affection between the
two and Mildred likes to cross and tease her aunt. She not only insults her aunt but also
slaps her insultingly across her face.
Mildred represents the capitalist class of American society. This American upper
class society is artificial and empty. Industrialism has not only degraded the best worker
to the condition of beast but also dehumanized and reduced the upper class people to
the status of robots who act mechanically. Mildred has no regard for her aunt which
shows that she is dehumanized and has lost all connection with life.
8.6 SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
8.6.1 Significance of Yank’s Confrontation with Mildred Douglas.
The most significant event in the play The Hairy Ape is Yank’s confrontation
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with Mildred. Two totally different worlds clash in the stokehole. Before Mildred
descends in the stokehole to satisfy her curiosity, the atmosphere there is heightened
by fusing several scenic means of expression : lightening, noises and collective action.
The description of the stokers in rows compares them with (i) Galley slaves (ii)
Chained gorillas and (iii) machines. As Mildred enters the stokehole, even before her
encounter with Yank, she “turns paler” and “shivers with fright in spite of blazing
heat.” The engineer’s whistle sounds, which irritates the stokers and makes Yank lose
his temper. He bursts out angrily by brandishing his shovel over his head and pounding
his chest with one hand “gorilla” like. Seeing this, Mildred is terrified. She puts her
hands before her eyes to shut out the sight of his face. She calls Yank ‘filthy beast”
and faints. She is taken out by the two engineers but Yank, who is insulted in a very
unknown fashion, hurls his shovel at the door, which has just closed. The violence and
brutality, which is the outcome of Yank’s confrontation with Mildred, is an inevitable
result of the class-conflict. Mildred owns steel and is protected by it because when
Yank tries to hit her with his shovel, the door is closed behind her, imprisoning Yank,
as it were, in his cage. This confrontation is dramatically very significant because here
the seeds of tragedy and catastrophe are sown: the moment marks the beginning of
Yank’s undoing.
8.6.2 USE OF INTERIOR MONOLOGUE IN THE PLAY
O’Neill has exploited the technique of the, “interior monologue”, to lay bare the
suffering, anguished soul of Yank. The last scene of the play is a long monologue of
Yank. He is thrown out of the I.W.W. office and from there he lands himself in a zoo
as if he were driven into it by the world of capitalists and socialists. In this long
monologue of Yank, the gorilla in the cage is the only interlocutor. It is an admirable
study of Yank’s thought processes and it fully brings out the disintegration of Yank’s
personality. Carried away by his obsession, Yank sees himself as a hairy ape. He
addresses the gorilla as a ‘brother’ and thinks that they both belong to the same club
- the club of ‘the Hairy Apes’. Obsessed with idea of revenge he is no longer capable
of any reasoning or rational thought. He feels that the gorilla at least belongs to nature,
but he does not belong even to that beautiful world. He belongs to the world of man,
but he has been rejected and thrown out by that world. He would like to have his
revenge on that rejecting world. He lets the gorilla out of the cage, shakes hand with
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it, intending to take him to the Fifth Avenue and with his help have his revenge on the
class to which Mildred belonged. But the gorilla crushes him to death, and as he dies
he mutters in deep anguish, “Even him did not think I belonged. Christ, where do I get
off at ? Where do I fit in.” Alienation and isolation is the common lot of man in the
modern industrialized and urbanized society. This monologue expresses the horror of the
predicament of contemporary man.
8.7 ANNOTATIONS
i) They dragged us down till we’re only wage slaves in the bowels of a bloody
ship, sweating’, burning up eatin’ coal-dust! Hit’s them’s ter blame-the damned capitalist
class’’.
These lines are spoken by Long, a stoker, in the first scene of the play The
Hairy Ape - Yank, the protagonist, is presented as a dominant figure, a symbol of
a worker’s illusion that he can identify with his work in the capitalistic society. He
feels that ship is his home. At this Long agrees that the ship is their home, but that
home of theirs is hell. They are forced to live and suffer in it all their lives. According
to him it is the capitalistic class, who travels in the first cabin, which is to be blamed
for the condition of the working class. These lines represent Long as a social
thinker whose doctrine is a patchwork of sentimental socialism and the Christian
creed of charity.
ii) But I’m afraid I have neither the vitality nor integrity. All that was burnt out in
our stock before I was born.
These lines are spoken by Mildred Douglas in the second scene of the play The
Hairy Ape. She is the only daughter of the president of Nazareth Steel and Chairman
of Board of Directors. She has a pale, pretty face marred by a self-conscious expression
of disdainful superiority. She is conscious of her weaknesses and knows that she lacks
vitality and integrity. She inherits wealth but not energy and so is a waste product of the
process of making steel. She feels that all the energy was used by her father and
grandfather in making steel i.e. wealth before she was born. That is why she is anaemic
and lacks energy. These words of Mildred show that the industrial growth of America,
results in producing wealth and in the process results in dehumanization. The weaknesses
of Mildred is the weaknesses of her whole class. They have turned into money making
85
machine and lack all vitality and strength.
iii. Dis is man’s job.get me? It belongs. It runs dis tub.
Yank speaks these lines in the first scene of the play The Hairy Ape. His two
fellow stokers, Long and Paddy dislike the job of stokers and feel that they are living
in hell. Whereas Paddy is a romantic escapist, Long preaches a sort of Christian
socialism. Yank rejects both on the ground that they are weak and timid. He himself is
proud of being the worker on whom the modern civilization depends. These lines of
Yank depict him as a dominant figure, a symbol of a worker’s illusion that he identifies
with his work in the capitalistic society. According to him, the stokers are better than
the first class passengers because the stokers are strong people doing man’s job and
making the ship move. Thus Yank cherishes the illusion of belonging and being at the
center of the things.
iv) Votes, hell! Vote is a Joke, see Votes for women! Let dem do it.
These lines are spoken by Yank to Long in the fifth scene by the play The Hairy
Ape. After his confrontation with Mildred, Yank takes the insult in a purely personal way
and wants to take personal revenge on Mildred. Long takes him to the fifth avenue. He
tells Yank that they cannot bear this insult and suggests to him that they should go to
law or to government. He advises him to use only peaceful, lawful means such as
capturing power through their votes. But Yank contemptuously condemns his view of
seeking help from these institutions and calls such ideas fit only for women. He also says
that vote is a joke. Through these lines, O’Neill makes a bitter satire on the American
political institutions. Law, governments and democracy all these bodies are controlled
by the capitalist class and they pay no heed to the poor people. Yank, thus, rejects the
basic trait of the American way of life.
vi) You mean change of unequal conditions of society by legitimate direct action or
with dynamite.
The secretary of I.W.W. says this to Yank. Yank, in the beginning, is shown
happy and confident in his existence and proud of his physical strength. But his self-
respect is shattered after his encounter with Mildred Douglas. Her insulting remark
makes him unsure of himself and so he swears revenge on her. He joins I.W.W. thinking
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it to be an underground organization of anarchists as Senator Queen has spoken about
it. He has come to join so that he may blow up the artifacts of capitalism. He tells the
secretary that his specific purpose is to blow up Douglas’ factory where steel is
manufactured. The secretary fears that some detective agency have sent Yank to spy
on I.W.W. So he tells Yank that they have no use for a dynamite. They do not want
to blow up anything. They want to change the conditions of society by entirely legitimate
means. Yank is a ‘brainless ape’ and is thrown out of the office of I.W.W. Yank’s
rejection by I.W.W. completes the process of his alienation. His consciousness has not
developed to the extent of realizing that the working class movement has reached a
stage where individual terrorist acts are not sufficient.
viii) He got me, aw sight I am tron. Even him didn’t tink I belonged.
These lines present the tragic denouement. From I.W.W., Yank lands himself in
a zoo. His consciousness has made him aware that man is nothing but a beast. He,
therefore, tries to seek fellowship with the gorilla but the latter crushes him to death.
Before his death, he mutters painfully that even the gorilla did not think that the former
belonged to his group. Here Yank reaches the nadir of his despair. Man cannot live
alone. He needs his past and his future, however, delusory, for he is otherwise incurably
lonely. No doubt, in the modern capitalistic society the people of the working class have
been reduced to an animal-like existence. And sometimes they want to go to the past,
to an earlier stage than human. Present civilization may have destroyed humanity but this
problem cannot be solved by going back. That is why Yank, in his attempt to belong
to the past, is killed by the gorilla.
1. Discuss O’Neill’s use of the technique of ‘‘interior monologue’’ in the play The
Hairy Ape.
2. Discuss Yank as a tragic hero.
3. Write a short note on Long as a preacher of Christian socialism.
4. Critically comment on the following :
a) I’m waste product in the Bessember process-like the millions or rather,
87
I inherit the acquired trait of the by-product, wealth, but none of the
energy, none of the strength of the steel made it.
b) Hell, sure, dat’s my fav’rite climate. I at it up’. I git fat on it! It’s me makes
it hot! It’s me makes it roar !
c) Pardon me for my outburst. When a leopard complains of it spots, it must

sound rather grostesuque.
d) We lives in ‘ell, comrades- and right enough we’ll die in it. And who’s ter
blame, I asks yer?
e) I’m what makes iron into steel! Steel that stands for de whole ring! And
I’m steel-steel-steel!
Cargill, Oscar O’Neill and His Plays : Four decades of Criticism. New
York, New York University Press 1961 : Survey of O’Neill’s criticism.
Gassner, John. O’Neill : A Collection of Critical Essays New Jersey : Prentice

Hall 1964.
_________Eugene O’ Neill. University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American

Writers.
Tiusanen, Timo, O’Neill’s scenic images New Jersey Princeton University Press.
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AMERICAN LITERATURE-II UNIT-III
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
STRUCTURE
9.1 Objectives
9.2 Arthur Miller–Life and Works
9.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to explore the life and works of Arthur Miller and
to acquaint the learner with various influences on Miller’s dramatic themes and style.
9.2 ARTHUR MILLER–LIFE AND WORKS
Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915 in Manhattan (New York). He
attended high school in suburb of Brooklyn (New York). His parents, Isadore and
Augusta Barnett Miller, belonged to the middle-class community in the busy industrial
borough of New York. It was the sprawling size of the metropolis that had given rise
(those days) to the term “the melting pot”. Miller’s father was a hardworking businessman,
a manufacturer of women’s coats. He tried to give his family such advantages as he as
a child in Austria–Hungary was deprived of. Miller’s mother, Augusta, was born in
America. She had few interests outside her home and children. She led the life of an
average Brooklyn housewife. Although she had always longed to go to college, she
made a career of looking after her husband’s needs and looking after their three
children. Miller had an older brother who joined business, and a sister who adopted
career on the stage.
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Arthur Miller, from his early years, was a thin wiry boy. His hazel eyes looked
out thoughtfully from his rather thin and pointed face. He was more inclined to sports
than to studies. Right from childhood, he was an avid football fan. By the time he
reached school, he had shaped as a tall, angry teen-ager. He soon became a football
star, graduating from school in 1933 as the “hero”. He was keen on joining the university
of Michigan for the reason that they had there football team of national fame. All through
his high-school he had been following the fortunes of this team. Being a businessman,
his father, however, declined to support him. He had been hit by the depression of the
1930’s and perhaps was not in a position to afford college education for his son,
especially, at an out of home-town. Therefore, for two and a half years, Miller had to
work as a loader and shipping clerk in an automoblie warehouse, saving for his further
education. During this work-period a certain change also took place in his character and
personality.
Arthur Miller underwent a profound change during this shaping period of

his life; it sharply changed his plans for future as well as his outlook on life. Since
it was a mechanical job he was doing at the warehouse, it also became rather
boring. Its routine gave him enough time to think. Also, every day he had to go
a long distance from home to the warehouse. To kill time, he took to reading
books during the journey. He had a number of books he had been wanting to
read since his school days, as the busy school schedule and his football sport had
not allowed him time for reading them. Once he was set on reading, there was
no stopping. He read straight through even such long books as War and Peace
while hanging on to a subway strap. During his lunch hour, he often went to the
library to hunt for books. Even though not much to his liking, these two and a half
years of work proved useful for Miller. He delighted himself in reading that
expressed the truths of life—partly in poetry, more in novels, but mainly in plays.
Like most New Yorkers, he had always enjoyed the theatre, going to Broadway
shows. All this accumulated into a desire for writing plays, in which he could
embody his impressions of life.
One of the books Miller read during this period was Write That Play! by
Kenneth E. Rowe, of the University of Michigan Drama Department. In place of
football, the urge to meet the author of this book and to study in his department called
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him to go to Ann Arboor, the seat of the University of Michigan. When he found that
he had saved enough to pay for his tuition at the university, he discovered that his marks
in high school were not good enough to qualify him for the entrance examination. So
he wrote to Clarence Cook Little, the progressive president at Michigan, asking for
permission to enter on the grounds that he would prove his merit in the first year of his
study. In case he did not do more than passing well, if he did not show true distinction
as promising playwright, he would drop out. The magnanimous president granted him
the opportunity. So he went off to Ann Arbor with the blessings of his family. Soon as
he settled in the new place he set down to writing plays as if he was sent to do that
very job.
His hopes were not belied. He found in Kenneth Rowe the kind of
understanding critic and teacher he needed to make him “write the play,” following
it with another, and another. Not only that he did not have to drop out after
completing one year, he succeeded in winning the Avery Hopwood Award for
two years, which was offered annually at Michigan for the best original play. He
quickly acquired a thorough knowledge of the theatre, about writing as well as
producing a play. Another opportunity became available to him there. In 1929,
the Lydia Mendelsohnn Repertory Theatre had opened in the newly built Women’s
League, which offered a workshop for new as well as seasoned productions.
Miller attended rehearsals, performances, sessions in lighting, set designing, etc.
He seemed to be set on the big job. Ideas, dialogues, words flowed voluntarily,
spontaneously, effortlessly. During one of his vacations, he visited Chicago, where
he watched a performance of Awake and Sing, a play by Clifford Odets, an
American dramatist of the period. The play’s overt message, “Life should have
some dignity”, made a deep and lasting impact on his mind. A key sentence from
the play, “Go out and flight so life shouldn’t be printed on dollar bills,” seemed
to epitomize the attitude of the decade of the thirties towards the false ideals of
the decade of the twenties. He gave a serious thought to the case of his own
family, which had been a victim of the depression. He thought of others, who had
suffered similar fate. His mind went into the reasons that caused the collapse at
the Wall Street. He thought of those suicides that had taken place owing to
financial failures.
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All this thinking led Miller to formulate concepts of moral responsibility within
the family, which were to furnish the main themes of his plays, especially the relation
between father and son. Making family a model for society, he extended those concepts
to the society at large. He related the individual to society, individual’s responsibility
towards welfare of the people. Going through all these ideas, he reached the conclusion
that it was immoral for any individual to amass wealth, for it is done at the cost of
others. This further led him to an assessment of the social injustices, of the sins
individuals commit in the name of “free enterprise”. The American fascination for
success and the tendency to accept all means, including the immoral and criminal, so
long as one succeeds, the mindless worship of the success god, became repugnant
to him. He came to comprehend these values as false, socially irresponsible, and
morally unpardonable. He wrote plays later to expose these false values and to show
their pernicious effects on individuals as well as society. Once clear about his ideas
and values he set to conceiving appropriate plots and suitable characters for the plays
he would use as an instrument of social awakening and social reform.
Miller’s hard work, professional preparation, clarity of thought, and sincerity of

social concern brought results almost instantly. In 1937, one of his Hopwood-award
winning plays fetched a substantial prize of $ 1250 from the Bureau of New Plays,
set up by the Theatre Guild under the directorship of Theresa Helburn. Although not
a large sum even by the standards of his time, the fact that his early plays could make
a mark among the professional judges of drama was quite an encouragement to Miller
as a budding dramatist. It was also an occasion to celebrate for his friends, his
department, and all others associated, directly or indirectly, with his ambition as a
theatre artist. After this signal event, romance of love also came his way. One of his
classmates, Mary Grace Slattery, fell for him, and the affair flowered. With his rising
fame as a prize winner dramatist he had no difficulty landing a post on the Federal
Theatre Project, writing plays for a payment of $ 22.77 a week. He was to report
for duty at the Project office every day, leaving the night for himself to continue writing
plays on his own.
The first drama he completed those days was a poetic play, which he named
Montezuma, concerning the conquest of Mexico. Apparently, the play seems removed
92
from contemporary life, it is actually related to the international struggle of the decade
of depression in an indirect manner. As a matter of fact, it adumbrates the technique
Miller later uses in The Crucible. Hoping that it would do well, he sent copies to all
the possible interested parties, including the Theater Guild, the Group, The New
Theatre League. But nobody favourably responded to the play. Perhaps the play’s
historical theme, suggested by its title, prevented favourable considerations. One such
recipient of the play, Harold Clurman, Managing Director of the Group, later confessed
that he found the play’s copy in his file lying unread. Although disappointed, Miller
was not really discouraged by the unfair treatment meted out to his manuscript. He
soon took up writing of radio scripts, which he was able to do with some success.
This experiment helped him out of job. The Theatre Project was abandoned in 1940,
throwing him out of job. The radio script writing came handy in a time of dire
necessity. He was able to earn a living in a medium to which he had never given a
serious thought. He was able to establish himself a little later, which led to his marriage
with Mary Slattery.
After the marriage, the couple settled down to a semi-suburban life in

Patchogue, Long Island. Although living there, they were never able to join the
suburbia community, reason being Miller’s all-consuming interest in the theatre for
which there was no company at that place. Within a few years of marriage, the
couple was blessed with a daughter, and in next three years by a son. During these
years, their subsistence depended upon Miller’s radio scripts, which he regularly
wrote. Simultaneously, he also tried to write plays and get them produced. When
the World War II came along, he also did some scripts for a documentary film,
The Story of G.I. Joe, which was based on Ernie Pyle’s columns of the war. Miller
took keen interest in war. He went to numerous camps, maintained a diary as his
research, which he later published in book form, under the title Situation Normal.
During the same period he had also been working on a novel, which was his protest
against an openly Fascist organization, but thinly disguised by the name Christian
Front. In his book called Focus, Miller exposed the anti-Semitism of such
organizations, pointing out the dangers of religious fanaticism. The book received
notable coverage in the press, provoking conflicting opinions and discussions of its
contemporary relevance.
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Luck really favoured him in 1945 when he found a producer for his ninth play’s
script, The Man Who Had All The Luck. It dramatized a rather contrived story of a man
whose continuous good luck becomes a source of dismay and insecurity to him until he
suffers a serious setback, when he feels assured that he will drive forward of his own
volition. Except for the fact that it was produced, the play itself did not have much
luck in presentation, which lasted only four performances. Nevertheless, his name came
into limelight, and so did his work. No one now doubted his status as a serious
dramatist of his time. He felt satisfied with this recognition. Although not many reviews
were favourable, one Burton Rascoe was perceptive enough to point out Miller’s
potential as a challenging, forceful playwright of the contemporary theatre. Even more
important for him was the immediate reward he received in the form of requests for his
next play from several top producers, among them Harold Clurman. The course
seemed set for his goal just ahead. Just about this time he had started writing a realistic
play, to be called All My Sons, dramatizing his key concept of moral responsibility in
the family, linking it to the inner struggle of men in authority during the war.
With the end of the World War II in 1945, public questions came to be
raised, seeking to fix responsibility for the guilt where it belonged: not on the enemy
alone, but on every individual, who had in any manner shown complicity in the
international slaughter. To convey his message, Miller presented a hypothetical case
in which an executive allows defective warplane motors to be shipped to the Army
rather than ruin this company’s business by losing contract. He seeks to show the
consequences of the man’s dereliction of his moral duty. The play’s protagonist Joe
Keller does, however, come to realize by the end of the play that the pilots, who
flew, those planes were, as he says, “all my sons.” The fact that for the makers of
the planes war is only a business does not exonerate him of his sin. Keller’s son,
Chris, gets disillusioned with his father, who had revered him all his life. When he
comes to know of what his father had done, he cries out, “I know you’re no worse
than other men, but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man; I saw
you as my father.” This denunciation from Keller’s son is scathing enough, and also
heart-breaking, for it is his declaration of the loss of regard and reverence for a
father.
The play, of course, is not flawless. One cannot fail to notice certain artificialities
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of plot, which include the device that Bentley call “the time-honoured prop of
melodrama”, the last-minute discovery of a lost letter in which “all is revealed.” On the
whole, however, the play was a sincere, moving, at times, gripping drama of ideas.
Harold Clurman showed preparedness to produce it instantly. Waster Fried and Elia
Kazan also joined him, who directed the play. As the play opened on 29 January 1947,
it became a box office success. It also won Miller the Drama Critics’ Award as the best
play of the season. The play won its author a permanent place on Broadway. Miller’s
contribution to the American theatre was that he raised the commercial theatre above
the level of the “commodity play.” His next attempt took him to the pinnacle of his
career as dramatist.
Two years after the production of All My Sons, Miller was ready with
what proved to be the best play of his career. The play was Death of a Salesman.
This time Miller got two awards for his play for the year 1949–the Pulitzer and
the Drama Critics’ awards. Here, the same concept of moral responsibility Miller
had experimented with in All My Sons, was carried a step further and to its
logical conclusion. Here, Miller not only put on trial the moral values of his
protagonist, Willy Loman, the salesman, but the whole society, which throws its
individuals into the arena of competition only to achieve material success at the
cost of moral values and human dignity. Willy Loman, the play’s hero, might have
been an efficient employee, he is forced out of job by the demands of
mechanization. He is made to run pantingly in search of the will-o-the-wisp,
financial wealth. He has no choice but to accept the vapid, superficial life of the
salesman. It is a life of false heartiness, the emptiness, the loneliness, covered up
by colossal bluff, the fleeting pleasure of a sportive fling, and the anodyne of
alcohol.
In Death of a Salesman, the irony of Willy’s tragedy is that his goal of life
remains the mirage of material life. He miserably fails as father, unable to fulfil his filial
duties towards his sons. He also fails in his goal of amassing wealth. The play’s message
is that even if he had succeeded in his pursuit of lucree, he would not have earned
happiness. He is unable to achieve even the Philistine satisfaction of wealth. By the end
of the play, we find him in ruin both morally as well as financially. Left with not many
options, he can only think of taking his life in order that his son, Biff, can at last have
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the benefit of his insurance policy. The play’s indictment of the economic order in
America, which pushes into such a tight corner an average individual like Willy who
finally finds himself forced to sell the last thing left with him—their own body. Salesmen
are the patsies of the industrial ring-masters whose products they parade. Only one out
of a thousand rises to become a star, succeeding in changing his status in the world.
The rest remain on the run in the pursuit of the mirage shown to them, ending at end
of the day, exhausted and extinguished. In the figure of Willy Loman, Miller has created
an unforgettable character, who represents a large segment of the American population.
Despite all his drawbacks, however, he does not become a detestable character. He
retains the readers’ or the theatre-goers’ love and sympathy. Willy’s wife is very like
Kelly’s wife in All My Sons. She is loyal to her husband and sons to the last. She
arouses our pity as an innocent victim of the economic order. But our pity is not
unmixed with annoyance of her insistence in sticking to the hypocrisies of convention,
the chimeras of society.
The play was praised as a thought-provoking work, full of psychological

and sociological insights. Eric Bentley, who had attacked All My Sons, calling it
“serious in intent only,” described Death of a Salesman as a “signal event” in the
theatre. Most critics agreed that it imparted true dramatic intensity to the theatre of
ideas. They recognized Miller as a writer with strong convictions, acknowledging
that he was not merely a skillful playwright but also a moralist. Some went to the
extent of calling him a radical writer, underlining his emphasis on social inequalities.
During the days of the McCarthy era (1950’s), when the reactionary House un-
American Activities Committee began to suppress the voices of social progress, to
persecute as revolutionaries all those, who had supported the much-needed reforms
of the 1930’s and early 40’s, Miller was among those who spearheaded the protest
against the modern witchhunt of McCarthyism. It was in this very climate that
between 1952 and 1953 he composed his most controversial play, The Crucible.
Set in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, the play presents the famous (or notorious)
witch-hunt that took place in the New England village. The play draws an apparent
parallel between the events of those days and the events of Miller’s own time. As
Miller wrote in his “Introduction” to the Collected Plays, “It was not only the rise
of McCarthyism that moved me, but something which was much more weird and
mysterious. It was the fact that a political, objective, knowledgeable campaign from
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the far Right was capable of creating not only a terror, but a new subjective reality,
a veritable mystique which was gradually assuming even a holy resonance. That so
inferior and subjective an emotion could have been so manifestly created from
without was a marvel to me. It underlies every word in The Crucible..... “I saw
forming a kind of interior mechanism of confession and forgiveness of sins, which
until now had not rightly been categorized as sins. New sins were being created
monthly. It was very odd how quickly these were accepted into the new orthodoxy,
quite as though they had been there since the beginning of time...Above all, above
all horrors, I saw accepted the notion that conscience was no longer a private
matter, but one of state administration. I saw men handing conscience to other men
and thanking other men for the opportunity of doing so.”
Feeling strongly against such a climate in his own country, Miller went on
to show how reprehensible the conduct of the Committee was in the eyes of all
those like him who still believed in the freedom of thought and freedom of expression.
Going back into the national past, he dug up the records of the Salem witchcraft
trials, and created his own characters based on the few facts of “known behaviour”
of the persons involved. It resulted in a powerful dramatic indictment of mass
hysteria and savage fury born of terror and superstition. However, when the play
was produced the first time in January 1953, it received a mixed response. They
saw the analogy clearly enough, and made no mistake about that; the preachment
came out powerfully well. But the play was found heavy-handed, lacking in the
warmth or passion necessary for successful drama. Miller felt deeply distressed by
the unenthusiastic response of the audience. On his part, he still saw power in his
play, and purpose which should move people. He decided to keep his work before
the people, to keep his message alive. So he staged it himself, adding a single scene
between Proctor and Abigail (leader of the accusers) in order that the passions of
the people could be heightened, and the motivation was strengthened. Miller also
made some changes in the spectacle part of the play. He did away with the scenery
altogether. Instead, he used drapes as a backdrop to the action as well as effectively-
lit cyclorama, which gave more flexibility and fluency to his interpretation of history.
This gave a vision of the timelessness of the tragic situation in the play, the implication
that, regardless of the period in which it occurs, “the sin of the public terror is that
it divests man of conscience, of himself”.
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In the new production of his play, his own, which came six months after the first,
Miller succeeded in evoking the response he had anticipated. This time, the play had
a long run in the Martin Beck Theatre before going on a national tour. Now, Miller
found the audience deeply moved. The critics also agreed that the revised version of
the play had greater dramatic power and artistic merit than the original. His drama may
not have attained the tragic heights, it did elevate the level of the social drama possessing
“broad social awareness.” Miller’s reply to the critics about the lack of warmth in his
play was that in such dramatic works emotion and private feeling has to be subdued.
In the second production, however, the checkrein was not so much in evidence. As a
result, the play proved far more effective than the first production. Now his name as
a playwright became associated with “moralist”. He, too, continued to tirade against the
betrayal of free speech being perpetrated in the country by the McCarthy Committee.
He also continues to probe more deeply into the psychology of the informer.
Following the strain of The Crucible production, in an interlude of repose,

Miller recalled with a touch of nostalgia the days of the depression, when, for all his
hours at the warehouse, he used to read and study with a serene mind, uncomplicated
by the problems of ethical considerations. As an expression of his feeling, he wrote A
Memory of Two Mondays, a one-act play, which recaptured the scene in the warehouse
as he recalled it. John Gassner called the play “a sensitive and admirably uncontrived
genre-piece.” It actually served as a curtain raiser to another one-act play, A View from
the Bridge. This latter play, much longer in length, pushed the former into background.
The longer play is an intense and impassioned drama of enquiry into the soul of the
betrayer. Miller succeeds in this play in probing the deeper motives lurking behind the
surface reasons an informer might claim as justification for his acts of treachery. The
subject of the play is the smuggling of illegal immigrants into the Brooklyn waterfront
from Sicily by the Mafia through friends and relatives-familiarly called “submarines”. The
play presents the case of Eddie Carbone, who, in a fit of jealousy, informs on his wife’s
relatives. There are two newly arrived “submarines” who have been staying at the
Carbone home. The younger one of the two falls in love with the niece of Eddie’s wife,
an orphan who has grown in their house. As an overly protective guardian, Eddie is
unconsciously in love with the girl. His dark and deep unacknowledged feeling hurts him
into a jealous fury the moment he comes to know that the girl and the younger “submarine”
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are set on getting married. Much against his own conscience as well as against legal
advise he turns the two “submarines” from an impoverished land over to the Immigration
office. Eddie thereafter is killed by Marco, the older man, who comes to claim vengeance
paid in full. One gets the impression of some muddle in the play’s meaning, as Alfieri
the lawyer-narrator concludes: “Most of the time now we settle for half, and I like it
better. But the truth is holy, and even as I know how wrong he was, and his death
useless,. I tremble...” The impression made by the play is that perhaps Miller himself
was not clear in his mind in what measure the informer should be condemned. Perhaps
in those times he was not alone in his bewilderment, his alarm at the number of people
who apparently had hardly any compunction in revealing names to the McCarthy
Committee.
Miller’s A View from the Bridge, when presented on September 29, 1955,
on a double programme with A Memory of Two Mondays, proved so powerful and
moving that it demanded single billing. He had to shelve the little memory play with
great reluctance and expand A View from the Bridge into two acts for a production
scheduled for London. The new expanded version of A View from the Bridge
benefited from expansion, with more details added and realistic staging given it by
Peter Brock in London, although it lost certain elements of poetry and classical
allusion. The revision also resulted in the deletion of a verse prologue and epilogue
spoken by Alfieri in the original play. The play was a great success in London. It kept
the audience spellbound. The complex emotions brought out in the play in the lives
of outwardly simple, hardworking people, the longshoremen the play was not viewed
as moralistic. The moral truths were perhaps overlooked. It become tremendously
popular in England. The revised version came off equally well in America also, where
it continued for almost a decade. At times too much theatrically in a play obliterated
its serious import. Some such thing had happened with this play. The audiences
tended to ignore, or failed to grasp, its serious meaning. Miller was deeply disturbed
by this facile audience response. He had always intended serious moral purpose in
his plays. This neglect of his serious intents had started with The Crucible, to the
great uneasiness of the author.
In an interview in 1964, Miller made a comment on his problem, saying. “The

production of A view from the Bridge clinched the growing feeling that the work I was
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doing was regarded as unimportant. I felt I was a kind of entertainer, succeeding in
drawing a tear or a laugh, but it seemed to me that what was behind my plays remained
a secret.” Well, the fact that the audience shed a tear or share a laugh shows that the
dramatist has succeeded in carrying the audience with him, and hence communicated his
message successfully. The effect of a play should not be expected to be the same as
that of a debate or discussion. Great works of literature have always influenced their
readers through tears and laughters, not through ideas and arguments. I do not understand
why Miller should feel dismayed on the success of his plays, taking it as a measure of
a “popular” artist, and hence, in his view, a mere “entertainer”. He could have recalled
the status of Shakespeare in his age. He, too, was popular with the Elizabethan audience,
and was considered, above all, an entertainer. But that is not how Miller understood his
position. He felt “fed up”, as he said, with the profession itself. He decided not to go
on with the writing of plays.
It was not that his creative resources had been exhausted, but that the
flood-tide of events which had changed the course of his life, plunging him into the
vortex of public existence and attention, prevented him from having a clear view of
himself or world, necessary for writing a play that he considered worth the
presentation. One of the significant things that happened to him at this time was his
attracting attention for opposing the McCarthy Committee. For this, he was among
the front-runners who were targetted for attack. He became a suspect, whether
guilty or not. He was astounded by the methods of the Committee: “Astounded, I
watched men pass me without a nod whom I had known rather well for years.” He
recounted it again in his “Introduction” to the Collected Plays: “and again, the
astonishment was produced by my knowledge, which I could not give up, that the
terror in these people was being knowingly planned and consciously engineered,
and yet that they all knew it was terror.”
Miller was called to appear before the McCarthy Committee a number of

times. Finally, in 1956, he was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to
give the name of people he had recognized at a certain meeting years before.
Around the same time, another event of significance took place : in 1956 itself, he
and his wife Marry Slattery parted company by divorcing their marriage. Keeping
in view his strong faith in family as the “symbolic cell” of the social structure, the
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decision to part must have been followed by a deep conflict. But he soon fell into
the hands of another woman, the screen fairy, the sex symbol of the twentieth
century–Marilyn Monroe. He must have done it in a huff, for such a step could not
be called wise for a man of Miller’s background and commitment. It had to end and
end speedily, and so it did. Miller dramatized the affair in his screenplay rightly
called The Misfits. He himself later admitted that their marriage was “marred by
too many cross purposes.” Marilyn Monroe acted in this film, and died the next
year (the film was released in 1961).
The first two years of his second marriage were spent in Miller’s protesting his
indictment in court. He forcefully defended his case legally. Besides, he also wrote
articles and made speeches in defence of the human rights under fire in the 1950’s,
called the McCarthy era. When his trial had reached its height, he also spoke before
a large audience at the first National Assembly of the Authors’ League, in May, 1957,
on the subject of the censorship of the press. He strongly admonished the writers to
hold on to the right of free speech. At last, he was absolved of the charges against him
by the United States Court of Appeals in 1958. When this one worry was over, the
other followed. It was at this very point of time that his troubles with Marilyn Monroe
reached the flash point ending in separation. To get over it all he went overseas for a
while, where he met Miss Ingeborg Morath, a photographer of Austrian birth, with
whom he concluded his third marriage in 1962.
Despite all these turbulent events, and with all the disgust he had developed with
the theatre, Miller had been engaged in doing his writing work. Or, may be he was
involved in his writing work to heal his wounds, for after all, an occupation of one’s own
liking does help dissolve the tensions that are caused by happenings contrary to one’s
interests. No wonder that Miller completed during this period five scripts, although none
to his own satisfaction. His problem was partly technical partly ideational. He was not
able to resolve the tangle of making clear to his audience the play’s “secret” significance.
One answer to it could be : well, if the audience cannot grasp your “secret” message,
disclose the “secret”. Whether he lacked courage to speak out straight or was unable
to create an art that would convey his ideas is a matter of debate. But one thing is
certain that this problem spoiled many of his dramatic attempts. In the five plays he
wrote but did not, or could, put them to stage he seemed to be attempting to develop
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a viewpoint towards the world and himself. Although the plays were, no doubt, searching,
they did not reach any dramatic conclusion that could gratify him. It led him to conceive
the idea, in 1959, of writing a play that presented the search itself. Gradually, the
concept developed. He began giving it more body and contour. By the time he was
married the third time in 1962, a new work had taken shape. The play was named
After the Fall, an emotionally personal drama of self.
Miller’s new play, so to say, opened the much heralded Repertory Theatre of
Lincoln Centre. The play, however, was received with a storm of controversy, or, in his
own words, with “a nimbus of myth and hysteria”. Miller was once again dismayed that
his audiences were still overlooking the “message” and were content with the theatricality
of the subject-matter. The play was decidedly the most introspective he had ever
written, and the first that made such an elaborate treatment to the marital relationship.
When the play’s protagonist, Quentin, cries out, “I can’t bear to be a separate person!”,
he is only reechoing Miller’s all-time theme that “no man is an island unto himself”. But
the play is not without a realization that man has also to be a “separate person” – an
individual in his own right – though not detached from the mass of mankind. The play,
through an individual life, touches upon the major political events of its time – the Nazi
massacres, the McCarthy inquisitions, the economic depression. This individual, Quentin,
also reflects a good deal of Miller also. He is on the verge of marrying for the third time.
He talks to a Listener, the audience, or, perhaps, the analyst – the impartial ear outside
himself. He recalls different people who influenced his life, which includes his parents,
his second wife, his colleagues caught up in the web of McCarthyism. These figures
appear, and disappear, and then reappear in varied sequences before the spectator.
However, from this saleidoscopic succession of scenes, the single pattern of truth
emerges : the aspect of universality in human nature may yet be his salvation. It is like
an eternal well, from which love springs and hope rises after one has fallen into despair.
Quentin, the play’s hero, is not absolved, but he accepts and understands his “guilt”. He
can now go forward to greet his love.
One pertinent aspect of Miller’s dramatic art that emerges from his career is
that a playwright can be misrepresented by the stage. No wonder Aristotle placed
spectacle at the bottom of his list of six elements of drama. As also reinforced by several
subsequent critics, a play speaks better in reading than in acting. On the stage, the
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work is at the mercy of the directors, the actors, even costume designers and make-
up men, who generally distort, at times, even destroy, the more sensitive aspects of
art. In the case of a writer like Miller the problem gets compounded by conscious
or unconscious, search for the author’s personal life. In the present case also, as Miller
observed, “there was more speculation as to whether the play was really about Marilyn
Monroe than there was discussion about its intrinsic, artistic merits.” In the twentieth
century, drama was highly disadvantaged by the advent of cinema. Most theatre-goers
habitually look for all that they so often see in a movie. Only a handful of serious
students of literature can appreciate great works of drama in this age of cinema, and
now (worse) TV serials.
Being socially-oriented from the start, Miller always wrote on themes of

larger social significance. Also, politics being the most powerful force in social life,
he always reacted and responded to the political events of his time, never failing to
give a dramatic treatment to every such happening. While in Europe on a tour, for
instance, Miller attended the trials of Nazi murderers in Frankfurt, provoking an
immediate reaction to write a play on the subject. Since composing of a dramatic
work cannot be a matter of a day or two, he first expressed his reaction in an
article “re-instating in the public mind an understanding of the dynamics of Fascism.”
He named the play Incident at Vicky. Once again his theme became that of guilt
and responsibility. Miller approached the theme with a viewpoint sharpened by the
trials he had witnessed at Frankfurt. Although the action takes place in a detention
room in Vicky, 1942, recounting the brutal tactics of the Nazis and the sacrifice
made by an Austrian prince who hands over his papers to the Jewish doctor after
he has become aware of his unconscious share in the Nazi invasion, the play is also
“about today”. As the author insisted, “It concerns the question of insight, of seeing
in oneself the capacity for collaboration with the evil one condemns. It is a question
that exists for all of us – what is the responsibility of each of us, for example, that
the slums of Harlem exist?” Keeping Miller’s emphasis in view, one can legitimately
call him a dramatic historian of his age; for his plays do embody the essential history
of the post-war period in America.
Miller himself was highly satisfied with Incident at Vicky : “I’m satisfied that
the play exists. It has a shape, a form, a truth”. The “ordinary” response notwithstanding,
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the play was a great success. Miller also made a significant remark about the
interrelationship of his various plays : “Any body of work is voyage with parts of call.
Each of my plays has carried through some element of an earlier play.” It can be said,
without much exaggeration, that more than any other contemporary dramatist, Miller
assumed the mantle of Robert Sherwood as the public conscience of America. In
articles like “The Playwright and the Atomic Age” (1961), he revealed an international
viewpoint and a serious concern for the presentation of world peace. He still remained
popular as a dramatist because there is in his plays the touch of common speech
mingled with democratic idealism, poetic expression, and an acute capacity for feeling
the anguish of the soul.
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN
STRUCTURE
10.1 Objectives
10.2 Miller’s Theory of Drama
10.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of the lesson is to explore Arthur Miller’s theory of Drama and
how he justifies that playwriting in the modern times does not limit itself to the sake of
amusement but poses realistic, social and personal issues through visionistic display or
staging.
10.2 MILLER’S THEORY OF DRAMA
Miller’s ideas on drama are most adequately expressed in his “Introduction” to

the Collected Plays he brought out in 1957. Of course, he wrote more plays after
1957, but he did not, in any way, modify his position as dramatist. Whatever views he
had expressed in the “Introduction” have a certain finality about them. In fact, this is
perhaps the only critical piece in which Miller makes an attempt to theorize about drama
as he perceived it. Being an important document, it deserves serious critical attention.
To begin with, Miller remarks that the very fact that drama has a history of about three
thousand years establishes its social significance; he considers its “human function” as
its “fundamental nature”. In his considered opinion, “the drama and its production must
represent a well-defined expression of profound social needs, needs which transcend
any particular form of society or any particular historic moment.”
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Miller argues that drama must be separated from what in modern times is termed
literature. As he puts it, “A drama ought not be looked at first and foremost from literary
perspectives merely because it uses words, verbal rhythm, and poetic image. These can
be its most memorable parts, it is true, but they are not its inevitable accompaniments.”
He, however, declines to go into the “vivisection” of “dramatic form or the technique of
playwriting.” Instead, he wishes “to speak for” himself as to his “own aims”, “simply to
talk in workaday language about the problem of how to write.” He then goes into the
various assumptions, which, as dramatist, he takes to be basic. One of these assumptions
is that his plays “were written on the assumption that they would be acted before
audiences.” Another assumption is that actors on the stage are like persons who, when
you meet them first time, raise in your mind all sorts of questions and curiosities. Which
of these questions “a play chooses to answer, and how they are answered, are the ruling
and highly consequential imperatives which create the style of the play, and control what
are later called the stylistic levels of its writing.” In Miller’s view, the actors’ mask or
disguise itself will indicate the nature of the play we are going to witness : “In a word,
the actor’s appearance on the stage in normal human guise leads us to expect a realistic
treatment. The play will either be intent upon rounding out the characters by virtue of
its complete answers to the common questions, or will substitute answers to a more
limited group of questions, which, instead of being “human”, are thematic and are
designed to form a symbol of meaning rather than an apparancy of the “real”. It is the
nature of the questions asked and answered, rather than the language used - whether
verse, ordinary slang, or colorless prose - that determines whether the style is realistic
or non-realistic.” Thus, in his view, there is an “organic” connection between the style
and substance of a play, and there are no temperamental choices involved here. On the
basis of this distinction, he characterizes Shakespeare’s tragedies as “species of realism,
and those of Aeschylus and Sophocles” as non-realistic. Miller’s contention is that “when
the career of a person rather than the detail of his motives stands at the forefront of the
play, we move closer to non-realistic styles, and vice versa. “Coming to his own plays,
he considers his early plays - All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman - as realistic,
because they “were written and performed with the intention of answering as many of
the common questions as was possible.” As for his later plays - The Crucible, A
Memory of Two Mondays, and A View from the Bridge, they were not designed to
answer all questions, “and to this extent they are a departure from realism.”
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Miller also attaches great importance to the concept of time in a play. He takes
it as one of the decisive influences upon style. His distinction, again, is based on the
premise of realism : “Broadly speaking, where it is conceived and used so as to convey
a natural passage of hours, days, or months, the style it enforces is pressed toward
realism. Where action is quite openly freed so that things mature in a moment, for
instance, which would take a year in life, a free licence for non-realistic styles in thereby
won.” In a non-realistic play, the compacting of time destroys the realistic style to create
a symbolic dimension. To some extent, every play collapses time, otherwise we shall
have to sit in the theatre for days, or months together. “But where the play does pretend
to give us details of hours, months and years which are not clearly and avowedly
germane to the symbolic meaning, we come closer and closer to what is called a
realistic style.” At this stage, Miller makes an illuminating comment on the vital relationship
between the concept of time and the dramatist’s (and the society’s) interest in the story
(or the character). As he observes, “the Greek ‘unity’ of time imposed on the drama
was not arbitrary but a concomitant of the preponderant Greek interest in the fate and
career of the hero rather than his private characteristics, or, to put it another way, his
social and symbolic side rather than his family role.
In Miller’s theory of drama, the third, and most important, element of the play
that influences its style is “not only to depict why a man does what he does, or why
he nearly didn’t do it, but why he cannot simply walk away and say to hell with it....
To ask this question is immediately to impose on oneself not, perhaps, a style of writing
but at least a kind of dramatic construction... I take it that if one could know enough
about a human being one could discover some conflict, some value, some challenge,
however minor or major, which he cannot find it in himself to walk away from or turn
his back on.” It is ability, or disability, of a character to walk away from a conflict which,
in Miller’s view, determines whether or not he or she has the potential to be tragic. He
thinks, “the less capable a man is of walking away from the central conflict of the play,
the closer he approaches a tragic existence. In turn, this implies that the closer a man
approaches tragedy the more intense in his concentration of emotion upon the fixed
point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call
fanaticism.” Here one can see Miller’ justification for modern man as a tragic hero, for
what is essential to be tragic is, not status or rank, but his ability to make a commitment
and remain emotionally attached to it.
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Talking of drama, Miller does not think in conventional terms of plot, character,
thought, etc., certainly not in that order. His order of preference, very obviously, is
different from that of Aristotle. Since Aristotle gave primacy to form, he considered plot
as the soul of tragedy; for it is plot that shapes nature into art. But since for Miller the
moral or message of a play is more important than its artistic form, he gives greater
importance to “idea” than to plot or character. In Aristotle’s order of preference,
“thought” (or idea) comes at number three (after plot and character). Miller has already
made out the difference between the Greek drama of destiny and the modern social
drama (of which he himself is also a practitioner). He begins the argument by claiming
that the “assumption - or presumption” - behind his plays is that “life has meaning.” He
brings in Plato also to support his contention. His plea is that “Plato, by banning artists
from citizenship in his ideal republic, expressed at least a partial truth; the intention
behind a work of art and its effects upon the public are not always the same.” He firmly
believes that “every play means something - even the play which denies all meaning to
existence.” In his view, “the ‘idea’ of a play is its measure of value and importance and
beauty, and that a play, which appears merely to exist to one side of ‘ideas’ is an
aesthetic nullity.” Hence Miller insists that “idea is very important to me as a dramatist.”
However, Miller is aware of the fact that his statement can be misunderstood
or misinterpreted. As a caveat, therefore, he adds “that playwrights, including the greatest,
have not been noted for the new ideas they have broached in their plays.... Surely there
is no known philosophy, which was fist announced through a play, nor any ethical
idea.... As a matter of fact, it is highly unlikely that a new idea could be successfully
launched through a play at all, and this for several good reasons.” His contention is very
sound. “..... no dramatic structure can bear the brunt of the incredulity with which any
really new idea is greeted, the play form would collapse under the burdens of having
to deliver up the mountain of proof required for a new idea to be believed.” In his view,
any new idea, not only requires heaving proofing to be acceptable, which the play’s
form cannot afford, but is also a “humiliation for the majority of the people.... It offends
against the things they worship, whether God, or science or money.” Hence drama and
new idea are antithetical, and there cannot be any resolution of the conflict.
Carrying the argument a step further, Miller contends that plays may not broach
new ideas, but they do enunciate “not-yet-popular ideas, which are already in the air,
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ideas for which there has already been a preparation by non-dramatic media.” How an
idea becomes the substance of drama is beautifully explained by Miller :
.....once an idea is “in the air” it is no longer an idea but a feeling,

a sensation, an emotion, and with these the drama can deal. For one
thing, where no doubt exists in the hearts of the people, a play
cannot create doubt; where no desire to believe exists, a play cannot
create a belief. And again, this springs from the nature of dramatic
form and its inevitable dynamism; it must communicate as it proceeds
and it literally has no existence if it must wait until the audience goes
home to think before it can be appreciated. It is the art of the
present tense par excellence.
Following this belief, Miller argues that a dramatist only holds a sort of mirror
to his contemporaries, to make them aware of things about themselves with which they
live, but often without being fully conscious of what they are doing. As he insists, “These
plays, in one sense are my response to what was in the air; they are one man’s way
of saying to his fellow men, ‘this is what you see every day, or think or feel; now I will
show you what you really know but have not had the time, or disinterestedness, or the
insight, or the information to understand consciously.” This contention is not very different
from Pope’s definition of poetry as “what often was thought but not so well expressed.”
Taking up the question of meaning or message in drama, Miller does not agree
with those of his contemporaries who would not like a play, which would yield a
“distinct meaning reducible to a sentence.” He is against their preference for so-called
“poetic” drama, “whose ultimate thought or meaning is elusive, a drama which, appears
not to have been composed or constructed, but which somehow comes to life on a
stage and then flickers away.” In his view, the critics, demand that a play be praised
for its “high seriousness” and their demand at the same time that a “play be praised for
not trying to teach” are highly contradictory, betraying only a confusion of their principles.
Miller is very clear in his mind. To him, there is no such thing as complete detachment,
and there is no such thing as a “meaningless” play. As he puts it, “The very conception
of a dramatic theme inevitable means that certain aspects of life are selected and others
left out, and to imagine that a play can be written disinterestedly is to believe that one
can make love disinterestedly.”
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Here Miller rejects Keatsean kind of aestheticism, of art for art’s sake, where
there is a basic quarrel admitted between literature and philosophy. In his view, there
is no such quarrel. The only thing is that the philosophic or social meaning must be
embodied in art form. Also, that a literary work’s merit is to be judged, not on the basis
of its message (social or philosophical), but on the quality of its art. As he puts it, “The
debatable question is never whether a play ought to teach but whether it is art, and in
this connection the basic criterion - purely technical consideration to one side - is the
passion with which the teaching is made. I hasten to add the obvious - that a work
cannot be judged by the validity of its teaching. But it is entirely misleading to state that
there is some profound conflict between art and the philosophically or socially meaningful
theme.” Miller’s argument seems very sound. In his view, art, by nature, has to say
something. It has to end the story, and the story has to end in a climax. Now, to arrange
a climax, the artist, here dramatist, has to act arbitrarily, for in life all stories at least do
not reach dramatic culminations. “Thus, all dramas are to that extent arbitrary - in
comparison with life itself - and embody a viewpoint if not an obsession on the author’s
part.” And this “viewpoint” or “obsession” is the social or philosophic meaning of the
play.
It is very important for Miller that drama speaks to the common man. If it fails
with the commonsense people, it is defeat for the dramatist. As he puts it, “A play,
I think ought to make sense to commonsense people. I know what it is to have been
rejected by them, even unfairly so, but the only challenge worth the effort is the widest
one and the tallest one, which is the people themselves.” To Miller, the conservatism
of the people is both a check as well as a challenge for the dramatist. They are a
check because too much of experimentation (of technique as well as subject) will not
work with them. And they are a challenge because the dramatist must break the
barrier of conventionalism. As he insists, “It is their innate conservatism which, I think,
is and ought to be the barrier to excess in experiment and the exploitation of the
bizarre, even as it is the proper aim of drama to break down the limits of conventional
unawareness and acceptance of outmoded and banal forms.” Miller’s test is always
public, not private; social, not scholarly; artistic, not technical. As he emphatically puts
it, “By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse
the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new
relationships between a man and men, and between men and man. Drama is akin to
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the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely
to spend our feelings.”
In a way, Miller is anti-Platonic. For Plato had precisely objected to the

“route of passion” that the arts use for working upon the people. Miller advocates the
use of same route for working upon the people, for awakening them to new awareness,
for moving them into impassioned will to act. The success or failure of a dramatist is
to be measured, for him, in terms of the effect his plays show on its audiences. The
New Critics will hold Miller guilty of “Affective Fallacy.” Their contention is to
consider art out of its social context. Miller would not care for such an accusation.
On the contrary, he would accuse the New Critics of Artistic Fallacy, which ignores
the social aspect of art. Miller’s firm belief is : “The Ultimate justification for a new
form is the new and heightened consciousness of causation in the light of known but
hitherto inexplicable effects.” In his strong adherence to realism he is unshakeable. He
does not fully accept the modern theories about the nature and destiny of man, his
duties towards his self and society, much less the post-realism techniques that look
for escape routes from realism. As he puts it, “Not only in the drama, but in sociology,
psychology, psychiatry, and religion, the past half-century (early twentieth century)
has created an almost overwhelming documentation of man as a nearly passive creation
of environment and family-created psychological drives. If only from the dramatic
point of view, this dictum cannot be accepted as final and “realistic” any more than
man’s ultimate position can be accepted as his efficient use by state or corporate
apparatus. It is no more “real”, however, for drama to “liberate” itself from this vise
by the route of romance and the spectacle of free will and a new heroic formula than
it is “real” now to represent man’s defeat as the ultimate implication of an overwhelming
determinism.”
Thus, Miller rejects both the extremist views of social determinism as well as
romantic free will. He feels that the reality or truth lies somewhere between the two.
Without being swayed by the intellectual fashions of his day, or the dramatic, he sticks
to his commonsense approach to life and theatre, based on his experience of life and
the stage, rather than any theory of life or drama. He relates the novelty of the theatre,
not to the newness of the spectacle on the stage, but to the changed realities of his time.
He rejects the mere innovativeness of the externals, and addresses the essentials in the
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experience of modern man, using externals only as means to that end - the end of
putting across the modern man’s experience. As he remarks, “Realism, heightened or
conventional, is neither more nor less an artifice, a species of poetic symbolization, than
any other form. It is merely more familiar in this age. If it is used as a covering of safety
against the evaluation of life, it must be overthrown, and for that reason above all the
rest. But neither poetry nor liberation can come merely from a rearrangement of the
lights or from leaving the skeletons of the flats exposed instead of covered by painted
clothes; nor can it come merely from verse, or from the expunging of common details
of life’s apparencies. A new poem on the stage is a new concept of relationships
between the one and the many and the many and history, and to create it requires
greater attention, not less, to the inexorable, common, pervasive conditions of existence
in this time and this hour. Otherwise, a new self-indulgence is created, and it will be left
behind, however, poetic its surface.”
Miller firmly believes in the two-fold character of drama : one, that it must be
worthy of its time, addressing the problems of the age; two, that it must know and
recognize its valuable traditions “and where it has departed from them.” He thinks that
“determinism” in any form, sociological, economic, or psychological, is a theory forming
“a closed circle.” He takes it as something essentially opposed to the very spirit of
drama. To take one example, he says, the very concept of hero is defeated by the
“concept of unbreakable trap,” being utterly “incompatible with a drama whose bounds
are set in advance by the theory. His argument is : “The history of man is a ceaseless
process of overthrowing one determinism to make way for another more faithful to life’s
changing relationships. And it is a process inconceivable without the will of man. His will
is as much a fact as his defeat. Any determinism, even the most scientific, is only that
stasis, that seemingly endless pause, before the application of man’s will administering
a new insight into causation.” Thus, Miller rejects all philosophic and psychological
theories that deny man his will. He also rejects all dramatics techniques that are derived
from such concepts or theories.
Hence Miller is wedded to realism only in its commonsense form. The moment
it becomes a determinism, he distances himself from it. He is not prepared to accept
man as only a manipulable material. Whatever deterministic forces may work to condition
man’s conduct, there always remains in the soul of man a residue which defies all
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theories and systems. He would like to believe, being convinced by the long history of
mankind, that man has a will, that, at last, moves individual life and shapes collective
history. As he expresses his firm belief, “The idea of realism has become wedded to the
idea that man is at best the sum of forces working upon him and of given psychological
forces within him. Yet an innate value, an innate will, does in fact posit itself as real, not
alone because it is devoutly to be wished, but because, however, closely he is measured
and systematically accounted for, he is more than the sum of his stimuli and is unpredictable
beyond a certain point. A drama, like a history, which stop at this point, the point of
conditioning, is not reflecting reality. What is wanted, therefore, is not a poetry of
escape from process and determinism, like that mood play which stops where feeling
ends or that inverted romanticism which would mirror all the world in the sado-masochistic
relationship. Not will the heightening of the intensity of language alone yield the prize.
A new poem will appear because a new balance has been struck which embraces both
determinism and the paradox of will. If there is one unseen goal toward which every
play in this book strives, it is that very discovery and its proof, - that we are made any
yet, are more than what made us.”
Thus, is concluded Miller’s theory (if it can be so called) of drama, which as

a matter of fact is not so much a theory as a set of views on drama, man, and life,
refusing to form a system. As is clear from the entire critical piece called “Introduction”,
he is wedded, as dramatist, to reality, not to realism. He is against formulating any
theory or system about man and life, drama and literature. His only demand is that
drama must be as dynamic as life is, as rich as human nature is, defying all traditions
and theories, but not unrelated to the traditions nor totally stranger to theory. Since it
has to address the ever-changing life around, it cannot be fixed in the framework of any
theory or system of determinism. It must belong to the tradition, but it must also depart
from tradition.
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN
STRUCTURE
11.1 Objectives
11.2 Death of a Salesman as a Tragedy
11.3 Willy Loman as Tragic Hero
11.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to discuss the Death of a Salesman as a tragedy,

exploring whether it falls well within the defined Greek Tragedy or has projected itself
as a distinct modern tragedy. The lesson also discusses the central tragic figure Willy
Loman as a true representation or epitome of Modern man struggling hard to come in
terms with the growing demands of family and society.
11.2 DEATH OF A SALESMAN AS A TRAGEDY
As we saw in the case of structure or form of Death of a Salesman, that it

is unAristotelian in its conception, so in the case of its generic character, the play
challenges or modifies some of the essentials of tragedy. Miller refutes the “charge” that
he attempts to write, in the story of Willy Loman, a tragedy. His clear contention is that
he did not set out to “write a tragedy” in this play, but only to “show the truth as I saw
it.” However, he was not impressed by the arguments of those who chose to characterize
his play as “pseudo-tragedy.” In his view, these arguments contained “ideas so misleading,
and in some cases so laughable that it might be in place to deal with a few of them.”
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Miller amusingly states that “Aristotle having spoken of a fall from the heights, it goes
without saying that someone of the common mold cannot be a fit tragic hero.” This said,
he proceeds to answer the question implied in the critiques of those who called his play
a “pseudo-tragedy.” It is now many centuries, he reminds his detractors, that Aristotle
lived. In Miller’s view, there is no more reason “for falling down in a faint before his
Poetics than before Euclid’s geometry, which has been amended numerous times by
men with new insights.” Making an implied fun of the blind followers of the traditional
concept of tragedy, he remarks, “nor, for that matter, would I choose to have my
illnesses diagnosed by Hippocrates rather than the most ordinary graduate of an American
medical schools, despite the Greek’s genius.” Miller rightly insists that things do change,
and that “even a genius is limited by his times and the nature of his society.”
After bringing his argument to rest on a convincing premise, Miller proceeds to

challenge some of the assumptions that lie behind the concepts Aristotle put forth in his
Poetics. He again makes a clever move by reminding us that Aristotle “lived in a slave
society.” On grounds of simple logic, therefore, he says he would deny this one of
Aristotle’s contentions (that tragedy takes place in a fall from the heights) on that very
ground that he lived in a slave society. His argument is that “when a vast number of
people are divested of alternatives, as slaves are, it is rather inevitable that one will not
be able to imagine drama, let alone tragedy, as being possible for any but the higher
ranks of society.” In his view, there is involved here a legitimate question of stature, but
none of rank, which is so often confused with it. Carrying the argument a step further,
he remarks that “so long as the hero may be said to have had alternatives of a
magnitude to have materially changed the course of his life, it seems to me that in this
respect at least, he cannot be debarred from the heroic role.” He rightly insists that the
question of rank had significance only to the extent it reflects the question of the social
application of the hero’s career. Miller gives an illustration to make clear his point, which
may be cited in full :
There is no doubt that if a character is shown on the stage who

goes through the most ordinary actions, and is suddenly revealed
to be the President of the United States, his actions immediately
assume a much greater magnitude, and pose the possibilities of
much greater meaning, than if he is the corner grocer. But at the
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same time, his stature as a hero is not so utterly dependent upon
his rank that the corner grocer cannot outdistance him as a tragic
figure — provided, of course, that the grocer’s career engages the
issues of, for instance, the survival of the race, the relationships of
man to God — the questions, in short, whose answers define
humanity and the right way to live so that the world is a home,
instead of a battleground or a fog in which disembodied spirits
pass each other in an endless twilight.
We must recall here Aristotle’s definition of the tragic hero who, he says, has
to be superior to the average man, by which he means moral superiority to the average
man. Of course, in his tribal times, the social and moral statuses were almost synonymous
with each other. Hence Miller’s contention that in a slave society, it was inconceivable
to imagine a slave having any superiority to those of the higher classes. At the same time,
it is important to remember that Aristotle lays emphasis not so much on the social rank
as on the moral superiority of the hero.
Miller proceeds further to build up a case for Death of a Salesman as a

tragedy, but not yet making any direct assertion. He begins by making cautious statements,
such as the following : “In this respect Death of a Salesman is a slippery play to
categorize because nobody in it stops to make a speech objectively stating the great
issues which I believe it embodies. If it were a worse play, less closely articulating its
meanings with its actions, I think it would have more quickly satisfied a certain kind of
criticism. But it was meant to be less a play than a fact; it refused admission to its
author’s opinions and opened itself to a revelation of process and the operations of an
ethic, of social laws of action no less powerful in their effects upon individuals than any
tribal law administered by gods with names.” Thus, slowly, and step by step, Miller
builds up a case for his modern man’s tragedy, trying to dispel from our minds the ghost
of the ancient concept that has been seated like a deity unchallenged and unchallengeable
for centuries. Gods and ghosts are not easy to dislodge. But it is also not easy to ignore
the force of argument that Miller puts forth in favour of a modern tragic story like that
of Willy Loman. Carrying it another step forward, he says, “I need not claim that this
play is a genuine solid gold tragedy for my opinions on tragedy to be held valid. My
purpose here is simply to point out a historical fact which must be taken into account
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in any consideration of tragedy, and it is the sharp alteration in the meaning of rank in
society between the present time and the distant past. More important to me is the fact
that this particular kind of argument obscures much more relevant considerations.”
Successfully creating consciousness in our mind the historical difference (of

ethics and values) between the immediate present and the distant past, showing how life
is a process of continuous change, and therefore the necessity to continuously keep
changing our perspective of reality, Miller, comes to the most crucial aspect of tragedy
— “the question of intensity.” His strongest argument appears at this stage, which runs
as under :
It matters not at all whether a modern play concerns itself with a

grocer or a president if the intensity of the hero’s commitment to his
course is less than the maximum possible. It matters not at all whether
the hero falls from a great height or a small one, whether his pride
brings the fall or an unseen pattern written behind clouds; if the
intensity, the human passion to surpass his given bounds, the fanatic
insistence upon his self-conceived role — if these are not present
there can only be an outline of tragedy but no living thing. I believe,
for myself, that the lasting appeal of tragedy is due to our need to
face the fact of death in order to strengthen ourselves for life, and
that over and above this function of the tragic viewpoint there are
and will be a great number of formal variations which no single
definition will ever embrace.
Here, we need to recall once more Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, which says
that in tragedy the action moves from happiness to suffering (and death), not from a
high position to a lower, although that may also take place along with the fall from
the position of happiness to that of suffering. Viewed from “humanist”, rather than
sociological or ethical position, which decidedly is the plane at which Aristotle’s
theory works, we need not have many definitions of tragedy. A definition that is free
from the surface layers of our social or cultural life is not affected by historical
changes, and as such can hold good through ages. Aristotle’s definition of tragedy
relates to a plane far beyond the social or cultural — the reason why it has held the
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ground through the ages.
Miller next takes up for consideration the issue of what he terms the “so-called
tragic victory, a question closely related to the consciousness of the hero.” In his view,
one makes a “nonsense” of this if “victory” is taken to mean that we feel happy if the
hero sacrifices himself for a cause, and sad if he dies without one. For Miller, “a man’s
death is and ought to be an essentially terrifying thing and ought to make nobody
happy.” As for “victory” in tragedy, it makes sense for him only if it is taken to mean
“an assertion of bravery” in the face of death. In his view, it is in this sense that separates
the death of man from the death of animals. In fact for Miller, “in a great variety of ways
even death the ultimate negative, can be, and appear to be, an assertion of bravery.”
It is this distinction between man’s death as an assertion of bravery and the death of
animals “which underlies any conception of a victory in death.” Working out a difference
between the hero’s death in a religious society and his death in a secular society, Miller
elaborates, “For a society of faith, the nature of the death can prove the existence of
the spirit, and posit its immortality. For a secular society, it is perhaps more difficult for
such a victory to document itself and to make itself felt, but, conversely, the need to
offer greater proofs of the humanity of man can make that victory more real. It goes
without saying that in a society where there is basic disagreement as to the right way
to live, there can hardly be agreement as to the right way to die, and both life and death
must be heavily weighted with meaningless futility.”
11.3 WILLY LOMAN AS TRAGIC HERO
The question whether Death of a Salesman is a tragedy largely hinges on

whether Willy is a tragic hero. While the author argues for Willy’s tragic heroism in his
death, the audiences as well as the reviewers felt otherwise. After having known rather
adverse reaction to the play as tragedy, Miller was pressed hard to make out a case
for Willy as a tragic hero, although he says he had “no need to be Willy’s advocate
before the jury which decides who is and who is not a tragic hero.” He does, however,
proceed at once to advocate Willy’s case. In his typical manner of pleading while
pretending not to plead, Miller offers a detailed defence for Willy as a tragic hero. His
strategy for making his point is, as usual, to first attack the tradition which comes in the
way of granting Willy the status of a tragic hero. Miller’s argument runs as under :
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It was not out of any deference to a tragic definition that Willy
Loman is filled with joy, however broken-hearted, as he approaches
his end, but simply that my sense of his character dictated his joy,
and even what I felt was an exultation. In terms of his character, he
has achieved a very powerful piece of knowledge, which is that he
is loved by his son and has been embraced by him and forgiven. In
this he is given his existence, so to speak - his fatherhood, for which
he has always striven and which until now he could not achieve. That
he is unable to take his victory thoroughly to his heart, that it closes
the circle for him and propels him to his death, is the wage of his sin,
which was to have committed himself so completely to the counterfeits
of dignity and the false coinage embodied in his idea of success that
he can prove his existence only by bestowing “power” on his posterity,
a power deriving from the sale of his last asset, himself, for the price
of his insurance policy.
Miller as writer expresses his “intentions” in creating the character of Willy.

However, there remains a problem about the play - that the audiences and critics
did not appreciate what the author had intended. Here is the perennial problem of
art : should we or should we not look for, and accept, the intention of the author
? Besides, there can be, as happened in this case, a dichotomy between what an
author intends and what the reader perceives. Death of a Salesman, intended as
a modern tragedy, was perceived by critics as a pathetic suicide, a passive suffering,
which is not a fit subject for tragedy (in the view of Arnold and Yeats), said the
critics.
Painfully aware of the difference between what he had intended and what the
audiences and reviewers had perceived, Miller offered an explanatory comment, saying,
“I must confess here to a miscalculation, however, I did not realize while writing the play
that so may people in the world do not see as clearly, or would not admit, as I thought
they must, how futile most lives are ; so there could be no hope of consoling the
audience for the death of this man. I did not realize either how few would be impressed
by the fact this man is actually a brave spirit who cannot settle for half but must pursue
his dream of himself to the end. Finally, I thought it must be clear, even obvious, that
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this was no dumb brute heading mindlessly to his catastrophe.” Miller, it seems, did
miscalculate on more than one thing here. For one thing, his expectation that the
audience will take Willy as their representative in the realization of life as futile and
would admit to this fact is decidedly a miscalculation, for all the people cannot be
expected to carry that feeling or having that realization, much less to “admit” it. For sure,
no one goes to the theatre to make a confession, even if one recognized the hero to
be representing his own life. No doubt, every tragic (or comic) hero, including Willy,
reflects something of our own nature - the reason why we like to watch or read a
tragedy - but no tragic hero can be viewed a representative of each audience, at least
no audience does. Willy, even though he represents a good deal of what an average
American experiences in the given conditions, cannot be taken as an archetype of the
American people. If Miller thought that this would be the case, he was seriously
miscalculating.
As for the death of Willy being tragic because he cannot settle on less than
the whole, Miller again seems to be miscalculating. For one thing, there is a basic
contradiction between making or creating a “tragic” character and making or creating
him a representative of the average or common American, for the average or the
common is not tragic or heroic. When we say this, we are not endorsing any social
or literary hierarchy; we are only stating that those who are tragic are so because they
show an uncommon bravery in undergoing the sufferings of life, in taking suffering
bravely, not breaking down under the pressure, much less to commit suicide. The
audience do not experience the tragic feelings of pity and fear by recognizing their
own weaknesses in the hero, much less by experiencing a sense of futility. On the
contrary, they experience the tragic feelings by watching someone showing greater
bravery or courage than they themselves possess in facing the odds of life, by seeing
the exceptional man going down in life suffering, but never surrendering to the odds.
In other words, the tragic hero is not a pathetic figure, nor a victim of circumstances.
He does not invite only the feeling of pity; there is always a feeling of awe and
admiration also. Even the murderers among them - a Macbeth or a Brutus - have
something exceptional in them that we admire. Their essential humanity, especially
awakened by the tragic events, showing a humane response, makes them tragic. Willy
seems to fall short of it all somewhere along the line. Only Miller knows why. The
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reader or viewer can only say what he feels on reading or watching. Miller also tells
us here what he intended. And the wide gap remains between the two - between the
author’s intention and the reader’s response.
Miller’s defence of Willy as a tragic hero is as long as his character’s case is

weak - the two are in direct proportion to each other. Here follows the opening
paragraph of that long defence :
I have no need to be Willy’s advocate before the jury which decides

who is and who is not a tragic hero. I am merely noting that the
lingering ponderousness of so many ancient definitions has blinded
students and critics to the facts before them, and not only in regard
to this play. Had Willy been unaware of his separation from values
that endure he would have died contentedly while polishing his car,
probably on a Sunday afternoon with the ball game coming over the
radio. But he was agonized by his awareness of being in a false
position, so constantly haunted by the hollowness of all he has placed
his faith in, so aware, in short, that he must somehow be filled in his
spirit or fly apart, that he staked his very life on the ultimate assertion.
That he had not the intellectual fluency to verbalize his situation is not
the same thing as saying that he lacked awareness, even an overly
intensified consciousness that the life he had made was without form
and inner meaning.
Well, if the students and critics, as Miller says, are blinded, by the
preponderousness of ancient definitions, “to the facts before them”, he himself is no
less; for else why must he insist upon the tragic status of his hero and on the play
being a tragedy? No one denies greatness to Death of a Salesman; it remains one
of the classics of modern literature. But if we call it a classic, placing it in the
company of The Sound and The Fury, The Waste Land, Ulysses, etc., we do not
mean to say that it is a “tragedy”. It need not be a tragedy to be a great work of
art. None of the works mentioned here is a tragedy, nor any of them was so
intended. They, including Miller’s own, are great because they are able to express
effectively the modern condition. It is widely recognized both by writers and critics
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in our time that the great works of modern literature including Miller’s are essentially
ironic, and that they are neither tragedies nor comedies in the conventional sense.
Miller owed no explanation to students or critics; no writer does. He should not
have unnecessarily taken it upon himself to prove or disprove what his work is like.
It has served no purpose, much less his own cause as a dramatist. If anything, it
spoils his case.
Miller, as said earlier, makes too long a case for Willy Loman to be taken the
way the author “intended” him to be taken. No one has any quarrel on what the author
intended, but we do have quarrel on what the author expects of us. If we grant him
freedom to “intend”, he has to grant us freedom to feel the way we do on viewing or
reading an expression or illustration of his intention. Whether he “miscalculated”, as he
says he did, or the readers and audiences misjudged, as he alleges they did, is a
pointless contronery raised by Miller. No writer need to raise such a quarrel. But Miller
does. He goes on with his long explanation of what Willy was meant to be, what Willy
comes out on the stage, etc. Here is the longest paragraph of his long argument that he
offers in defence of Willy :
To be sure, had he been able to know that he was as much the

victim of his beliefs as their defeated exemplar, had he known how
much of guilt he ought to bear and how much to shed from his soul,
he would be more conscious. But it seems to me that there is of
necessity a severe limitation of self-awareness in any character,
even the most knowing, which serves to define him as a character,
and more, that this very limit serves to complete the tragedy and,
indeed, to make it at all possible. Complete consciousness is possible
only in a play about forces, like Prometheus, but not in a play
about people. I think that the point is whether there is a sufficient
awareness in the hero’s career to make the audience supply the
rest. Had Oedipus, for instance, been more conscious and more
aware of the forces at work upon him he must surely have said that
he was not really to blame for having cohabited with his mother
since neither he nor anyone else knew his mother. He must surely
decide to divorce her, provide for their children, firmly resolve to
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investigate the family background of his next wife, and thus deprive
us of a very fine play and the name for a famous neurosis. But he
is conscious only upto a point at which guilt begins. Now he is
inconsolable and must tear out his eyes. What is tragic about this
? Why is it not even ridiculous ? How can we respect a man who
goes to such extremities over something he could in no way help
or prevent? The answer, I think, is not that we respect the man,
but that we respect the Law which he has so completely broken,
wittingly or not, for it is that Law which, we believe, defines us as
men. The confusion of some critics viewing Death of a Salesman
in this regard is that they do not see that Willy Loman has broken
a law without whose protection life is insupportable if not
incomprehensive to him and to may others; it is the law which says
that a failure in society and in business has no right to live. Unlike
the law against incest, the law of success is not administered by
statute or church, but it is very nearly as powerful in its grip over
men. The confusion increases because, while it is a law, it is by
no means a wholly agreeable one even as it is slavishly obeyed,
for to fail is no longer to belong to society, in his estimate.
Therefore, the path is opened for those who wish to call Willy
merely a foolish man even as they themselves are living in obedience
to the same law that killed him. Equally, the fact that Willy’s law
- the belief, in other words, which administers guilt to him - is not
a civilizing statute whose destruction menaces us all; it is, rather,
a deeply believed and deeply suspect “good” which, when
questioned as to its value, as it is in this play, serves more to raise
our anxieties than to reassure us of the existence of an unseen but
humane metaphysical system in the world. My attempt in the play
was to counter this anxiety with an opposing system which, so to
speak, is in a race for Willy’s faith, and it is the system of love
which is the opposite of the law of success. It is embodied in Biff
Loman, but by the time Willy can perceive his love it can serve
only as an ironic comment upon the life he sacrificed for power
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and for success and its tokens.
Miller’s analysis of “the law of success” as a sort of modern equivalent of the

ancient, “unwritten laws” of Greek tragedy is, for sure, a brilliant one. His intention, as
he explains, was to create a conflict between this law and its opposite in “the law of
love” is also understandable. The conflict could create a real tragic intensity in the hero’s
life. But, somehow, it does not actually take place. The play falls short of that intensity.
As far as I can see, the “law of success” works very well in the character of Willy. The
drive acts as a real social and psychological force to give real life to both Willy’s
character and to Willy’s play. But something remains amiss with the “law of love”. It
does not seem to work as powerfully. It falls short of the required measure of tragic
intensity. Both Biff and Willy seem to show it in much less measure than required by
the tragic conflict. One recalls here the Greek play Antigone. There, the conflict between
duty and love, between political order and the emotional order clash at the most intense
level, and the conflict assumes a real tragic character. Antigone is a convincing embodiment
of the “law of love”, so is Creon of the “law of duty”. Here, Biff as well Willy do not
convince us to be committed enough, not at the level of tragic intensity. However hard
Miller may try to explain his intention in making these two the embodiments of these
conflicting forces, they do not, as a matter of fact, convince us by their characters. Their
commitment remains rather tentative, too weak to acquire tragic intensity. We do not
doubt Miller’s intention, but we do not see it realized on the stage. The problem is not
with the play as such. It is a very great work of art, as asserted earlier, but it is not
a great tragedy as Miller is trying so hard to make us believe. He need not justify the
play for what it is not.
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN AS AN INDICTMENT OF
AMERICAN SOCIETY
STRUCTURE
12.1 Objectives
12.2 Death of a Salesman as an Indictment of American Society
12.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to discuss the play Death of a Salesman as an

indictment of American Society. The lesson also tries to familiarise the learner about the
author’s representation of middle class family life in America and how it ironically
refutes the idea of ‘American Dream’ both socially and economically.
12.2 DEATH OF A SALESMAN AS AN INDICTMENT OF AMERICAN

SOCIETY
In a certain quarter of the critical world, any literary work touching upon
social or economic aspect of contemporary society is easily characterized as a political
work, and is equally easily condemned on that very ground, fixing on it the ideological
lable of their liking or disliking. Miller rightly objects to this sort of critical activity. As
he puts it,
A play cannot be equated with a political philosophy, at least

not in the way a smaller number, by simple multiplication, can
be assimilated into a larger. I do not believe that any work of
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art can help but be diminished by its adherence at any cost to
a political program, including its author’s, and not for any other
reason than that there is no political program - any more than
there is a theory of tragedy - which can encompass the
complexities of real life. Doubtless an author’ politics must be
one element, and even an important one, in the germination of
his art, but if it is art he has created it must be definition bend
itself to his observation rather than to his opinions or even his
hopes. If I have shown a preference for plays which seek
causation not only in psychology but in society, I may also
believe in the autonomy of art, and I believe this because my
experience with All My Sons and Death of a Salesman forces
the belief upon me. If the earlier play was Marxist, it was a
Marxism of a strange hue. Joe Keller is arraigned by his son for
a wilfully unethical use of his economic position; and this, as the
Russians said when they removed the play from their stages,
bespeaks an assumption that the norm of the capitalist behaviour
is ethical or at least can be an assumption no Marxist can hold.
Nor does Chris propose to liquidate the business built in part
on soldiers’ blood; he will run it himself, but cleanly.
Miller offers here a sound argument that while a writer’s political awareness
gives his work a solid social fibre, he has to keep it free from his political opinions in
the interest of art, which, for sure, would destroy its artistic fibre. His contention is that
it is the writer’s “observation”, rather than his opinions, which should structure the play’s
vision, its form. If a writer submits his observation to his opinions or programme, his
work becomes a piece of propaganda, rather than a piece of art. He is again irked by
the labelling of All My Sons as a Marxist play, and tries hard to convince us that it is
not. His answer to the political charge is quite convincing in the realm of art. None of
his plays is a piece of political propaganda, but each of his plays is an evocation as well
as an indictment of a way of life which erodes individual humanity and destroys social
solidarity. He greatly succeeds in evoking as well as indicting the American way of life
inspired by the ideal of success.
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Continuing his discussion of the relation between art and politics in the context
of his own work, he takes up the case of Death of Salesman. His contention is that
there are no political theories implied in his plays, they are meant to stay as near the
truth as possible. He tries to explain how characters are not political, even social,
types, and that they are more life-like than allegorical figures. Here is his comment on
the play :
The most decent man in Death of a Salesman is a capitalist (Charley)

whose aims are not different from Willy Loman’s. The great difference between
them is that Charley is not a fanatic. Equally, however, he has learned how to
live without that frenzy, that ecstasy of spirit which Willy chases to his end.
And even as Willy’s sons are unhappy men, Charley’s boy, Bernard, works
hard, attends to his studies, and attains a worthwhile objective. These people
are all of the same class, the same background, the same neighbourhood.
What theory lies behind this double view ? None whatever. It is simply that
I knew and know that I feel better when my work is reflecting a balance of
the truth as it exists. A muffled debate arose with the success of Death of a
Salesman in which attempts were made to justify or dismiss the play as a
Left-Wing piece, or as a Right-Wing manifestation of decadence. The
presumption underlying both views is that a work of art is the sum of its
author’s political outlook, real or alleged, and more, that its political implications
are valid elements in its aesthetic evaluation. I do not believe this, either for
my own or other writer’s works.
Miller’s emphatic denial here for having carried, in Death of a Salesman, a

political agenda is well argued and is quite convincing. The comments to which he
makes reference only show how vitiated the critical climate in his country had become
in the age of McCarthism. The cold-war effects on the world of letters was, obviously,
no less than on the life in America in general. In such an atmosphere, undoubtedly, truth
is the first casualty. The vision of society gets coloured by the feelings of fears and
suspicions. They get hardened into irrational prejudices. Even small suspicions get
enlarged and exaggerated, and things assume gothic and supernatural dimensions. In
such a climate, no wonder, Death of a Salesman would also appear in red or yellow,
not in white.
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To drive home his point, Miller gives example of a well-known play with
political theme, and shows how a play by even an avowed socialist like Shaw cannot
be dubbed in mere political terms. He decries simplistic conclusions about works of art,
and counsels balanced artistic approach, rather than make polemical impositions on
literary texts. Here is the case he uses for illustration :
The most radical play I ever saw was not Waiting for Lefty but The
Madwoman of Chaillot. I know nothing of Giradoux’s political
alignment, and it is of no moment to me; I am able to read this play,
which is the most open indictment of private exploitation of the earth
I know about. By the evidence of his plays Shaw, the socialist, was
in love not in not with the working class, whose characters he would
only caricature, but with the middle of the economic aristocracy,
those men who, in his estimate, lived without social or economic
illusions. There is a strain of mystic fatalism in Ibsen so powerful as
to throw all his scientific tenets into doubt, and a good measure
besides of contempt - in this radical - for the men who are usually
called the public. The list is long and the contradictions are
embarrassing until one concedes a perfectly simple proposition. It is
merely that a writer of any worth creates out of his total perception,
the vaster part of which is subjective and not within his intellectual
control. For myself, it has never been possible to generate the energy
to write and complete a play if I know in advance everything it
signifies and all it will contain. The very impulse to write, I think,
springs from an inner chaos crying for order, for meaning, and
that meaning must be discovered in the process of writing or the
work lies dead as it is finished. To speak, therefore, of a play as
though it were the objective work of propagandist is an almost
biological kind of nonsense, provided, of course, that it is a play,
which is to say a work of art.
Here, in this part of his argument, Miller comes out most convincing. He
affirms his artistic creed in the social relevance of art, especially the dramatic art.
He explains how in Death of a Salesman, he addresses one of the key problems
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of modern American society, its tragedy in having opted for the law of success
in life, ignoring the more important spiritual needs of individuals who constitute
that society. The system that the law of success has evolved at the larger level
driving the American society involves a continuous devaluation of human values
and a simultaneous degeneration of each individual. The dreams that such a
society generates drives one like a machine in an onward march, irrespective of
what it crushes on the way, and what it eliminates and ignores on both sides of
its road to success.
At the same time, Miller feels irritated by those who cannot take any social
emphasis in art, and must, by the force of their political prejudice, see red in such an
attempt, labelling it as Marxist, socialist, or communist. Here, he makes a fine distinction
between art and propaganda. Like a romantic writer, he insists that art is fundamentally
exploratory and experiencial, since nothing is readymade or predecided, and that there
is only an urge to express the compelling feeling or emotion which clamours for order.
And it is only through the experience of writing itself that the artist discovers the
meaning, and imposes an order on the chaotic urge demanding expression. As against
such an artistic attempt and the resulting artistic work, there is a piece of propaganda,
written after a well laid-out plan, executing a scheme of ideas to be put across for a
definite purpose of persuading the audience to a definite ideology or viewpoint. Such
a piece of composition for Miller will be a dead work, having no claim to the objective
perspective of art. He hates to follow the mechanics of a propagandist writing, and
would not admit such a writing in the domain of art.
Miller’s test of success as dramatist is based on the response of the common

reader or audience who, having no notion of an ideology, instinctively and naturally
respond to a play, feeling as if what they see on the stage is the story of their own life.
It is only this response of the common, inarticulate humanity that confirms the social
bearing of a play as the writer’s success in making an artistic execution of his social
concern. Miller’s comment on this ‘‘common’’ response to Death of a Salesman is
highly useful for a proper appreciation of his play:
In the writing of Death of a Salesman I tried, of course, to achieve a

maximum power of effect. But when I saw the devastating force with which it
struck its audience, something within me was shocked and put off. I had thought
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of myself as rather an optimistic man. I looked at what I had wrought and was
forced to wonder whether I knew myself at all in this play, which I had written half
in laughter and joy, was as morose and as utterly sad as its audience found it. Either
I was much rougher than they, and could stare at calamity with fewer terrors, or
I was harboring within myself another man who was only tangentially connected
with what I would have called my rather bright veiwpoint about mankind. As I
watched and saw tears in the eyes of the audience I felt a certain embarrassment
at having as I thought convinced so many people that life was not worth living-for
so the play was widely interpreted. I hasten to add now that I ought not have been
embarrassed, and that I am convinced the play is not a document of pessimism, a
philosophy in which I do not believe.
Here, Miller feels satisfied, by the audience’s response to the play, by the mere
fact that it moved so may Americans to shed tears on the sad story of Willy Loman.
At the same time, he feels embarrassed that it should have an effect other then the
desired. As he tells us, he had conceived the play half in joy and laughter. Well, he
should not forget that it was only ‘‘half’’, and not full, joy and laughter in which he had
conceived it. The other half was pity and terror that the plight of Loman evokes. And
it is this other half that stayed deeper and lasting with audience. Well, it always does:
while the laughter and joy are for a moment, pain and suffering stay deep in the heart.
Miller, as usual, while discussing one aspect of his play, must always touch upon
another, although the two are never quite unrelated. Here, discussing the social theme
of Death of a Salesman, he touches upon the mood of the play, wondering, once
again, how it sounded with the audience a pessimistic note which he had never intended.
Miller need to be reminded here of his own earlier assertion that a play is an exploration
and an experience for a writer, and it is only while undergoing that experience that he
discovers what it really means. He might have begun in the mood of half joy and
laughter, but it turns serious along the way and ends in tragedy. Also, Miller had earlier
insisted upon the tragic intensity of Willy’s pursuit of his dream, comparing it with that
of the Greek tragic hero, considering Willy as the modern counterpart of the ancient
Greek. He should not forget now that it is the same tragic intensity of Willy’s experience,
with whom the average American instinctively identified, that sent them to tears. It was
only natural that they should feel that way watching an almost a repeat of their own
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individual experience in the society which they shared with Willy’s.
As discussed earlier, this gap between what the author intends and what the
audience perceive is always there. For while the intention is an idea, an emphasis, an
effect, the play’s experience, meant to embody and illustrate that intention, is not an
idea, but an experience. The writer as audience of that very experience of his embodied
or illustrated intention, I am sure, would discover the difference between what he had
intended and what he has accomplished. The experience does not work on the mind.
It works upon his heart, upon one’s emotions. As such, the effect of an experience will
always be different from the effect of an idea. No doubt, the writer’s rhetorical articulation
conditions in part the reader or audience response. But it is only partly. Partly, it is also
conditioned by his own mental and emotional constitution. After all, the reader or
audience are also conditioned, composed, by social forces as well as individual destiny,
and even when all, including the writer, may have shared a common social milieu or
environment, each gets shaped in his own way, different from others. Although there
remains considerable space of shared experience, there also remains at the same time
some private space for individual experience. Hence, the author’s intention and the
reader’s response can never be identical, nor the vaious responses of different readers
- the reason why we come upon so many, and so very different, interpretations of one
and the same text. All these differences notwithstanding, however, the validity of Miller’s
assertion remains, that a ‘‘play cannot be equated with a political philosophy.’’ Thus, it
can be safely summed up that while Death of a Salesman is a period piece, a social
document, it is not a piece of political propaganda.
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131
EXPRESSIONISTIC ELEMENTS IN DEATH
OF A SALESMAN
STRUCTURE
13.1 Objectives
13.2 Expressionistic elements in Death of a Salesman
13.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to appraise the learner about the expressionistic
elements in Death of a Salesman while exploring Expressionism as an Art movement
and its effect on Literature.
13.2 EXPRESSIONISTIC ELEMENTS IN DEATH OF A SALESMAN
The term was probably first used by Vauxcelles after a series of paintings by
Julien-Auguste Herve’ in 1901 under the title Expressionismes. Thus, its origin is
German, and it was used initially for a style of painting. As such, it refers to a movement
in Germany very early in the twentieth century (in 1905) in which a number of painters
sought to avoid the representation of external reality. Instead, they tried to project
themselves and a highly personal vision of the world. The term came to be applied to
dramatic literature, as some of the dramatists in Europe and America moved away from
Ibsenian realism and employed certain devices to focus on inner reality of life. The
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technique especially helped in projecting the inner life of their characters. Briefly
summarized, the main principle involved is that expression, not representation, determines
form of a literary work. Consequently, it also determines imagery, syntax, punctuation,
and so forth. Indeed, any of the formal rules and elements of writing can be bent or
disjointed to suit the purpose.
After painting, the movement had its greatest impact on the theatre. The theories
of expressionism found greatest favour in Germany and Scandinavia. In fact, expressionism
dominated the theatre for a time in the 1920’s in Europe. In its special mutation in
drama, it became a reaction against realism. It aimed to show inner psychological
realities. The origins of this are probably to be found in Strindberg’s The Dream Play
(1907) and The Ghost Sonata (1907). Wedekind’s plays during the same period were
also highly expressionistic. He wrote violent anti-bourgeois plays, three of which are
chiefly considered expressionistic: Spring Awakening (1891), Lulu (1895), and
Pandora’s Box (1902). The first drama of German expressionism came from a nineteen
year old dramatist, Reinhard Sorge, under the title Der Bettler (1912). About the same
time, a rival dramatist named Carl Sternbeim produced his expressionistic plays with the
titles Die Hose (1910) and Der Snob (1914).
After these beginnings came the chief spokesman of German expressionism,

namely Ernst Toller, and became the representative dramatist of the movement. He
was decidedly a revolutionary in dramatic style, almost an extremist. His first major
play in this style was Die Wandlung (1920), which, presented in thirteen tableux,
depicted the horrors of war as he himself had experienced them. This was followed
by Masse Mensch (1920) and Massenschlacht (1921). Another dramatist who made
a great impression at the time was Fritz von Unruh. He produced popular plays like
Offiziere (1911), Prinz Louis Ferdinand von Preussen (1913), and Ein Geschlecht
(1917). He continued writing expressionistic plays later in the 1920’s also. The most
prolific of the German dramatists, however, was George Kaiser, who gave tremendous
momentum to the new dramatic style by producing as many as seventy plays. Among
the major of these plays are considered Von Morgens Bis Mitternachts (1916) and
his triology comprising Die Koralle (1917), Gas I (1918), Gas II (1920). Another
dramatist in the movement was Walter Hasenclever, who, too, made an impact with
his Der Sohn (1914) and Antigone (1917). Most of these dramatists later influenced
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the best known dramatist today, Bertolt Brecht. In some of the plays of these writers,
we can see the making of the epic theatre whose representative became Brecht.
The movement did not take long to cross the Atlantic. It reached America in
1920’s, although by the mid-20’s it was almost over in Germany, and did not catch on
in France and other European countries. While England and France remained almost
unaware, or unaffected, by the movement of expressionism, it found quite a few enthusiasts
in America. The leading dramatists of the period, such as Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice,
Thornton Wilder, embraced the movement whole-heartedly. Compared to these, their
British counterparts in Eliot, Auden, and Isherwood accepted it in terms which are
almost negligible.
The movement of expressionism as such was never a very well-defined one.

What can be safely said about it, however, is that it was a revolt against the artistic
literary, and dramatic tradition of realism, both in subject matter and in style. The artists
of the movement, painters as well as dramatists, undertook to express a personal vision,
both of human life as well as of human society. They did this by exaggerating and
distorting what, according to the norms of artistic realism, are objective features of the
world. They also did it by embodying violent extremes of mood and feeling. Quite often,
their works implied that what was depicted or dramatized represented the experience
of an individual, standing alone and afraid in an industrial, technological and urban
society which, they felt, was disintegrating into pieces, even chaos. Those radical among
the expressionists, especially in politics, also projected utopian views of a future community
in a regenerate world.
Although painters and poets introduced symbolic characters and nightmarish

events, and departed from standard metre, syntax and poetic structure, it were the
dramatists who made the most noticeable impact. Drama, more than poetry and
novel, became the most prominent and widely influential form of expressionist writing.
Dramatists invariably tended to represent anonymous human types instead of
individualized characters. They also replaced plot by episodic renderings of intense
and rapidly oscillating emotional states. They quite often fragmented the dialogue into
exclamatory and seemingly incoherent sentences or phrases. Besides, it was very
common with them to employ masks. The stage in expressionistic drama turned into
rather abstract, lopsided, and sprawling sets. The new revolving stage and special
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effects in light and sound were also introduced.
The greatest influence of this German movement among the American dramatists
was on Eugene O’Neill. His play The Emperor Jones (1920) projected, in a sequence
of symbolic episodes, the individual and racial memories of a terrified African-American
protagonist. Similarly, in Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923), non-realistic devices
were used to dramatize a mechanical, sterile, and frightening world as experienced by
Mr. Zero. Here, too, the protagonist is a tiny and helpless cog in the severe system of
big business. When the Nazis suppressed expressionism in Germany during the 30’s, it
remained somewhat subdued in Europe also. But it cropped up in America again after
the war ended in 1945. Its direct or indirect influence has always been recognized on
the writing and staging of such plays as Thornton wilder’s The Sking of Our Teeth and
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. It suited both these playwrights, since both
wanted to give expression to their highly individualistic vision of American society. The
themes they had decided to write about and the protagonists they had picked up for
the purpose could not have found more appropriate expression than through the style
of expressionism.
Arthur Miller himself admits as to the conscious use of the various devices of
expressionism in Death of a Salesman. As he puts it,
Perhaps I can indicate its basic elements by saying the Salesman moves
with its arms open wide, sweeping into itself by means of a subjective
process of thought-connection a multitude of observations, feelings,
suggestions, and shadings much as the mind does in its ordinary daily
functionings. Its author chose its path, of course, but, once chosen, that
path could meander as it pleased through a world that was well
recognized by the audience. From the theatrical viewpoint that play
desired that audience to forget it was in a theatre even as it broke the
bounds, I believe, of a long convention of realism. Its expressionistic
elements were consciously used as such, but since the approach to
Willy Loman’s characterization was consistently and rigorously subjective,
the audience would not ever be aware - if I could help it - that they
were witnessing the use of a technique which had until then created only
coldness, objectivity, and a highly styled sort of play, I had willingly
135
employed expressionism but always to create a subjective truth, and this
play, which was so manifestly ‘‘written’’, seemed as though nobody had
written it at all but that it had simply ‘‘happened’’. I had always been
attracted and repelled by the brilliance of German expressionism after
World War I, and one aim in Salesman was to employ its quite
marvellous shorthand for humane, ‘‘felt’’ characterizations rather than
for purposes of demonstrations for which the Germans had used it.
Thus, we can see how Death of a Salesman was consciously constructed as

an expressionistic play. Miller chose to express his individual vision of an American
society. He makes the necessary exaggerations. He creates violent scenes in which Willy
and his sons participate. He also creates hysterical and obsessive scenes. The ‘‘low-
man’’ Willy is an anonymous American, who feels crushed by the crushing social system,
which heavily relies on ‘‘making it’’ at all costs. Those less human may succeed, but
others like Willy, who have not yet fully been mechanized and dehumanized by the
system, are bound to fail and become drop-outs of the system. And if they persist on
not getting dropped, they get crushed as Willy does at the end. Quite foolishly, he was
trying to stay on within the system even though the system had found him ‘‘unusable’’.
Willy’s anonymity and his smallness or lowness in comparison to the mighty

system, in which he wants to remain fitted as a cog, are effectively brought out
through stage-setting right at the start of the play. The authorial directions, with
which the play opens, clearly convey the expressionistic message. The light and
sound, the setting of the house’s location and its interior structure, are all designed
in accordance with the well-known practices of expressionist dramatists of the
1920’s in Germany. Miller makes wonderful use of those conventions. The dramatic
effectiveness of all these devices made the play a powerful tragedy, making the
play-goers highly sensitive to what is wrong with the society in which Willy is, like
so many, an anonymous individual. Note how the play opens with the seemingly
simple setting, which actually turns out to be symbolic, hiding under its simplicity the
terror of an individual person falling apart, indicating at the same time the falling to
pieces of a society, which has sold its soul, so to say, to the devil of material
success.
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A melody is heard, played upon a flute. It is small and fine, telling
of grass and trees and the horizon. The curtain rises.
Before us is the Salesman’s house. We are aware of towering, angular

shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides, Only the blue light of
the sky falls upon the house and the forestage. As more light appears,
we see a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile-
seeming home. An air of dream clings to the place, a dream rising
out of reality....
The entire setting is wholly or, in some places, partially transparent.

The roof-line of the house is one-dimensional; under and over it we
see the apartment buildings. Before the house lies an apron, curving
beyond the forestage into the orchestra... Whenever the action is in
the present the actors observe the imaginary wall-lines, entering
the house only through its door at the left. But in the scenes of the
past these boundaries are broken, and characters enter or leave a
room by stepping ‘‘through’’ a wall onto the forestage.
We can see from the opening authorial stage-directions, produced in part here,
how unrealistic, and highly symbolic the whole stage-setting is. The various effects of
spectacle produced here - those of light and sound, of structural repression, of the
broken wall of time - are meant to project the dark and obscure facts of life about an
individual in a society. Obviously, the attempt is to bring out in visual terms the inner
psychological and spiritual condition of this individual as well as the society which has
shaped him. Unlike the setting in a realistic play, where it is a dead piece of physical
scenery meant to create an illusion of reality, Miller has made it highly functional, by
making it symbolic of inner spiritual life.
In the conventions of expressionism, Miller has intensified every element of

drama, by making each tense and obsessive, hysterical and nerve-breaking, for that is
what modern industrial-society’s life is, and that is what is being dramatized in Death
of a Salesman. The dialogue, an important element of drama, too, is not in the tradition
of realism, as plain and simple conversation we come across in real life. Here, it is made
unreal by making it tense, broken, repetitive, indicating obsession and hysteria of the
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characters involved. Note how in the very opening of the play we see the functionality
of the dialogue at work:
LINDA, hearing Willy outside the bedroom, calls with some trepidations: Willy!
WILLY : It’s all right. I came back.
LINDA : Why? What happened Slight pause. Did something happen, Willy?
Willy : No, nothing happened.
LINDA : You didn’t smash the car, did your?
WILLY, with casual irritation : I said nothing happened. Didn’t you hear me?
LINDA : Don’t you feel well?
WILLY : I’m tired to the Death. The flute has faded away. He sits on the bed beside
her, a little dumb. I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t make it, Linda.
LINDA, very carefully, delicately: Where were you all day? You look terrible.
WILLY : I got as far as a little above Yonkers. I stopped for a cup of coffee. Maybe
it was the coffee.
LINDA : What?
WILLY, after a pause : I suddenly couldn’t drive any more. The car kept going off
onto the shoulder, y’know?
LINDA, helpfully : Oh. May be it was the steering again. I don’t think Angelo knows
the Studebaker.
WILLY : No, it’s me, it’s me. Suddenly I realize I’m going sixty miles an hour and I
don’t remember the last five minutes. I’m – I can’t seem to-keep my mind to it.
LINDA : Maybe it’s your glasses. You never went for your new glasses.
It can be seen how the conversation proceeds unfolding in an utter oblique

manner the horror that haunts Willy’s life, the automatic distraction that unconsciously
drives him off the road (of life). Linda speaks on the plane of realism, asking usual
questions about her husband’s unusual condition, and the more she persists on that
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plane, the greater is the expressionistic effect of Willy’s pauses, hints, and suggestions,
that lift the lid off his inner chaos. The dialogue does it all, and does it so effectively that
we fear the presence of something dreadful at hand. This feeling gets greatly intensified
as we go along the conversation, which finally brings out the horror that surrounds the
individual life in a society which wears attractive appearances but which conceals behind
those appearances a frightful emptiness, a void of nothingness.
The second Act of Death of a Salesman intensifies the dramatization of this

horror by showing more of Willy’s cracked mind, how, losing sense of time and place,
it freely moves back and forth, leading to nowhere, getting only more and more hysterical
in the orbit of his shattered dream, still in sight, and he still purshing it unstoppably. See
how it goes at this stage :
LINDA : Biff was very changed this morning. His whole attitude seemed to be hopeful.
He couldn’t wait to get downtown to see Oliver.
WILLY : He’s heading for a change. There’s no question, there simply are some men
that take longer to get – slidified. How did he dress?
LINDA : His blue suit. He’s so handsome in that suit. He could be a - anything in that
suit !
Willy gets up from the table. Linda holds his jacket for him.
LINDA : There’s no question, no question at all. Gee, on the way home tonight I’d like
to buy some seeds.
LINDA, laughing : That’d be wonderful. But not enough sun gets back there. Nothing’ll
grow any more.
WILLY : You wait, kid, before it’s all over we’re gonna get a little place out in the
country, and I’ll raise some vegetables, a couple of chickens... LINDA : You’ll do it yet,
dear.
Willy walks out of his jacket, Linda follows him.
WILLY : And they’ll get married, and for a weekend. I’d build a little guest house.
‘Cause I got so may fine tools, all I’d need be a little lumber and some peace of
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mind.
LINDA, joyfully : I sewed the lining....
WILLY : I could build two guest houses, so they’d both come. Did he decide how
much he’s going to ask Oliver for ?
LINDA, getting him into the jacket : He didn’t mention it, but I imagine ten or fifteen
thousand. You going to talk to Howard today ?.....
We can see how the shattered Willy is shown fallen apart through his conversation
with his wife. Linda, always trying to put his jacket on him, keeping him within the
conscious frame of mind, containing him within the limits of life here and now. But Willy
always walks out of his jacket. The very mention of Biff and Happy, his two sons, sets
him on to dreaming about them. And once he gets going, there is no stopping his mind.
He walks through the walls of time, of boundaries of space, and gets so seized by his
dream, which is the American Dream, that nothing can hold him back on the ground.
Also, the more he walks away from reality, the more horror comes upon us, the
audience, watching him walk through the walls, pursuing the inevitable disaster at hand.
Miller makes it clear in his “Introduction” to his Collected Plays, how, unlike
All My Sons, Death of a Salesman was meant to be an expressionistic play, focussed
wholly on what goes on inside Willy’s mind, which is brought out through the subtle
devices of the new technique of unrealistic drama. As he explains, “The first image
that occurred to me, which was to result in Death of a Salesman, was of an
enormous face the height of the proscenium arch, which would appear and then open
up and we would see the inside of a man’s head. In fact, The Inside of His Head
was the first title.... The image was in direct opposition to the method of All My Sons
- a method one might call linear or eventual in that one fact or incident creates the
necessity for the next. The Salesman image was from the beginning absorbed with
the concept that nothing in life comes “next” but that everything exists together and
at the same time within us; that there is no past to be “brought forward” in a human
being, but that he is his past at every moment and that the present is merely that which
his past is capable of noticing and smelling and reacting to.” All the assumptions,
stated by the dramatist here, are a direct opposition to those that lie behind the
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creation of a realistic play. In fact, almost every element of realistic drama is totally
reversed here to create a psycho-spiritual spectacle of inner life of an anonymous
individual, who represents the life of every anonymous individual in American society.
All the expressionistic devices used in Death of a Salesman combine to create an
effect of a searchlight which is focussed on whatever otherwise would remain hidden
from our naked eyes.
Miller’s expressionistic intention is more than clear in all the aspects of drama.
He modulates, modifies, and manipulates those aspects in order to make them
serviceable to his definite goal, which is Willy’s character, the inside of it. As he
explains, “I wished to create a form which, in itself as a form, would literally be the
process of Willy Loman’s way of mind... I wished to speak of the salesman most
precisely as I felt about him, to give no part of that feeling away for the sake of any
effect or any dramatic necessity. What was wanted now was not a mounting line of
tension, nor a gradually narrowing cone of intensifying suspense, but a bloc, a single
chord presented as such at the outset, within which all the strains and melodies would
already be contained.... As I look at the play now its form seems the form of a
confession, for that is how it is told, now speaking of what happened yesterday, then
suddenly following some convention to a time twenty years ago, then leaping even
further back and then returning to the present and even speculating about the future.”
Thus, the dramatist succeeds in creating a form which expresses and projects, not
depicts and represents, inner, not outer, reality. The symbolic setting with light and
sound effects, the motive-driven character, the stylized dialogue, the simultaneous time
continuum, all work to project, as if on a screen, the inside of Willy’s mind. Miller
has made the most memorable play by harmonising form with character, style with
substance, dialogue with design, all blending into an icon of artistic excellence,
unmatched by any other artistic product of its time.
1. Write, in 300 words, a note on the post-war American drama, with special
reference to Arthur Miller.
2. Discuss Arthur Miller as a “modern” dramatist.
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3. Examine Death of a Salesman as the picture of post-war America.
4. Death of a Salesman as an expressionistic play.
5. Examine the case of Death of a Salesman as a modern tragedy.
6. Discuss Willy Loman as a Tragic hero.
7. Write a note on the dramaturgy of Death of a Salesman.
1. Eric Bentley. The Dramatic Event. New York : Horizon Press, 1954.
2. John Gassner, Masters of the Drama. New York : Dover Publications Inc.,
1945.
3. John Gassner. The Theatre in Our Times. New York : Crown Publications,
Inc., 1954.
4. Joseph Wood Crutch. The American Drama Since 1918. New York: Random
House, Inc., 1939.
5. Burns Mantle. Contemporary American Playwrights. New York : Dodd,

Mead & Co., 1939.
6. Gerald Weales. American Drama Since World War II. New York : Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1962.
7. Elmer Rice. The Living Theatre. New York : Harper and Row, 1959.
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AMERICAN LITERATURE-II UNIT-IV
THE INVISIBLE MAN - RALPH ELLISON
STRUCTURE
14.1. Introduction
14.2. Objectives
14.3. The Times of Ralph Ellison
14.4. Ralph Ellison: A Biographical Sketch
14.5. Fill in the Blanks
14.6. Short Answer Questions
14.7. Answer Key
14.8. Let Us Sum Up
14.1. INTRODUCTION
Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man is one of the most important book written
about the reality of racism and the problem of black identity in the United States.
Through this work, Ellison urges the Blacks to forego the political struggle for equality
in favour of hard work. He asserts that with hard work, blacks can gain the trust and
support of the Whites in power, who will in exchange give them political equality. In the
context of the times of Ralph Ellison, the novel is steeped in the Blacks’ experience in
America and the human struggle for individuality. No wonder that Invisible Man spent
16 weeks on the best-seller list and won the National Book Award in 1953.
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14.2. OBJECTIVES
The lesson aims to introduce the learner to African-American literature through the
detailed reading and discussion of Ralph Ellison's novel The Invisible Man. The objective
is to provide elaborate analysis of the novel to enable the learner to answer questions
based on different aspects of the novel.
14.3. THE TIMES OF RALPH ELLISON
The first major movement of African-American literature, beginning around 1923

and flourishing until the depression, was Harlem Renaissance, which provided a stimulus
that lasted through the 1940s. The renaissance mainly involved a group of writers and
intellectuals associated (often loosely) with Harlem, the district of Manhattan that, during
the migration of African Americans from the rural South, became the major centre for
urbanized Blacks. Harlem was described by Alain Locke (1886-1954) as "not merely
the largest Negro community in the world, but the first concentration in history of so
many diverse elements of Negro life." The renaissance was associated with the New
Negro Movement, so called because of the anthology The New Negro (1925) edited
by Locke, whose introductory essay "The New Negro" is the closest to a manifesto or
statement of ideals that the Harlem Renaissance has. In it he writes of the Negro who
is no longer apologetic for blackness but who takes a new pride in a racial identity and
heritage, of the "renewed self-respect and self-dependence" felt in the contemporary
Black community, which is "about to enter a new phase." Elsewhere Locke urged
writers to examine the meaning of an African past and to utilize this in their art. This
urging coincided with a growing interest among the Whites at the time in primitivism,
evident for example in Eugene O'Neill's plays "The Emperor Jones" (1920) and "All
God's Chillun Got Wings" (1924). The Harlem Renaissance was partly fostered by the
existence of this interest, and by the concurrent development of American modernism
and the readiness to accept experimentation and to expand the breadth of artistic
expression.
One characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance was a move toward so-called

"high art" in Black writing, rather than the use of folk idioms, comic writing, and vernacular
that had often been considered the special realm of African-American writing up to that
time. In some respects this shift mirrors the change from rural to urban life for many
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blacks in this period. However, several of the Harlem writers made powerful use of folk
idioms such as the blues, particularly Langston Hughes (1902-67). The Harlem writers
also engaged in an intense debate regarding the place of the African American in
American life, and on the role and identity of the African-American artist.
Prominent Harlem Renaissance writers include James Weldon Johnson (1871-

1938), Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961), the Jamaican born Claude McKay (1889-
1948), Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen (1893-1964), Jean Toomer (1894-1967),
Arna Bontemps (1902-73), Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-81), and Helene Johnson (1907-
95).
The times of Ralph Ellison is referred to as the Civil Rights Movement era
(1954-1968). A large migration of African Americans began during World War I, hitting
its high point during World War II. During this Great Migration, Black people left the
racism and lack of opportunities in the American South and settled in northern cities like
Chicago, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy. This
migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed
to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration
also empowered the growing American Civil Rights Movement, which made a powerful
impression on Black writers during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Just as Black activists
were pushing to end segregation and racism and create a new sense of Black nationalism,
so too were Black authors attempting to address these issues with their writings.
One of the first writers to do so was James Baldwin, whose work addressed
issues of race and sexuality. Baldwin, who is best known for his novel Go Tell It on the
Mountain, wrote deeply personal stories and essays while examining what it was like to
be both Black and homosexual at a time when neither of these identities was accepted
by American culture. In all, Baldwin wrote nearly 20 books, including such classics as
Another Country and The Fire Next Time.
Baldwin's idol and friend was author Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called "the
greatest Black writer in the world for me". Wright is best known for his novel Native
Son (1940), which tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance
in Chicago. Baldwin was so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection of his own
essays Notes of a Native Son in reference to Wright's novel. However, their friendship
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fell apart due to one of the book's essays, "Everybody's Protest Novel", which criticized
Native Son for lacking credible characters and psychological complexity.
Ralph Ellison entered the league of great novelists of this period with the
publication of his novel Invisible Man (1952). Even though he did not complete another
novel during his lifetime, Invisible Man was so influential that it secured his place in
literary history.
The Civil Rights time period also saw the rise of female Black poets, most
notably Gwendolyn Brooks, who became the first African American to win the Pulitzer
Prize when it was awarded for her 1949 book of poetry, Annie Allen. Along with
Brooks, other female poets who became well known during the 1950s and 1960s are
Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez. During this time, a number of playwrights also came
to national attention, notably Lorraine Hansberry, whose play A Raisin in the Sun
focuses on a poor Black family living in Chicago. The play won the 1959 New York
Drama Critics' Circle Award. Another playwright who gained attention was Amiri Baraka,
who wrote controversial off-Broadway plays. In more recent years, Baraka has become
known for his poetry and music criticism. It is also worth noting that a number of
important essays and books about human rights were written by the leaders of the Civil
Rights Movement. One of the leading examples of these is Martin Luther King, Jr's
"Letter from Birmingham Jail".
14.4. RALPH ELLISON: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
The grandson of slaves, Ralph Ellison was born in 1914 in Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma, and was raised largely in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father was a construction
worker, and his mother was a domestic servant who also volunteered for the local
Socialist Party. From his birth, Ellison's parents knew he was bound for prosperity. His
father even named him for the great writer Ralph Waldo Emerson in an effort to ensure
such success. As Ellison himself says in reference to his parents, "no matter what their
lives had been, their children's lives would be lives of possibility." Mrs. Ellison, a maid,
would bring home books, magazines, and record albums that had been discarded in the
homes she cleaned. Ralph and his brother, Herbert, were supplied with chemistry sets,
toy typewriters, and a rolltop desk so that they would have the tools to succeed. When
he was a teenager, Ellison and his friends daydreamed of being "Renaissance Men".
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Therefore, they studied the values and attitudes of Native Americans and Whites, as
well as Blacks.
As a young man, Ellison developed an abiding interest in jazz music; he befriended

a group of musicians who played in a regional band called Walter Page's Blue Devils,
many of whom later played with Count Basie's legendary big band in the late 1930s.
Ellison himself studied the cornet and trumpet, and planned a career as a jazz musician.
Ellison revered and admired the musicians of his area. At Douglas High School, Ellison
followed his inclination toward music. From there, in 1933, he left Oklahoma and went
to Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama on a scholarship and dreamed of writing a
symphony. The Institute, which is now called Tuskegee University, was founded in 1881
by Booker T. Washington, one of the foremost Black educators in American history,
and became one of the nation's most important Black colleges. It later served as the
model for the Black college attended by the narrator in Invisible Man.
After there was a mix-up with his scholarship, Ellison chose to leave the Tuskegee
Institute in 1936 and go north in order to save money for tuition. Arriving in New York,
Ellison found it difficult to find work and even harder to find work as a musician. The
result was a succession of odd jobs at Harlem's YMCA with a psychiatrist. There,
Ellison acted as a file clerk and a receptionist, and held various other jobs around town.
During this time, Ellison met writer Richard Wright, who encouraged him to be a writer
rather than a musician. As an employee of the Federal Writers' Project, Ellison also
befriended many important African-American writers of the era, including Langston
Hughes. Ellison also befriended the eminent jazz writer and sociologist Albert Murray,
with whom he carried on a lengthy and important literary correspondence, later collected
in the book Trading Twelves. After a year editing the Negro Quarterly, Ellison left for
the Merchant Marines, in which he served during World War II. After the war, Ellison
won a Rosenwald Fellowship, which he used to write Invisible Man. The first chapter
appeared in America in the 1948 volume of Magazine of the Year, and the novel was
published in its entirety in 1952.
Employing a shifting, improvisational style directly based on Ellison's experience

of jazz performance, Invisible Man ranges in tone from realism to extreme surrealism,
from tragedy to vicious satire to near-slapstick comedy. Rich in symbolism and metaphor,
virtuosic in its use of multiple styles and tones, and achieving one of the most sensational
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debuts of any novel in American history, Invisible Man was hailed by writers such as
Saul Bellow and critics such as Irving Howe as a landmark publication; some critics
claimed that it was the most important American novel to appear after World War II.
Invisible Man was heavily influenced by the work of a number of twentieth-

century French writers known as the existentialists. Existentialism, whose foremost
proponents included Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, explored the question of
individuality and the nature of meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. Ellison
adapted the existentialists' universal themes to the Black experience of oppression and
prejudice in America. He also engaged powerfully with the tradition of African-American
social debate. In the character of Dr. Bledsoe, the novel offers a vehement rejection of
the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, which advocated that blacks should work
toward economic success as a means of achieving racial equality. It also critiques,
through the character of Ras the Exhorter, Marcus Garvey's philosophy of Black
nationalism.
Despite or possibly because of the overwhelming success of Invisible Man,

Ellison never published another novel in his lifetime. Though he published two books of
essays-Shadow Act in the 1960s and Going to the Territory in the 1980s. Ellison
spent his later decades laboring on a vast novel, which he never finished. Upon his death
in 1994 (April 16), Ellison left behind more than 2,000 pages of unedited, incomplete
manuscript. In heavily abridged and edited form, this manuscript was published five
years after his death under the title Juneteenth, to generally unfavorable reviews. In
1996, Flying Home: And Other Stories was published after being discovered in his
home.
Ellison is often criticized for not using his writing as a propaganda tool to elevate
the "black man in society." For instance, critic Richard Corliss writes, "The unfashionable
fact is that Ellison's writing was too refined, elaborate, to be spray painted on a tenement
wall. He was a celebrator as much a denouncer of the nation that bred him". Ellison
defended himself by saying, "I wasn't and am not concerned with injustice but with art."
14.5 FILL IN THE BLANKS
1. ________________ was the movement of African-American

literature that began around 1923.
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2. Ralph Ellison was born in ________________
3. ________________ was the first African American to win the

Pulitzer Prize.
4. Ellison's manuscript entitled ________________ was published

after his death.
5. The times of Ralph Ellison is referred to as the ________________.
14.6 SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
1. Write a short note on Harlem Renaissance.
2. Briefly discuss the times of Ralph Ellison
3. Briefly sketch the biography of Ralph Ellison
14.7 ANSWER KEY
1.Harlem Renaissance, 2. Oklahoma City, 3. Gwendolyn Brooks, 4. Juneteenth,

5. Civil Rights Movement era
SHORT ANSWERS:
A brief biographical sketch of Ralph Ellison: Ralph Waldo Ellison was an

African American novelist who was named after the celebrated poet Ralph Waldo
Emerson, by his father who wanted his son to become a poet. Ellison was born in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on 1st March 1914. He was born to Ida Millsap and Lewis
Alfred Ellison and had a brother Herbert Millsap Ellison. In his initial years Ellison and
his family had to deal with difficult times. Ralph lost his father. Lewis Alfred in the year
1917 in an accident when Ralph was at the tender age of 3. In his young years, he was
encouraged to read. He went to study music in Alabama's Tuskegee Institute in 1933
on a scholarship. Ellison left Tuskegee and moved to New York City in 1936 after his
third year as a result of financial issues, planning to complete his education in due time.
While at New York, Ellison studied photography in addition to sculpture. Ellison thoroughly
enjoyed New York's vibrancy and liveliness. However, the major turning point for
Ellison in New York was meeting with Richard Wright. It was Richard Wright who
pointed Ellison in the direction of writing and motivated Ellison to write for him. Ellison's
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work appeared in various publications including Antioch Review, New Challenge and
New Masses. He would write short stories, reviews and essays. Invisible Man was
published in 1952 by Random House. Afterwards, Ellison published more of his works.
Ellison began to teach both American and Russian literature at Bard College. He taught
at New York University from 1970 to 1979. He was awarded the Presidential Medal
of Freedom in 1969. In 1994, Ralph Ellison died of pancreatic cancer.
14.8 LET US SUM UP
Through this lesson, the Distance Learners are introduced to African American
writer Ralph Ellison. The lesson offers a biographical sketch about the author and also
gives a preview of the times that Ralph Ellison lived in. Students will be equipped with
background information which will help them understand Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible
Man.
_______
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STRUCTURE
15.1. Introduction
15.2. Objectives
15.3. Chapters : Summaries
15.6. Answer Key
15.7. Let Us Sum Up
15.1. INTRODUCTION
The lesson presents summary of each chapter of the novel. The major instances
of each chapter are touched upon and presented in a simple language.
15.2. OBJECTIVES
The lesson provides chapter-wise summary of the novel to facilitate better

appreciation of the text. Lucid yet explanatory, the lesson will help students get a gist of
each chapter and he or she can trace the development of novel step by step.
15.3. CHAPTERS : SUMMARIES
CHAPTER 1
The narrator, a man in his forties, opens the novel pondering over his past. He
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speaks of his grandparents, who were freed slaves and after the Civil War had believed
that they were separate from but equal to the Whites despite the segregation. The
narrator's grandfather lived a humble and quiet life after being freed. The narrator, while
relating an anecdote about his grandfather says that he spoke bitterly to his father when
on his deathbed. He shocked everybody by telling them that he was a traitor and a spy
(to his race), while comparing the lives of Black Americans to warfare. Now the
narrator too lives meekly; he too receives praise from the White members of his town.
But his grandfather's words haunt him, for the old man deemed such meekness to be
treachery.
Then the narrator recollects his high school graduation speech where he had
emphasized meekness and submission as key to the advancement of Black Americans.
His audience comprised the leading White citizens of the town. He is supposed to take
part in a "royal battle"-a blindfolded boxing match-that is part of entertainment package
for the evening. Along with some other Black boys, the narrator is forced to look at a
naked blonde White who has American tattooed on her stomach. Furthermore, they are
lunge for coins on a rug that has an electric current running through it and are forced
to fall face forward onto the rug. After all the humiliation, the narrator gives his speech.
The White men all laugh and ignore him but he finally gets his award: a calfskin briefcase
with a scholarship to the state college for Black youth.
That night, the narrator has a dream of going to a circus with his grandfather,
who refuses to laugh at the clowns. His grandfather instructs him to open the briefcase.
Inside the narrator finds an official envelope with a state seal. He opens it only to find
another envelope, itself containing another envelope. The last one contains an engraved
document reading: "To Whom It May Concern . . . Keep This Nigger-Boy Running."
The narrator wakes with his grandfather's laughter ringing in his ears.
CHAPTER 2
As the chapter opens, the narrator is a student at the black college to which he
received a scholarship. He remembers with particular fascination the college's bronze
statue of its Founder, a Black man. He describes the statue as cold and paternal, its
eyes empty. As he struggles towards acceptance of his identity, he takes a job driving
Mr. Norton, the college's White millionaire trustee, around the campus. In an attempt
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to show the old gentleman the countryside near the campus, the narrator accidentally
drives Norton to an area of ramshackle cabins which once served as slave quarters but
now house poor Black sharecroppers. Though Norton finds the cabins intriguing. The
narrator tells him about Jim Trueblood who lives there but is regarded with hatred and
distrust because he has impregnated his own daughter. Norton is horrified but insists on
speaking with Trueblood.
Trueblood explains that he had a strange dream and woke to find himself having
sex with his daughter. Trueblood expresses wonder at the fact that white people have
showered him with more money and help than before he committed the unspeakable
taboo of incest. Norton, shocked at the story, hands Trueblood a one hundred dollar
bill to buy toys for his children. He gets back into the car in a daze and requests some
whiskey to calm his nerves.
CHAPTER 3
The narrator, fearing that Norton might die from shock, drives to the Golden
Day, which is disreputable tavern and serves Black people. Big Halley, the bartender,
refuses to let the narrator take a drink outside to Norton. Inside, Norton is propositioned
by a prostitute, insulted by a veteran, and overwhelmed by the "inmates" - institutionalized
war veterans who fill the bar.
After the narrator and Norton witness the chaotic events at the Golden Day,
including the brutal beating of the veteran's attendant, Supercargo, the narrator finally
manages to get a distraught Norton - collapsed under the strain of being in a situation
where he has no control - back into the car, and the two head back to the college
campus.
CHAPTER 4
Mr. Norton asks to be taken to his room and requests a personal visit from Dr.
Bledsoe, the president of the college. Bledsoe becomes furious when the narrator
informs him of the afternoon's events, scolding him that he should have known to show
powerful White trustees only what the college wants them to see. When Bledsoe arrives
at Norton's room, he orders the narrator to leave and instructs him to attend the chapel
service that evening. In his room later that afternoon, the narrator receives a message
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that Bledsoe wants to speak with him in Norton's room. He arrives to find only Mr.
Norton, however, who informs him that Bledsoe had to leave suddenly but that the
narrator can find him in his office after the evening service. Norton says that he explained
to Bledsoe that the narrator was not responsible for what happened and adds that he
thinks that Bledsoe understands.
CHAPTER 5
Attending chapel, the narrator hears Reverend Homer A. Barbee, an African

American blind preacher from Chicago, deliver a powerful sermon about the Founder
and his vision for the college. He tells the story of the Founder, who was born into
slavery and poverty but possessed a precocious intelligence. The Founder was almost
killed as a child when a cousin splashed him with lye, rendering him impotent. After
nine days in a coma, he woke, as if resurrected. He taught himself how to read and
later escaped slavery. He went north and pursued further education. After many years,
he returned to the South and founded the college to which he devoted the rest of his
life's work. The sermon deeply moves the narrator. Barbee stumbles on the way back
to his chair, and his glasses fall from his face. The narrator catches a glimpse of
Barbee's sightless eyes and realizes that Barbee is blind.
CHAPTER 6
After the service, the narrator meets with Bledsoe, who is angry that the narrator
took Norton to the old slave quarters, Jim Trueblood's cabin, and the Golden Day.
Though the narrator explains that Norton ordered him to stop at the cabin, Bledsoe
replies that he should know how to lie his way out of such situations. Bledsoe says that
he will have to investigate the veteran who mocked Norton. He picks up a slave's leg
shackle and informs the narrator that he must be disciplined. The narrator threatens to
tell everyone that Bledsoe broke his promise to Norton not to punish him. Bledsoe
responds angrily that he has worked hard to achieve his position of power and that he
doesn't plan to lose it. Rather than expel the narrator outright, Bledsoe tells him to go
to New York for the summer and work to earn his year's tuition. Bledsoe hints that if
he does well he will earn the right to return to school. He offers to send letters of
recommendation to some of the trustees to ensure that the narrator gets work. The next
day, the narrator retrieves seven sealed letters and assures Bledsoe that he doesn't
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resent his punishment. Bledsoe praises his attitude, but the narrator remains haunted by
his grandfather's prophetic dying words.
CHAPTER 7
On the bus to New York, the narrator encounters the veteran who mocked Mr.
Norton and the college. Dr. Bledsoe has arranged to have the man transferred to a
psychiatric facility in Washington, D.C. He also tells the narrator that he hoped for a
transfer to Washington, D.C., for a long time but wonders what brought it about so
suddenly. The narrator cannot believe that Bledsoe could have anything to do with the
transfer, but the veteran winks and tells him to learn to see under the surface of things.
Crenshaw, the veteran's attendant, tells him that he talks too much. The veteran replies
that he verbalizes things that most men only feel. Before switching to another bus, the
veteran advises the narrator to serve as his own father. Arriving in New York, the
narrator takes the subway to Harlem, where he is amazed to see so many black people.
He also sees a gathering on a sidewalk in Harlem, in which a man with a West Indian
accent (whom he later learns is Ras the Exhorter) gives a speech about "chasing them
[the whites] out." The narrator feels as though a riot might erupt at any minute. He
quickly finds a place called the Men's House and takes a room.
CHAPTER 8
The narrator, over the next few days, delivers all of the letters of recommendation
he was carrying except with him except for one, which is addressed to a Mr. Emerson.
A week passes, but he receives no response. He tries to telephone the addressees, all
trustees of the college, only to receive polite but firm refusals from their secretaries. His
money is running out, and he begins to entertain vague doubts about Bledsoe's motives.
CHAPTER 9
The narrator sets out to deliver his last letter and meets a man named Peter
Wheatstraw, who speaks in a Black dialectical banter and recognizes the narrator's
Southern roots. Wheatstraw describes Harlem as a bear's den, which reminds the
narrator of the folk stories of Jack the Rabbit and Jack the Bear. The narrator stops
for breakfast at a deli. The waiter says he looks like he would enjoy the special: pork
chops, grits, eggs, hot biscuits, and coffee. Insulted by the waiter's stereotyping, the
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narrator orders orange juice, toast, and coffee.
The narrator arrives at Mr. Emerson's office. He meets Emerson's son, a nervous
little man. The son takes the letter and goes off to read it, only to return with a vaguely
disturbed expression, chattering about his analyst and about injustice. Finally, the son
allows the narrator to read the letter: Bledsoe has told each of the addressees that the
narrator has earned permanent expulsion and that Bledsoe had to send him away under
false pretenses in order to protect the college; Bledsoe requests that the narrator be
allowed to "continue undisturbed in [his] vain hopes [of returning to college] while
remaining as far as possible from our midst." Emerson says that his father is a strict,
unforgiving man and that he will not help the narrator, but he offers to secure the narrator
a job at the Liberty Paints plant. The narrator leaves the office full of anger and a desire
for revenge. He imagines Bledsoe requesting that Emerson "hope the bearer of this letter
to death and keep him running." He calls the plant and is told to report to work the next
morning.
CHAPTER 10
The narrator arrives at the Liberty Paints plant and is greeted by a sign that
reads "keep America pure with liberty paints." The narrator learns that the factory
makes paint for the government and that he is one of six "colored college boys" hired
to replace union workers out on strike. Mr. Kimbro is the narrator's supervisor and he
leads him to a long room filled with buckets of paint. Kimbro shows him how to do the
job: he opens buckets filled with a foul milky brown substance and drips ten drops of
another black chemical into them; then he stirs the buckets vigorously until the paint
becomes glossy white; last he applies the paint to small rectangular wooden boards and
waits for them to dry. If they dry brilliant white then the job has been done correctly.
Kimbro boasts that the Optic White of Liberty Paints is the purest white that can be
found anywhere and that it can cover up almost anything.
Kimbro asks the narrator to go to the tank room to get more black chemical
when only a bit is left. In the room, the narrator is confused on seeing seven tanks
marked by codes that he does not understand. He chooses one by scent and continues
to mix and paint the tiles, but the tiles turn out sticky and gray instead of being hard and
having a shine. When Kimbro checks it, he is furious at the narrator for putting
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concentrated remover into the paint and thereby ruining some seventy-five buckets of
paint. Kimbro fills the dropper with the correct chemical and leaves the narrator to his
job. The paint samples still dry with a vague gray tinge, but Kimbro doesn't seem to
notice.
Later, the narrator is sent to the furnace room to assist the engineer, Lucius
Brockway. Brockway instructs the narrator to watch the pressure gauges on the boiler.
Brockway is proud of his role as the maker of Optic White paint, the trademark color
of the company, since he alone can mix the base for the paint correctly. The slogan for
the colour is, "If It's Optic White, It's the Right White." The slogan reminds the narrator
of an old Southern saying: "If you're White, you're right."
Lunchtime arrives, and the narrator returns to the locker room to retrieve his
lunch, interrupting a union meeting. He is accused of being an informer by some members
when they hear that he is Brockway's assistant. The men resolve to investigate the
narrator and then allow him to retrieve his lunch. When Brockway finds out about the
union meeting, he is angry with the narrator assuming that he too is a member of the
union. He threatens to kill the narrator if he doesn't leave the plant. Following the
narrator denial to the accusation, the two get into a physical fight in which Brockway
has his teeth broken. The narrator notices the boilers hissing, and Brockway shouts for
him to turn the valve in order to lower the pressure. The narrator doesn't have the
strength to do so, however, and the boiler explodes. The narrator falls unconscious.
CHAPTER 11
When the narrator wakes up, he finds himself in the hospital. He sees a man-
a doctor-with what appears to be a bright third eye glowing in the centre of his
forehead. The narrator realizes that he is wearing a white pair of overalls. He loses
consciousness again after the doctor gives him something to swallow. Later, he wakes
on a cot to see the third eye burning into his own eye. The doctor asks him for his name,
but the narrator can only think about his pain. The "pink-faced" doctors begin using
electrical shock treatment on him. The narrator cannot remember how he came to be
in the hospital. The doctors argue about how to proceed with the narrator: one wants
to continue with the electrical shocks, while another believes that such means are rather
primitive and argues that they wouldn't use electrical shocks on someone with a Harvard
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or New England background. Someone even suggests castration, but the doctor in
charge chooses to continue with the electric shocks. As the shocks hit the narrator,
someone muses that he is dancing, noting that "they [Black people] really do have
rhythm."
The narrator is unable to make sense of what the doctor is saying or asking him.
They write their question down on a card: what is your name? The narrator realizes that
he doesn't remember his name. The doctors bombard him with other written questions
relating to his identity, but the narrator only stares back. The narrator learns that he is
in the factory hospital. The doctors tell him that he is cured and should dress and sign
some papers in order to receive his compensation check. The director of the hospital
urges him to find a quieter, easier job, since he is not ready for the difficulties of factory
work. The narrator asks whether the director knows Mr. Norton or Dr. Bledsoe, joking
that they are old friends of his.
The narrator leaves the hospital feeling like an alien. Roaming around in state of
inertia, he realizes that he no longer fears men like the trustees and Bledsoe. He wanders
into the subway and sees a platinum blonde woman biting a red apple as the train heads
for Harlem.
CHAPTER 12
The narrator exits the subway and collapses on the street. He is carried to the
home of a kind Black woman named Mary. When he wakes, Mary asks him the reason
for coming to New York City from the South. He replies that he wanted to be an
educator. She cautions against the city's corrupting influence, She, too, came from the
South and says, "I'm in New York, but New York ain't in me." When the narrator is
about to go, Mary tells him that he should come back if he ever wants to rent a room
somewhere besides the Men's House, adding that she offers a fair rent.
The narrator's white overalls draw hostile stares at the Men's House. He knows
that he can no longer live there. As he is about to take an elevator, he takes note of
a laughing man and mistakes him to be Dr. Bledsoe. He promptly empties a spittoon
on the man's head but realizes that the man is a notable Baptist preacher. He escapes
before anyone could catch him. He later persuades an amused porter to retrieve his
belongings from inside the building and learns that the Men's House has banned him for
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ninety-nine years and a day. The narrator takes a room at Mary's apartment but is
irritated by her for she hopes that he will take up some leadership role in the Black
community. The narrator begins to feel the desire for activism anyhow; within himself he
feels a "spot of black anger." His old urge to give speeches returns as winter settles over
New York.
CHAPTER 13
When the narrator comes across a street vendor selling baked yams, he becomes
nostalgic and remembers the South. As he eats them, he feels totally free. As he
imagines his classmates' being taken aback on seeing him with these emblems of Southern
culture, he also derides them for moving away from all of the things that they in fact like:
yams, chitterlings, and boiled hog's maws. He comes upon a crowd of people gathered
to watch as an eviction takes place. The crowd regards this act of dispossession as a
common happening. As White men drag household furnishings out of the house and drag
a chair out with an old Black woman still sitting in it, the narrator can relate to the
occurrence and identifies with the couple. In the spur of the moment, out of rage, he
delivers an inciting speech that provokes the crowd to resist the eviction. People then
carry the couple's belongings back into the building.
The police arrive, and the narrator flees. Later, he encounters a White man who
compliments the narrator of his speech on the street and claims to be his friend. He
takes the narrator to a coffeehouse and tries to persuade him to become a paid
spokesperson for his political organization's Harlem branch. The narrator turns him
down; the man tells him that his name is Brother Jack and gives him a phone number
to call should he change his mind.
CHAPTER 14
When the narrator returns to Mary's home, he realizes that she has been keeping
him and also feeding him for free since his compensation check from the factory ran out
weeks earlier and it was now time to repay. So, he changes his mind and calls the
number that Jack gave him and agrees to meet him on Lenox Avenue. He has then
driven to a hotel called the Chthonian, where a cocktail party seems to be taking place.
Jack introduces the narrator to his mistress, Emma, who whispers loud enough to Jack,
"But don't you think he should be a little blacker?"
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Jack explains that his organization, called the Brotherhood, focuses on social
activism, banding together to fight for people who have been "dispossessed of their
heritage". He says that the narrator will get some documents to read which will help him
decide whether he wishes to join the organization.
The narrator accepts the position, and Jack informs him that he must change his
name, move to an apartment provided by the organization, and be cut off from his past.
In fact, Jack writes down the narrator's new name on a slip of paper and gives it to
him, saying: "This is your new identity." He also gives the narrator money to pay his due
rent and says that he will now get sixty dollars a week. The narrator returns to Mary's
apartment late that night.
CHAPTER 15
The next morning, the narrator notices for the first time an object standing next
to his door: a cast-iron coin bank in the form of a Black man with bright red lips. When
one places a coin into the statue's hand and presses a lever on the back, the coin flips
into the grinning mouth. The narrator breaks the statue in anger. Later, he cleans up the
pieces, along with the coins that scatter on the floor. Embarrassed and reluctant to inform
Mary about what he has done, he collects the pieces in an old newspaper and hides the
package in his coat pocket. He pays his debt and leaves Mary's house without telling her
that he will not return.
When the narrator throws the package into a garbage can outside, an old
woman demands that he take his trash out of her can. He then leaves the package in
the snow at an intersection, but a man, thinking that the narrator has left the package
behind accidentally, follows him across the street and gives it back to him. The narrator
finally drops the package into his briefcase and gets onto the subway. He notices people
reading newspapers that declare in bold headlines: "Violent Protest Over Harlem Eviction."
He is asked by Jack to go to his new apartment on the Upper East Side and read the
literature left there for him. He is expected to give a speech at a Harlem rally scheduled
for that evening.
CHAPTER 16
The narrator is taken to a rally, which is taking place in a former boxing ring, and
is told to hold off his speech until the crowd be frantic and overexcited. The narrator
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notices a torn photograph of a former prizefight champion who lost his vision during a
rigged fight and later died in a home for the blind. As the narrator climbs the ramp to the
stage, the spotlight blinds him temporarily. The crowd is shouting slogans: "No more
dispossessing of the dispossessed!" As the narrator stands in front of the microphone, he
is unable to see the audience due to the glare of the light falling on him. In his nervousness,
he forgets all of the catchphrases that he had read in the literature of the Brotherhood and
decides to improvise.
The narrator's speech plays on an extended metaphor of blindness and aligns

itself along a dichotomy of "they" and "we." In his oratory, the narrator says that "they"
have dispossessed each one of "us" of an eye. "We" walk down the sidewalks, he says,
blind on one side, while an oily scoundrel in the middle of the street throws stones at
"us." The narrator calls to the crowd to regain "our" sight and band together so that "we"
might see both sides of the street. The audience applauds thunderously when he finishes.
He steps blindly from the platform, stumbling into the arms of his admirers.
Afterward, some of the Brothers criticize his speech for its inflammatory,
unscientific style. They decide to send the narrator to Brother Hambro to nurture his
natural talent for speaking but infuse it with the rhetoric of the Brotherhood. The narrator
returns home feeling like a new person, radically different from the boy expelled from
college. Yet, in his moment of pride and triumph, memories of his grandfather fleetingly
haunt him.
CHAPTER 17
After the narrator has studied the Brotherhood's ideology intensely for months,
the committee votes to appoint him as chief spokesperson for the Harlem district. The
narrator receives his own office and meets Tod Clifton, a black member of the executive
committee, who informs him that Ras the Exhorter, a militant Black nationalist, remains
the chief opponent of the Brotherhood in Harlem.
One day, the Brotherhood holds a rally in protest of what it deems to be racist
eviction policies in Harlem. Ras and his followers disrupt the rally, and a brawl ensues.
In the darkness of the night, the narrator has difficulty distinguishing his followers from
those of Ras. He finds Clifton and Ras locked in an intense fight. Ras pulls a knife but
decides to spare Clifton, citing their common skin color. He asks Clifton why he works
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with the Brotherhood, in which black members constitute the minority, and accuses him
of turning his back on his heritage. He insinuates that the Brotherhood lured Clifton with
the promise of White women and warns that the White members of the Brotherhood
will eventually betray the Black members.
The narrator begins calling Harlem community leaders for support in the
Brotherhood's fight against unfair eviction. These leaders all fall in line behind the
Brotherhood on the issue. The narrator's new name becomes well known in the
community. He throws himself into his work, organizing marches and rallies. Yet he still
has nightmares about Dr. Bledsoe, Lucius Brockway, and his grandfather, and he feels
a profound split between his public and private selves.
CHAPTER 18
The narrator gets an unsigned and unstamped letter cautioning him not to "go too
fast" and to remember that he is a Black man in a White world. He asks Brother Tarp,
another Black member, if he is disliked by anyone. Tarp assures him that he is supported
by all and asks the narrator if he comes from the South. Brother Tarp tells the narrator
about his imprisonment for more than 19 years because he dared to say "No" to a White
man, and he gives the narrator a link from the chain he was forced to wear as an inmate.
Another Black member of the group, Brother Wrestrum, glimpses the link of the iron chain
on the narrator's desk and suggests that he put it away because it "dramatizes" the racial
differences in the Brotherhood. Wrestrum suggests that some members of the Brotherhood
hold racist attitudes, but the narrator pays no attention to him. Wrestrum then suggests
Brotherhood members could wear an emblem so that the Brothers can recognize their
own members and narrates an incident where Tod Clifton beat up a White Brother during
a street brawl after mistaking him to be one of the ruffians at the rally.
Then, a magazine editor calls the office to request an interview with the narrator.
The narrator tries to convince the editor to interview Clifton instead, but the editor
mentions the narrator's favourable public image. Though the narrator emphasizes how
every Brother is a cog in the machine, each sacrificing personal ambitions for the benefit
of the whole organization, he is encouraged by Wrestrum. Partly to spite Brother
Wrestrum, he agrees to give the interview. About two weeks later, the narrator is
shocked to learn that Brother Wrestrum has filed charges against him, accusing him of
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being an opportunist. The disciplinary committee revokes the narrator's leadership role
as spokesman for the Harlem District and puts him in charge of the Woman Question.
Angry and humiliated, the narrator leaves Harlem without saying goodbye to anyone.
Although disappointed, the narrator decides to dedicate himself fully to his new assignment.
He packs his papers into his briefcase and leaves.
CHAPTER 19
After the narrator's first lecture as a women's rights activist, a White woman
invites him into her home to discuss the Brotherhood's ideology. But she, being a
neglected wife, seduces him and the two end up in bed together. Later in the night, the
woman's husband comes home but only bothers to say goodnight to his wife, who
sleeps in a separate bedroom. The narrator, horrified, dresses and rushes from the
building, unsure of whether he dreamed the husband, and incredulous that the husband
seemed not to notice him. He vows never to get himself into such a situation again.The
Brotherhood summons the narrator to an emergency meeting. He is told that he will be
transferred back to Harlem and that Clifton has disappeared.
CHAPTER 20
Back in Harlem, the narrator visits his old haunts, a bar. When he recognizes
two men who have attended some of his speeches and addresses them as "brother", he
gets a hostile reaction. He learns that many of the jobs that the Brotherhood procured
for Harlem residents have disappeared and that these men too have left the organization.
When he returns to his old office to look for Brother Tarp, he is unable to find anyone
in the building. He discovers that Harlem membership in the Brotherhood has declined
due to a change in the Brotherhood's emphasis from local issues to national and international
concerns.
The narrator then waits to be called to the strategy meeting that Brother Jack
mentioned, but never gets a call. When he reaches the headquarters, the meeting already
in progress. The narrator realizes that he was intentionally not included. Furious, he
leaves the building and goes to shop for shoes. He spots Clifton peddling "Sambo" dolls
in the street. (The American stereotype of "Sambo" dates back to the time of slavery,
denoting a docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, slave.) Clifton sings out a jingle while
the dolls dance in a loose-limbed motion. The narrator feels betrayed. Then, some
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police officers coming toward Clifton and sweeps up his Sambo dolls, and runs around
the corner. The narrator spots one of the dolls left behind and seeing one of the
policemen nearby, he keeps it in his briefcase. As he is walking away, he sees a huge
crowd gathered at another corner. Clifton stands in the midst of it, flanked by policemen.
The narrator then sees Clifton strike one of the officers, and the officer draws his gun
and shoots Clifton dead.
CHAPTER 21
In a state of shock, the narrator comes back to Harlem. The memory of

Clifton's death and of the black doll continues to haunt him. Once he reaches his office,
he tries to make the doll dance. AT that moment, young Brotherhood members come
to him asking about Clifton's death. The narrator corroborates the story. Having received
no message from the headquarters, he gathers the members to stage a funeral march for
Clifton and sends some women to claim the body from the morgue. He informs the
community church of the funeral and publicizes Clifton's untimely, unnecessary death.
The community, at the time of the march, is stirred to anger. Hundreds of former
members of the Brotherhood show up to for the march and the narrator delivers a
sobering speech. He hopes that members of the Brotherhood will make the most of this
tension in the crowd to regain their standing and influence in the Harlem community.
CHAPTER 22
When the narrator returns to his office, Brother Jack and the other committee
members are waiting for him. They are annoyed and furious about the narrator associating
the Brotherhood with the protest of Clifton's death without the committee's approval.
Jack tells the narrator that he was hired not to think but only to talk and say what the
Brotherhood tells him to say. The Brotherhood officially regards Clifton as a traitor to
the organization's ideals and would never have endorsed the eulogy that the narrator
gave.
The narrator replies that the Black community has accused the Brotherhood itself
of betrayal. But Jack says that the Brotherhood tells the community what to think. The
narrator accuses Jack of trying to be the "great white father". Just then, one of Jack's eyes-
a false one-pops out of his head into a drinking glass on the narrator's desk. He tells the
narrator that he lost the eye while doing his duty, stating that his personal sacrifice proves
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his loyalty to the Brotherhood and its ideals. Further, Jack instructs the narrator to see
Brother Hambro (a White member of the organization) to learn the Brotherhood's new
programme.
CHAPTER 23
The Harlem community's outrage over Clifton's death continues to build. The
narrator passes Ras while he is giving a speech against the Brotherhood. Two of Ras's
followers have a brawl with the narrator, but the narrator escapes. In an attempt to
disguise himself and protect himself from further physical attack, the narrator purchases
a pair of sunglasses with dark green lenses. But he is now addressed as "Rinehart." As
he makes his way back to Ras's meeting, several people, including a woman, a prostitute,
and those waiting for a "spiritual technologist", address him as "Rinehart" again. The
narrator finally reaches the apartment of Brother Hambro, who informs him that the
Brotherhood intends to sacrifice its influence in the Harlem community to pursue other,
wider political goals. The narrator exits in anger and decides to follow his grandfather's
advice: he will "yes, agree, and grin the Brotherhood to death". He plans to assure the
Brotherhood's members that the community stands in full agreement with their new
policy and to fill out false membership cards to inflate the Brotherhood's Harlem
membership. He also plans to discover the committee's real goals by cultivating a
relationship with a woman close to one of the Brotherhood's important leaders. He
thinks that perhaps he should try Emma, Jack's mistress.
CHAPTER 24
At a slight goading, people gather in Harlem and turn violent, smashing windows
and clashing with others. Ras further agitates the pointless violence. The narrator
sends out Brotherhood members to disrupt the violence and even condemns the
press for exaggerating minor incidents. He reports at the Brotherhood headquarters
that the Harlem branch has initiated a clean-up campaign to distract the people from
Tod Clifton's death. He also lies to them that Harlem has begun to quiet down and
hands them a false list of new members. The Brotherhood fails to detect the narrator's
deception.
The narrator decides to use Sybil, a neglected wife of one of the Brotherhood
members, who had once shown interest in him, to find out more about the goals of the
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Brotherhood. But he is not successful. Suddenly, the narrator receives a panicky call
from the Brotherhood in Harlem, asking him to come immediately. A riot erupts in Harlem
and when the narrator encounters a group of looters, he is given contradicting stories about
what caused the initial outbreak.
CHAPTER 25
The narrator finds out that Ras is provoking the violence and destruction. He
also realizes that the Brotherhood had planned the race riots all along, deliberately
ceding power to Ras and allowing Harlem to fall into mass chaos. He is caught up in
one rioter's plans to burn down a tenement building and as he flees from the burning
building, he realizes that he has left his briefcase inside. He dives back into the flames
to find his briefcase. Continuing his run through the chaos, he reaches a looted building
where mannequins are hanging. He finds Ras, dressed in the costume of an Abyssinian
chieftain and riding a black horse, calling for his followers to attack the narrator and kill
him for being a traitor. The narrator escapes from there but encounters two police
officers in the street, who ask to see the contents of his briefcase. He runs and falls
through an open manhole into a coal cellar. The police mock him and put the manhole
cover back in place, trapping him underground.
In order to provide himself with light, the narrator burns the items in his briefcase
one by one. These include his high school diploma and Clifton's doll. He finds the slip
of paper on which Jack had written his new Brotherhood name and also comes across
the anonymous threatening letter. As the papers burn to ashes, he realizes that the
handwriting on both is identical. He sleeps and dreams of Jack, Emerson, Bledsoe,
Norton, and Ras. The men mock him, castrate him, and declare that they have stripped
him of his illusions. He wakes with their cries of anguish and fury ringing in his ears. He
decides to stay underground and affirms, "The end was in the beginning."
EPILOGUE
The narrator concludes his story by saying that he has narrated all of the
important parts. "I'm an invisible man and it placed me in a hole-or showed me the hole
I was in, if you will-and I reluctantly accepted the fact." He doesn't know if his decision
to stay underground has pushed him at the back of social activism or in the avant-garde.
He decides to leave that question to people such as Jack while attempting to study the
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lessons of his own life.
He feels that that he was hated the most when he was very honest and was
loved when he endorsed the misguided beliefs of others. So now he plans to escape
the dilemma by becoming invisible. He has found a secret room in a closed-off section
of a basement. He, however, keeps thinking of his grandfather's advice to "agree 'em
to death," noting that his attempt to say "yes" to the Brotherhood ended only in a farce.
The narrator then begins to reconsider the meaning of his grandfather's words, wondering
if his grandfather's "yes" was meant as an affirmation of the principles on which the
country was built rather than of the men who corrupted its name. Perhaps by saying
"yes," his grandfather meant to take responsibility for society's evils and thus transcend
them. Then, the narrator declares the end of his hibernation: he must shake off his old
skin and come up for breath. Even the disembodied voice of an invisible man, he
asserts, has social responsibility.
15.4. FILL IN THE BLANKS
1. The narrator spots Clifton peddling ___________ dolls in the street.
2. The narrator is addressed as___________ when he disguises himself to escape

Ras.
3. The narrator is offered to become a paid spokesperson for a political organization

called ___________
4 Rather than expel the narrator outright, Bledsoe tells him to go to ___________
for the summer and work to earn his year's tuition.
5. It is at ___________ that narrator finally finds a job after coming to the North.
6. The white paint produced by the plant where the narrator works is
named as ___________
7. ___________ was the game in which the narrator and his mates participate
after their graduation speech.
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15.5. SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
1. Write a short note on the metaphor of blindness as presented in

the novel.
2. Compare and contrast Tod Clifton and the narrator.
3. Is the mood at the end of the novel hopeful or defeated? Explain

your answer.
4. Do you think the title of the novel is justified?
15.6. ANSWER KEY
Fill in the Blanks: Sombo, Rinehart, Brotherhood, New York, Liberty Paints
Plant, Optic White, royal battle
Short Answer Questions: The metaphor of blindness: The novel, as the highest
exponent of the Afro American movement, made society aware of the necessity to
eradicate racism. Presenting the concepts of blindness and invisibility, these authors face
the reader to the complex nature of this problem and its subjacent factors. Blindness is
not only a matter of whites and invisibility a matter of blacks, blacks and whites can be
mutually blind and invisible. While whites are blind because they conceive blacks as a
mass rather than as individuals, blacks are blind for submitting to their inferiority and for
not conceiving any white exception as an individual being. During the speech in Invisible
Man, the narrator and the audience also manifest these conditions. Another point is that
they portray blindness as a matter of self-perception, of how people regard their actions.
Moreover, the blindfolded boys from the Battle Royal are blind for not recognizing their
humiliation. In Invisible Man blindness and invisibility are often represented by metaphors
and symbols. The passage of the Battle Royal when the whites blindfold the boys
resembles this idea in a very clear way.
15.7. LET US SUM UP
Having gone through the chapter summaries, Invisible Man is the story of a
young, college educated black man struggling to survive and succeed in a racially
divided society that refuses to see him as a human being. Told in the form of a first-
person narrative, Invisible Man traces the nameless narrator's physical and psychological
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journey from blind ignorance to enlightened awareness or, according to the author, "from
Purpose to Passion to Perception" through a series of flashbacks in the forms of dreams
and memories. Set in the US during the pre-Civil Rights era when segregation laws
barred the Black Americans from enjoying the same basic human rights as their White
counterparts, the novel opens in the South (Greenwood, South Carolina), although the
majority of the action takes place in the North (Harlem, New York).
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STRUCTURE
16.1. Introduction
16.2. Objectives
16.3. Detailed Analysis of the Novel
16.6. Answer Key
16.7. Let Us Sum Up
16.1. INTRODUCTION
The Invisible Man is unique not only in the literary world for its improvisational
jazz-inspired style, but also in the political world for adding a new voice to the discussion
about Blacks in America. However, the novel's rejection of an absolute ideology in
general is a central theme, which explains why Invisible Man wasn't exactly a hit among
influential Black thinkers in 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement.
16.2. OBJECTIVES
The aim of the lesson is to discuss the novel extensively but in a comprehensive
manner. Through a deeper reading of the novel, the lesson underscores several ideologies
in the novel that Ellison has depicted and explains the themes as the plot develops
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through the chapters.
16.3. DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL
An element of ambiguity, both emotional and moral, is added by the confession

of the grandfather. The narrator goes deeper into the realm of self-doubt and gets further
entangled in the web of identity crisis. However, the reader never discovers whom the
grandfather feels he has betrayed: himself, his family, his ancestors, future generations,
or perhaps his race as a whole. The grandfather advises the family to maintain two
identities: on the outside they should embody the stereotypical good slaves, behaving
just as their former masters wish; on the inside, however, they should retain their
bitterness and resentment against this imposed false identity. By following this model, the
grandfather's descendants can refuse internally to accept second-class status, protect
their own self-respect, and avoid betraying themselves or each other.
The use of masks or role-playing as a method of subterfuge becomes increasingly

important later in the novel. As others aggressively attack the individual's sense of self,
the mask becomes a form of defense. Initially, obedience to the Whites wins him
admiration but, at the same time, the Whites take advantage of his docility, degrading
him and humiliating him from time to time. The royal battle underscores the tension
between obedience and rebellion and stretches the motifs of blindness and masks. The
boys' literal blindfolding in the ring parallels the men's metaphorical blindness as they
watch the fight, and also as they believe and try to fit into the stereotypes. The blindfolds
also represent the boys' own metaphorical blindness-their inability to see through the
false masks of goodwill that barely conceal the men's racist motives as they force the
boys to conform to the racial stereotype of the black man as a violent, savage, oversexed
beast.
Ellison questions the accepted beliefs through the narrator's speech, that of
nineteenth-century Black educator and writer Booker T. Washington. Although the narrator
never actually names Washington directly, his speech contains long quotations from the
great reformer's Atlanta Exposition Address of 1895. Washington's programme for the
advancement of Black Americans stressed upon industrial education. It was believed that
the Blacks, rather than shouting for political and civil rights, should channelize their energy
toward achieving economic success, which would thereby ensure equality. However,
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successful Black businessman, after all, proved as vulnerable to racial prejudice as the
poor, uneducated sharecropper. This is brought out in the novel through the White men's
reaction to the narrator's slip in substituting "social equality" for "social responsibility".
As the narrator ages and matures, however, he develops new conceptions of

race relations and come to new understandings of how to assert his own identity within
and against these relations. In portraying this evolution, Invisible Man enters into the
genre of the bildungsroman (a German word meaning "novel of formation"), where the
fiction portrays a young person's education and early experience and shows the moral
and intellectual growth that transforms him or her into an adult. One might best consider
it a kind of existential bildungsroman, combining the story of a young man's progress in
the world with an anguished and far-reaching exploration of race, society, and identity.
With the character of Mr. Norton, the novel introduces another instance of the
White's arrogance and snobbery and self-glorification being posed as generosity and
philanthropy. Norton's interest in the college stems more from self-interest than more a
genuine desire to improve the lives of the Back Americans. Earlier, in the car, he tells
the narrator, "You are my fate" (Chapter 2). Norton never concedes to the narrator the
right to claim his fate as his own; instead, their fates become one, with Norton claiming
ownership over both. Norton's influence over the lives of the black students remains an
insidious one; he exerts power over them while appearing to empower them. This
element of deception and illusion reintroduces Ellison's motif of invisibility and blindness.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bledsoe proves to have mastered the game of masquerading.

Domineering and forceful towards the narrator, he becomes appeasing and submissive
with Mr. Norton. When the narrator tried to clarify that he drove Norton to the old
slave quarters because he was ordered to do so, Bledsoe retorts: "Damn what he
wants. We take these white folks where we want them to go, we show them what we
want them to see." The narrator learns, to his shock, that the surface appearance of
humble servility in fact constitutes a mere mask under which Bledsoe manipulates and
deceives powerful White donors to his advantage.
It is essential for Bledsoe to ensure that the mask over the White people is not
removed and hence gets rid of him by sending him off to New York. Moreover, the
proposition to get the narrator hired in New York soon becomes clear and constitutes an
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act of deception in itself. Though Bledsoe has no intention of helping the narrator, the
narrator continues to trust in Bledsoe, illustrating that he has still not fully learned to look
underneath the surface and takes things at face value.
While reprimanding the narrator for his recklessness with Norton, Bledsoe toys
with an antique slave shackle, noting that it symbolizes African-American progress. By
the end of these chapters, however, Bledsoe's shackle becomes a symbol of continuing
enslavement to multiple forms of blindness. The narrator, on the other hand, seeks to
break free from the power structure that exists in American society, hence his journey
to the North. New York immediately presents itself as a world vastly different from that
of the South and at times making it impossible for the narrator to escape from the
reminders of the South that continue to haunt him just as the prejudices continue to cross
his path.
The narrator's encounter with Ras the Exhorter, whose inflammatory call for the
Black Harlem residents to drive out the Whites later gets him lynched in the South,
becomes yet another source of enlightenment for him. Ras's ideology of the Black
nationalism and of complete distrust of white people is wholly new to the naïve narrator.
Bledsoe's betrayal of the narrator seems initially to put Ras's philosophy of complete
distrust for the Whites into question, as it overlooks the fact that the Blacks can betray
the Blacks.
The narrator's experiences at the Liberty Paints Plant give Ellison the chance to
deflate a social and historical myth prevalent since before the Civil War-that of the
North as the land of freedom for the Black Americans. Seemingly, the North propagates
its own racist social structure, which the narrator discovers in the second half of the
novel. The Liberty Paints Plant serves as an extended metaphor for racial prejudice in
America. The factory's authorities, with their slogans emphasizing concepts of whiteness
and purity, infer the moral superiority of their whiteness. The inclusion of "Liberty" in the
factory's name stresses upon the widely held notions supposedly founded on "liberty"
and equality but in fact, ironically, advocating more freedom for the individuals it deems
worthiest-who are not Blacks. Ellison also criticizes the racial inequality perpetuated by
the social and political structures that operate within American companies and thus
within American capitalism.
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In the hospital, the narrator's experiences mark an important transition in the
novel. Having forgotten his past, even his name, the narrator is metaphorically being
born again. With no father or mother, he is left to fend for himself, a hard reality of the
world, in fact. Moreover, he is free to create and define his own identity instead of
adorning the one imposed on him from the outside. It begins a new phase of his life.
Even in the hospital, the doctors exhibit their racist attitude when they suggest
of castrating the narrator. Symbolically, to castrate someone is to strip him of his power,
to strip him of his ability to leave a genetic legacy; a systematic castration of all the Black
males would be tantamount to genocide. The idea of castration echoes the accidental
sterilization of the Founder, another nameless Black man who has been transformed into
a stereotype.
Later, in joining the Brotherhood the narrator stands poised to abandon his
heritage once again. By granting the narrator membership in a social and political
movement, the Brotherhood temptingly revives his dreams of living a life of social
significance. Additionally, the narrator's position within the organization provides him
with the opportunity to do what he loves most impassioned public speaking. However,
it soon becomes clear that the Brotherhood is using the narrator as a means toward its
own ends. But here again he is confined to being the race's symbol-he should be
"blacker"-and an object to be showcased for a cause. The Brotherhood calls on the
narrator to assume a new identity and to break with his past, and he does so without
resistance. That the hotel where the meeting takes place is named the Chthonian, a term
that refers to the gods of the Greek underworld, symbolizes the sinister nature of the
Brotherhood's intentions.
Then, the episode with the coin bank, coming immediately after the narrator's
decision to join the Brotherhood, seems to foreshadow a troubling relationship between
the narrator and the Brotherhood.
In his speech at the rally later the narrator uses an extended metaphor of blindness
to elucidate oppression. Blindness seems to have been the dividing line even among the
oppressed people: the college's faculty and students disowned Jim Trueblood because of
their blind allegiance to an ideology; Bledsoe betrays the narrator for the same reason.
Brockway betrays the union due to his fear of losing his job and his naïve faith in the
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ability of White power structures to help him maintain his position. Meanwhile, the union
refuses to allow the narrator to speak for himself, and does so out of its own utter distrust
of the black Brockway. The narrator urges the people to end the blindness that leads to
interracial divisions but his own speech becomes ironic when the reader discovers that he
cannot even see his audience; he becomes a blind leader of a blind audience.
The narrator believes that his joining the Brotherhood is in the interest of Black
Americans but he is disowned by the former members of the Harlem branch when he
attempts to strike up a friendly conversation. They see his continued membership in the
Brotherhood as a betrayal of the Black community. On the other hand, the narrator himself
feels betrayed, first when he discovers Clifton selling the Sambo dolls and later when he
learns that the Brotherhood has deliberately excluded him from their strategy meeting.
Towards the end, the narrator begins to understand that he cannot fight the White power
structure by working within it. He will have to step out and then assert his identity. It is
Rinehart that comes across as the strangest and most ambiguous figures in Invisible Man;
though he never appears in the flesh, he serves as a powerful symbol of the idea of a
protean or shape-shifting sense of identity, against which the narrator's own fragile sense
of identity can be compared. Rinehart is all things to all people, and those individuals
whom the narrator encounters while he wears his sunglasses impose a variety of identities
upon him. This fluidity of character plays a major role in the narrator's crucial realization
that he is invisible-that he has never had a self because he has always adopted a self given
to him by others. He vows that, though he may remain invisible to others, he will from that
moment forward be visible to himself.
Although the narrator has sensed that the Brotherhood kept secrets from him, he
now recognizes that he has fallen victim to a hugely tragic deception. He realizes that
his allegiance to the Brotherhood has rendered him a traitor twice: not only did he betray
his heritage by working for a racist group, but he also played an active role in the group's
plan to destroy New York's Black community. The narrator has been used as an abstract
symbol by the Brotherhood. The narrator's encounter with Ras in the end testifies to the
influence of the French existentialists on Invisible Man. Faced with the prospect of death,
the narrator decides in a climactic moment that he would rather live out his own "absurdity"
than die for someone else's. The narrator's realization of the world's absurdity prepares
him to write his memoirs and eventually cast off his invisibility at the end of the Epilogue.
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At the end of the novel, the narrator's story has come full circle: the novel begins
and ends with his underground life. The story's cyclical nature, along with the narrator's
claim that his time of hibernation is over, implies that the narrator stands poised for a
kind of rebirth. During his period of hibernation, the narrator has studied his experiences
and has sought to define the meaning of experience for himself, to define his own identity
without interference from others. He rejects the idea that a single ideology can constitute
an entire way of being; a perfect society created according to a single ideology would
necessary limit the complexity of each individual, for each individual constitutes a multitude
of various strands, and a society of individuals must necessarily mirror this diversity. As
the novel draws to a close, the narrator remains bewildered regarding his own identity
but determined to honor his individual complexity and his obligations to society as an
individual.
1. The protagonist is invisible because _________
2. He is not ashamed that his grandparents were _______
3. A sea of faces stood around and a magnificent blond was ________
4. His oration on graduation said that what was the secret? ________
1. Explore the significance of the tokens the narrator collects

throughout the novel (the diploma, the Brotherhood membership,
the anonymous letter, the broken bank, and the paper doll puppet).
Trace the growth of the narrator using these mementos.
2. When does the narrator begin to see the weaknesses of the

Brotherhood, and why?
3. To what extent is the narrator's sense of self bound to a racial

identity?
16.6. ANSWER KEY
Blanks: people can't see him; slaves; naked; Calculus
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Short Answer: 3) Identity in Invisible Man is a conflict between self-perception
and the projection of others, as seen through one man's story: the nameless narrator. His
true identity, he realizes, is in fact invisible to those around him. Only by intentionally
isolating himself from society can he grapple with and come to understand himself. Most
of the narrator's difficulties throughout the novel are associated with his race. The
Invisible Man is a novel aimed at transcending race and all the other ways humanity
has used to categorize people. For a long time, the narrator's identity is defined by his
race, leading to his invisibility. Though several forms of black politics are depicted in the
novel, including conservative progress, Black nationalism and communism, but The
Invisible Man rejects all forms of ideology, arguing that ideology misses the trees for
the forest, so to speak. In other words, the idea that ideology focuses too much on the
collective at the expense of the individual. It promotes a political philosophy of appealing
to the emotional individual.
16.7. LET US SUM UP
The narrator, also called the Invisible Man, is the protagonist and central figure
of the book. The antagonist is racism in the United States. At times the racism is
embodied by different characters in the novel, some overtly and others subtly. Also, the
racism is symbolized by organizations and institutions which claim to have the interests
of black people at their center. The novel reaches its climax when the narrator loses all
his illusions about life and success in the world. This disillusionment is most easily traced
in his relationship with the Brotherhood, an organization that he gradually comes to
realize has used and betrayed him. This climax is actually a series of small disillusionments
that culminate in a final catastrophic scene of understanding that takes place underground
in a manhole. Here, the narrator sees for the first time all the things that have been
holding him back and causing him to fail.
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STRUCTURE
17.1. Introduction
17.2. Objectives
17.3. Themes
17.4. Symbols and Symbolism
17.5. Motifs
17.8. Let Us Sum up
17.1. INTRODUCTION
The major theme of The Invisible Man is the necessity to construct a personal
identity in a divided society. Ellison builds this theme on the assumption that in a racist
country, blacks are granted no true identity; instead, they are merely the receptors of
the projections of the white man's fantasies and fears. The novel demonstrates the
process by which the narrator came to the realization that he and other blacks are
invisible and as such cannot ever succeed by playing according to white rules. The task
of the narrator upon realizing he is invisible is to figure out how to proceed from that
realization responsibly. He does not want to withdraw altogether from the world. He
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also does not want to engage with it on the false basis that he has in the past, when
he was blind to his invisibility.
17.2. OBJECTIVES
The aim of the lesson is to bring out various themes in the novel and to
highlight some of the hardest questions that the novel raises about racism in the
United States through the long-honored tradition of skepticism and
unflinching rationality.
17.3. THEMES
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
RACISM AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY
The narrator of The Invisible Man, throughout the novel, is struggling hard to
attain a sense of unified identity. The crisis of identity is complicated by the fact that he
is a Black man living in a racist American society. As the narrator passes through a series
of communities, from the Liberty Paints plant to the Brotherhood, the reader finds how
each microcosm endorses a different idea of how Blacks should behave in society.
While the narrator is attempting to find a definition for himself through the values and
expectations imposed on him, he realizes that social roles are already prescribed which
confines his individuality and compels him to be inauthentic.
Having come to New York, the narrator steps into a new world, that of the
Liberty Paints Plant, which offers him financial support by subverting blackness in the
service of a brighter White. During that period, the narrator realizes that the White
depends heavily on the Black-both in terms of the mixing of the paint tones and in terms
of the racial make-up of the workforce. Yet, the factory denies this dependence in the
final presentation of its product, and the narrator, as a Black man, ends up feeling muffled
and throttled. Later, when the narrator joins the organization called Brotherhood, he begins
to believe that he can fight for racial equality by working within the ideology of the
organization, but he then realizes that the Brotherhood seeks to use him as a token Black
man in its abstract project.
Finally, the narrator feels that the racial prejudice of others causes them to see
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him only as they want to see him, and their limited of vision in turn places limitations on
his ability to act. He concludes that he is invisible, in the sense that the world is filled
with blind people who cannot or will not see his real nature. Correspondingly, he
remains unable to act according to his own personality and fails to be himself literally.
Initially, the narrator surrenders and accepts his invisibility-when he falls into a manhole.
He feels that it is only by being invisible can he counter and break the stereotypes.
However, in the end he seems to acknowledge that being passive is not the solution.
He decides to come out from his underground "hibernation," and contribute in his own
way to society as a complex individual. He will once again make an effort to exercise
his power upon the world outside of society's system of prescribed roles. He will make
others acknowledge his existence, and accept his beliefs and behaviours, even if they
do not match the expectations of the masses.
IDEOLOGY AND THE STEREOTYPES
Over the course of the happenings in the novel, the narrator is acquainted with
his complex inner self and realizes that his individuality is confined to not just the concept
of racism held by the people but also other ideologies that have created stereotypes
within which a person is defined and judged. He discovers that the social institutions
propagate ideologies that prove to be too simplistic and linear and, therefore, cannot
suffice to define a concept as complicated and multidimensional as a human identity. The
novel contains many examples of ideology, from the tamer, ingratiating ideology of
Booker T. Washington subscribed to at the narrator's college to the more violent,
separatist ideology voiced by Ras the Exhorter. But the narrative marks its point most
strongly in its presentation of the Brotherhood. As part of the Brotherhood, the narrator
finds an ideology that promises to save "the people", though, in reality, it consistently
limits and betrays the freedom of the very individual it sets out to liberate from the
shackles of society's stereotypes. The novel implies that life is too rich, too various, and
too unpredictable to be bound up neatly in any single ideology.
Life has its moments of improvisation and surprise.
The narrator is not the only African American in the novel to have felt the
limitations of racist stereotyping. While he tries to escape the grip of prejudice on an
individual level, he encounters other Blacks who attempt to prescribe a defense strategy
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for all African Americans. Each presents a theory of the supposed right way to be a
Black in America and tries to outline how Blacks should act in accordance with this
theory. The Brotherhood believed that anyone who contradicts its prescribed ways and
counters its ways is betraying the whole race. The narrator realizes that one stereotype
is countered by another stereotype.
Early in the novel, the narrator's grandfather explains his belief that in order to
challenge and ridicule racism, Blacks should exaggerate their servility to Whites. The
narrator's college, represented by Dr. Bledsoe, thinks that Blacks can best achieve
success by working industriously and adopting the manners and speech of the Whites.
Ras the Exhorter thinks that Blacks should rise up and take their freedom by destroying
the Whites. Although all of these conceptions arise from within the Black community
itself, the novel implies that they ultimately prove as dangerous as White people's racist
stereotypes. By seeking to define their identity within a race in too limited a way, Black
figures such as Bledsoe and Ras aim to empower themselves but ultimately undermine
their own race. Instead of exploring their own identities, as the narrator struggles to do
throughout the book, Bledsoe and Ras consign themselves and their people to formulaic
roles. These men consider treacherous anyone who attempts to act outside their formulae
of blackness. But as blacks who seek to restrict and choreograph the behavior of the
black American community as a whole, it is men like these who most profoundly betray
their people.
17.4. SYMBOLS AND SYMBOLISM
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colours used to represent abstract
ideas or concepts. Ralph Ellison is a master of poetic devices and incorporates numerous
symbols and archetypes (universal symbols) into his novel, each providing a different
perspective on the narrative and yet supplementing the dominant themes of invisibility
and identity.
THE SAMBO DOLL AND THE COIN BANK
The coin bank in the shape of the grinning Black man and Tod Clifton's dancing
Sambo doll serve similar objectives in the novel, each representing the degrading Black
stereotypes and the damaging power of prejudice. The coin bank, which portrays a
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grinning slave who eats coins, embodies the idea of a Black slave who flatters the White
men for petty monetary returns. This stereotype literally follows the narrator, for even
after he has smashed the figure, he is unable to discard the debris, as various characters
return to him the packet in which the pieces are wrapped. Moreover, the statue's quick
swallow of coins is suggestive of the behaviour of the Black youths in the "battle royal",
as they scramble to collect the coins on the electrified rug, reinforcing the White stereotype
of the Blacks as toadying slaves, greedy for money.
The Sambo doll is made in the image of the Sambo slave, who, according to
the White's stereotype, acts lazy yet obsequious. Moreover, as a dancing doll, it represents
the negative stereotype of the black entertainer who laughs and sings for the Whites.
While the coin bank illustrates the power of stereotype to follow a person in his or her
every movement, the Sambo doll illustrates stereotype's power to control a person's
movements altogether. Stereotype and prejudice, like the invisible strings by which the
doll is made to move, often determine and manipulate the range of action of which a
person is capable.
THE LIBERTY PAINTS PLANT
The Liberty Paints plant serves as a complex metaphor for American society as
far as racism is concerned. Like America, it defines itself with notions of liberty and
freedom but incorporates a deeply ingrained racism in its most central operations.
Ellison makes his statements about colour literal through the portrayal of a factory that
produces paint. Thus, when the factory authorities boast of the superiority of their white
paint, their statements appear as parodies of arguments about white supremacy. With
the plant's claim that its trademark "Optic White" can cover up any tint or stain, Ellison
points out American society's intentions to paint the Black identity with the culture of the
Whites, to cover up the difference that exists between the two races and cultures, and
to treat darker-skinned individuals as "stains" upon white "purity."
Optic White is made through a process that involves the mixture of a number
of dark-coloured chemicals, one of which is coded as "dead black". But through the
right mixing, the dark colours disappear into the churning, and the paint emerges a
gleaming white, showing no trace of its true components. Similarly, the labour relations
within the plant manifest a similar pattern: the Blacks perform all of the crucial labour,
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while the White people sell the paint and make the highest wages, never acknowledging
their reliance upon their darker-skinned counterparts. This dynamic, too, seems to
mirror a larger one at work within America as a whole.
DREAMS
Dreams and visions hint at the power of the subconscious mind. In the novel,
numerous dreams and visions symbolize the narrator's retreat from reality, seeking solace
in memories of his childhood or days at the college, often occurring as he escapes into
his music. Ellison merges dreams and reality to underscore the surrealistic nature of the
narrator's experience and to highlight the gross disparities between the realities of the
Black's life and the myth of the American Dream.
MACHINE SYMBOLISM
Through frequent references to "the man in the machine" (the first occurs in
Chapter 2, where Trueblood dreams that he is trapped inside the clock), Ellison
emphasizes the stark contrasts between the agricultural South, with its farms and
plantations, and the industrial North, with its factories and steel structures. This image
is particularly powerful in Chapters 11 and 12, which focus on the Liberty Paint Factory
and the factory hospital. The narrator is trapped inside the glass and metal box. In the
final dream sequence, the bridge (the "machine") becomes a man and walks away.
Machine symbolism emphasizes the destruction of the individual by industry and
technology, highlighting the lack of empathy and emotion in a society where people are
indifferent to the needs of others.
17.5. MOTIFS
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to
develop and inform the text's major themes.
BLINDNESS
Probably the most important motif in The Invisible Man is that of blindness,
which recurs throughout the novel and generally represents how people willfully avoid
seeing and confronting the truth. The narrator repeatedly notes that people's inability to
see what they wish not to see ‘their inability to see that which their prejudice doesn't
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allow them to see’ has forced him into a life of effective invisibility. But prejudice against
others is not the only kind of blindness in the book. Many figures also refuse to
acknowledge truths about themselves or their communities, and this refusal emerges
consistently in the imagery of blindness. Thus, the boys who fight in the "battle royal"
wear blindfolds, symbolizing their powerlessness to recognize their exploitation at the
hands of the white men. The Founder's statue at the college has empty eyes, signifying
his ideology's stubborn neglect of racist realities. Blindness also afflicts Reverend Homer
A. Barbee, who romanticizes the Founder, and Brother Jack, who is revealed to lack
an eye-a lack that he has dissimulated by wearing a glass eye. The narrator himself
experiences moments of blindness, such as in Chapter 16 when he addresses the black
community under enormous, blinding lights. In each case, failure of sight corresponds to
a lack of insight.
INVISIBILITY
Because he has decided that the world is full of blind men and sleepwalkers
who cannot see him for what he is, the narrator describes himself as an "invisible man."
The motif of invisibility pervades the novel, often manifesting itself hand in hand with the
motif of blindness-one person becomes invisible because another is blind. While the
novel almost always portrays blindness in a negative light, it treats invisibility much more
ambiguously. Invisibility can bring disempowerment, but it can also bring freedom and
mobility. Indeed, it is the freedom the narrator derives from his anonymity that enables
him to tell his story. Moreover, both the veteran at the Golden Day and the narrator's
grandfather seem to endorse invisibility as a position from which one may safely exert
power over others, or at least undermine others' power, without being caught. The
narrator demonstrates this power in the Prologue, when he literally draws upon electrical
power from his hiding place underground; the electric company is aware of its losses
but cannot locate their source. At the end of the novel, however, the narrator has
decided that while invisibility may bring safety, actions undertaken in secrecy cannot
ultimately have any meaningful impact. One may undermine one's enemies from a position
of invisibility, but one cannot make significant changes to the world. Accordingly, in the
Epilogue the narrator decides to emerge from his hibernation, resolved to face society
and make a visible difference.
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1. Reverend Barbee praises the founder who is _______
2. Brother Jack has a false _________
3. Clifton controls ______ through string
4. The narrator receives ________ as a naive kid
5. The narrator lives _______
1. What is "the principle"? How does the narrator's understanding of

his grandfather's words change over time?
2. Is the ending optimistic or pessimistic?
3. Write a brief note on the character of Brother Jack.
17.8. ANSWER KEY
Blanks: blind; left eye; dolls; briefcase; underground
Character sketch of Brother Jack: Brother Jack, our main contact with the
Brotherhood is a pretty mysterious character. A white male, he easily enters the narrator's
life and offers him a ton of opportunities off the bat: money, a job, and the chance to
represent his community. However, there are many, many strings attached to the benefits
that the narrator accrues through working for the Brotherhood. Brother Jack demands
that the narrator renounce his past, focus on the collective, and use abstract jargon and
ideology in his speeches. Although he professes to be in favor of racial equality, when
the Brotherhood shifts its aims, Brother Jack willingly sacrifices the Harlem community
without batting an eyelid. Speaking of eyes, Brother Jack lacks one. His literal blindness
is a metaphor for the flawed nature of his vision.
17.9. LET US SUM UP
Ellison moves his protagonist narrator from the illusion that he can make it as
an individual by dedicated hard work to the realization that he must consider the plight
of his entire ethnic group as an oppressed people. This realization brings his own
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liberation. As racial tensions in Harlem continue to build, the narrator gets caught up in
a riot that drives him to a manhole. In the darkness and solitude of the manhole, he
begins to understand himself his invisibility and his identity. He decides to write his story
down (the body of the novel) and when he is finished, he vows to enter the world again.
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STRUCTURE
18.1. Introduction
18.2. Objectives
18.3. Important Excerpts
18.5. Examination Oriented Questions
18.6. Check Your Progress
18.7. Suggested Reading
18.1. INTRODUCTION
The lesson provides important excerpts of the novel and takes up a few questions
on theme and characters. The Invisible Man makes an effort to transcend the confines
of racial labeling and this is further highlighted through various questions picked in this
lesson.
18.2. OBJECTIVES
The aim of the lesson is to facilitate better and deeper understanding of the novel
and to help learner tackle various types of questions.
18.3. IMPORTANT EXCERPTS
1. "I's big and black and I say 'Yes, suh' as loudly as any burrhead when it's
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convenient, but I'm still the king down here. . . . The only ones I even pretend to please
are big white folk, and even those I control more than they control me. . . . That's my
life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about. . . . It's a nasty deal
and I don't always like it myself. . . . But I've made my place in it and I'll have every
Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am."
These words are spoken by Dr. Bledsoe to the narrator in Chapter 6 while
reprimanding him for taking Mr. Norton to the parts of campus that are disrepute and
rather not preferred locations. Bledsoe goes on to say that it has been through
subservience to the powerful White men that he has managed to attain a position and
also maintain it. As a result of flattering the Whites, he is able to exert his authority in
college. He derisively slips into the dialect of uneducated Southern Blacks, saying "I's"
instead of "I am." It is apparent that Bledsoe is no threat to the Whites for he has
presented and proved himself as an "ignorant" Black man. Bledsoe claims that by telling
the White men what they want to hear, he is able to control what they think and thereby
control them entirely. His unsettling rather scary final statement that he would rather see
every Black man in America mobbed and lynched instead of jeopardizing his position
of authority shows that he is completely devoted to and concerned about himself and
his own power.
These lines, in a way, accentuate the central theme of the novel and contribute
to its larger development. Reading these words it is clear that Bledsoe's motivation for
expelling and betraying the narrator was that the narrator had upset Bledsoe's strategy
of keeping the pretence up and concealing what is a real picture from the Whites when
he takes Norton to the areas that were left out from the White man's view till this time.
More important, this speech marks the first of the narrator's many moments of sudden
disenchantment in the novel. As a loyal, naïve adherent of the college's philosophy, the
narrator has always considered Bledsoe an admirable advocate of the Black's
advancement; his sudden recognition of Bledsoe's power-hungry, cynical hypocrisy comes
as a devastating blow. This disillusionment constitutes the first of many that the narrator
suffers as the novel progresses, perhaps most notably at the hands of the Brotherhood.
2. "Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you'd have to crack
it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn't white clear through."
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Lucius Brockway brags about the White's whiteness through these words in
Chapter 10. The narrator finds a job at the Liberty Paints Plant and is then quite
categorically told about the properties of the "Optic White" paint whose production he
supervises. Ellison uses Liberty Paints Plant as a metaphor in the novel to bring out the
dynamics of racism in America. Whether it is the description of the paint-mixing process
or the relation between the Blacks and the Whites in the company, Ellison aims to
underscore the fact that stereotypes are reiterated with the socio-cultural frameworks.
The exceptional property of Optic White, as Brockway puts it, is its ability to cover up
blackness, any kind of blackness. It can even whiten charcoal, which is often used to
make black marks upon-to spoil, in a sense-white paper. This is indirectly suggestive
of the power of the Whites; for, like the white paint that camouflages the other colours,
the Whites and their ways subvert and smother Black identity. On the other hand, out
of prejudice, the Black men and women assimilate into the White culture, and mask their
true thoughts and feelings in an effort to gain acceptance and tolerance.
3. The cast-iron figure of a very black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro . .

. stared up at me from the floor, his face an enormous grin, his single large black hand
held palm up before his chest. It was a bank, a piece of early Americana, the kind of
bank which, if a coin is placed in the hand and a lever pressed upon the back, will raise
its arm and flip the coin into the grinning mouth.
This passage, from Chapter15, describes the coin bank that the narrator finds
at Mary's home just before he leaves to join the Brotherhood. The coin bank starkly
symbolizes the essentialized racial stereotypes that the narrator has been trying to free
himself from. The figure represents the submissive, toadying and groveling slave, eager
to provide meek and self-effacing amusement to the White people, performing pet-like
tricks for them. Furthermore, through this bank figure, the Black man is objectified, he
merely becomes a petty toy to play with, a chattel that could be thrown here and there,
for the Whites. After the narrator moves out of Mary's home, he finds himself frustratingly
unable to get rid of this insulting coin bank, even the debris keeps coming back to him.
The bank thus illustrates another aspect of stereotype-its stubborn permanence, its
horrible tendency to follow a person throughout his or her life.
4. I looked at Ras on his horse and at their handful of guns and recognized the
absurdity of the whole night and of the simple yet confoundingly complex arrangement
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of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought me here still running, and knowing
now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or
from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and Nortons, but only from their
confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American
identity and mine. . . . And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity
than to die for that of others, whether for Ras's or Jack's.
It is at this moment of confrontation with Ras that self-realization finally dawns

upon the narrator. The scene in Chapter 25 helps in clearing the narrator's existential
doubts, as he realizes that it is his own identity that is instrumental in offering a meaning
in his life. It is futile to attempt to fit into a framework that is based on stereotypes and
meet other people's expectations, for it will only lead to the destruction of the self. When
Ras threatens to kill the narrator, it is the meaninglessness of the world that strikes the
narrator. Ellison, in fact, uses the term "absurd"- (a term that the French existentialists
used to characterize the universe, insisting on the idea that the meaning is to be understood
as what is invested in one's life) to describe the American life. Thus, the narrator must
look for meaning in his own life that affirms his existence and identity. The action of
hurling Ras's spear back at him demonstrates the narrator's refusal to be subject any
longer to others' visions and demands-he finally commits himself fully to an attempt to
assert his true identity in his own terms.
5. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own.
I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear
what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally
rebelled. I am an invisible man.
In these lines from the Epilogue, the narrator quite precisely and tidily summarizes
the main reason for his troubles that he went through in life, as spelled out in the twenty-
five chapters of the novel. The source of his miserable life has been the fact that rather
than living his own life, following his own heart and mind, the narrator has been struggling
to meet the expectations of others, proving true the prejudices others and fitting into the
prescribed social framework. He has followed the ideology of the college and the ideology
of the Brotherhood without trusting or developing his own identity. Now, however, he has
realized that his own identity, both in its flexibility and authenticity, is the key to freedom.
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Rinehart, a master of many identities, first suggests to the narrator the limitless capacity for
variation within oneself. However, Rinehart ultimately proves an unsatisfactory model for
the narrator because Rinehart's life lacks authenticity. The meaning of the narrator's assertion
that he is "an invisible man" has changed slightly since he made the same claim at the
beginning of the novel: whereas at the outset he means to call attention to the fact that
others cannot not see him, he now means to call attention to the fact that his identity, his
inner self, is real, even if others cannot see it.
1. Compare and contrast the ideologies of the Brotherhood and the college. How
does each ideology breed blindness and invisibility? What conflicts do they cause for
the narrator?
The college's ideology is based on the ideas of Booker T. Washington, who is

represented by the figure of the Founder; through a near-religious devotion to the legend
of the Founder's life, students at the college are taught to work hard and seek economic
advancement while not clamoring for equal rights or equal treatment from whites. The
college encourages students to reject black culture to the extent that it seems ignorant
and rural, and to pattern their behavior on the white middle class. The Brotherhood
adheres to an ideology based on that of American communist groups in the 1930s, a
sort of authoritarian socialism that relies on a Marxist theory of history-which holds that
those of lower social status must submit themselves to the unavoidable class struggles
on the path to equality. The Brotherhood thus prizes clinical, scientific exposition over
the sort of emotional appeal on behalf of the individual that the narrator makes after Tod
Clifton's death.
The ideology of the college limits the narrator's identity in that it forces him to reject
the black culture that shaped his early identity and forces him to accept a position of
inherent inferiority to whites. The ideology of the Brotherhood limits the narrator's
identity in that it requires blind adherence to the collective attitude of the organization
and allows no room for individual thought, expression, or action-the very things that the
narrator craves. By limiting the narrator's identity, these ideologies effectively render him
invisible, as they force him to bury his real self beneath the roles that those around him
require him to play.
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2. Write a note on who is Rinehart and what does he represent?
Rinehart is a mystery and a source of deep ambiguity in Invisible Man. He

never appears in the novel, and the narrator only learns of his existence when other
people mistake him for Rinehart while he is in disguise. Rinehart seems to be all things
to all people-pimp, bookie, and preacher, among other things. Ultimately, Rinehart is an
extremely surreal figure of Ellison's creation, designed not to be realistic or believable
but rather unsettling and confusing. Rinehart represents a protean conception of identity-
the idea that a person's identity can change completely depending on where one is and
with whom one interacts, an extreme version of the narrator's conundrum throughout the
novel. At first, the narrator feels that Rinehart's adaptability enables a kind of freedom,
but he quickly realizes that Rinehart's formlessness also represents a complete loss of
individual selfhood. In the end, the liquidity of Rinehart's identity is one of the forces that
compel the narrator to discover his own more solid identity.
3. What is the role of treachery in the novel? Who betrays whom? How does
treachery relate to the motifs of blindness and invisibility?
The two major betrayals in the novel are the narrator's betrayals at the hands
of the college (in the figure of Dr. Bledsoe) and the Brotherhood (in the figure of Brother
Jack). Bledsoe poses as a figure representing the advancement of black Americans
through education. In reality, however, he deliberately subordinates himself to whites and
says that he would see every black man in America lynched before giving up his power.
That he sends the narrator away with letters of supposed recommendation that, in
reality, explicitly criticize the narrator demonstrates his objectionable desire to suppress
black identity. The members of the Brotherhood betray the narrator in a number of
insidious ways, ranging from curtailing his individuality to turning their backs on the plight
of the poor blacks in Harlem. Jack, specifically, betrays the narrator by posing as a
compassionate and helpful friend while secretly harboring racist prejudice against him
and using him as a tool for the advancement of the Brotherhood's ends.
This sort of treachery generally contributes to the novel's creation of a bewildering,

malevolent world in which an unexpected blow can come at any time, reinforcing the
novel's characterization of the social effects of racial prejudice. Treachery also reinforces
the ideas of blindness and invisibility, because any betrayal is essentially a sign that the
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betrayer willfully refuses to see his victim. Additionally, the novel's betrayals function
through deceit and secrecy-for the most part, they are invisible, and the narrator is blind
to them until it is too late.
18.5. EXAMINATION ORIENTED QUESTIONS
1. How does the division between how the narrator perceives himself and
how others perceive him relate to the motifs of blindness and invisibility?
Consider the role of racial stereotypes in the novel.
2. How does the narrator's briefcase encapsulate his history? Consider the
contents of the briefcase. Consider also the dream that he has about the
briefcase after the "battle royal." How does the briefcase relate to the
narrator's position as a fugitive? What might the briefcase tell us about
the narrator's identity?
3. What does the extended metaphor of dolls (the Sambo doll, for example)
mean? What do they say about the power of racial stereotypes?
4. What does the veteran mean when he tells the narrator, "Be your own
father"? What is the role of fathers or father figures in the novel? Think
about the narrator's accusation that Jack wants to be the "great white
father" and the description of the Founder's statue.
5. How does Ellison use irony to underline the difference between surface
appearances and what lies beneath them? Consider Ellison's literary
treatment of Reverend Barbee as one example. What are other examples?
6. What is the relationship between individual identity and community

identity? Is it possible to remain true to both? Must the two always
conflict? How does the narrator fail or succeed to assert his individuality
amid communities such as the college, the Brotherhood, and Harlem?
18.6. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
1. At the beginning of the novel, where does the narrator live?
Ans. ____________________________________________________________
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2. Brother Tarp gives the narrator a link of chain and what?
Ans. ____________________________________________________________
3. In the Prologue, the narrator admires the music of whom?
Ans. ____________________________________________________________
4. What do they make at the factory where the narrator takes a job?
Ans. ____________________________________________________________
5. What is a 'battle royal'?
Ans. ____________________________________________________________
6. What is the narrator surprised to see upon his arrival in Harlem?
Ans. ____________________________________________________________
7. Which characters appear in the narrators castration dream?
Ans. ____________________________________________________________
8. Why is the narrator expelled from college?
Ans. ____________________________________________________________
18.7. SUGGESTED READING
Bone, Robert. "Ralph Ellison and the Uses of Imagination." In A Casebook

on Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN,ed. Joseph F. Trimmer, pp. 203-
224. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1972.
Busby, Mark.Ralph Ellison. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991.
Callahan, John F., and Albert Murray,eds. Trading Twelves: The Selected
Correspondence of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. New York: Modern
Library, 2000.
Ellison, Ralph. Living with Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings. Ed.
Robert G. O'Meally. New York: Modern Library, 2000.
---. Shadow and Act. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
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Nadel, Alan. Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon.
Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1988.
O'Meally, Robert,ed. New Essays on INVISIBLE MAN. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Tracy, Steven C. A Historical Guide to Ralph Ellison.Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press, 2004.
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AMERICAN LITERATURE-II UNIT-V
THE GRAPES OF WRATH

STRUCTURE
19.1 Objectives
19.2 Early Life and Works of John Steinbeck
19.3 Steinbeck’s Social Consciousness
19.4 Biological Theory of Man
19.5 Dream and Reality, a Fantasy World
19.6 The Grapes of Wrath—a representative novel of the great depression of
1930s
19.7 Summary of The Grapes of Wrath
19.8 Character Sketch
19.9 The Grapes of Wrath as a novel of Journey
19.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to provide a comprehensive detail of early life

and works of John Steinbeck discussing how it has been influenced by his intellectual
milieu. It also discusses in detail his outstanding canonical work, The Grapes of Wrath
through summary, character sketch and different critical perspectives.
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19.2 EARLY LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN STEINBECK
John Steinbeck was arguably one of the best American writers of the 20th century.
A winner of the Noble Prize for Literature in 1962, he is best known for his novella Of
Mice and Men (1937) and his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939),
both of which examine the lives of the working class and the migrant worker during the
Great Depression.
Steinbeck wrote in the naturalist style, portraying people as the centre of his stories.
His people and his stories were taken from real life struggles in the first half of the 20th
century. His body of work reflects his wide range of interests, including marine biology,
jazz, politics, philosophy, history and myth.
The life of John Steinbeck is fascinating . Steinbeck was born in 1902 in the
town of Salinas, California and the most significant biographical link between Steinbeck
and his writing is his birth and growth to maturity in Salinas valley, where he lived most
of his first forty years. Steinbeck’s father worked in county government as the treasurer
for the City of Salinas, and Steinbeck’s mother, Olive, was a teacher. At that time the
Salinas valley was a series of small farms devoted to cattle raising and growing of fruits
and vegetables. In the small towns of the valley the farmers used to bring their produce
to market. Young Steinbeck worked during summer vacations for the neighboring farmers
and ranchers.
In addition to living close to nature as a youth, Steinbeck was a voracious reader,

probably through the influence of his school teacher mother. His fictional characters
indicate a wide range of his reading interests which reflect the works of WaIter Scott,
Stevenson, Jack London, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Hardy’s The
Return of Native.
The period of Steinbeck’s young adulthood was intermixed with many experiences
in the laboring world. He attended Stanford University between 1920 and 1926. Steinbeck
did not graduate from Stanford, but instead chose to support himself through manual
labour while writing. His experiences among the working classes in California lent
authenticity to his depiction of the lives of the workers, who remain the central characters
of his most important novels.
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His first three novels - Cup of Gold (1929), The Pastures of Heaven (1932),
and To a God Unknown (1933) were unsuccessful, but he achieved popularity with
Tortilla Flat (1935; film, 1942), an affectionately told story of Mexican - Americans.
Dubious Battle (1936) is a classic account of a strike by farm workers. The novella Of
Mice and Men (1937; films 1939, 1999) is a tragic story about the strange, complex
bond between two migrant labourers. Another notable achievement of this period was
The Red Pony (1937; film, 1949). The Grapes of Wrath (1939, Pulitzer Prize; film,
1940), the story of the migration of a dispossessed family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl
to California and their subsequent exploitation by a ruthless system of agriculture economics,
earned him international fame. It was the last of his naturalistic novels of the 1930s with
proletarian themes.
After the best - selling success of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck went on an
expedition to the Gulf of California with his friend Ed Ricketts, the marine Biologist. Their
friendship lasted from 1930 to Ricketts’ death in 1948. Ricketts elicited and guided
Steinbeck’s interest in marine biology and the two men collaborated on Sea of Cortez
(1941), a study of fauna of the Gulf of California. During World War II, Steinbeck wrote
some effective pieces of government propaganda, among them The Moon Is Down (1942),
a novel about Norwegians under the Nazis. He also served a war correspondent. With the
end of World War II and the move from the Great Depression to economic prosperity
Steinbeck’s work softened somewhat. While still containing the elements of social criticism
that marked his earlier work, the three novels Steinbeck published immediately following
the war, Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl, and The Bus (both 1947) were more
sentimental and relaxed. Steinbeck also contributed to several screenplays. He wrote
the original stories for several films, including Lifeboat (1944), directed by Alfred
Hitchcock, and A Medal for Benny, and wrote the screenplay for Elia Kazan’s Viva
Zapata!, a biographical film about Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican peasant who rose to
the presidency.
Steinbeck married Carol Henning in 1930 and lived with her in Pacific Grove,
California. He spent much of his time in Monterey with his friend, Ricketts, at his Cannery
Row laboratory, an experience which inspired his popular 1945 novel, Cannery Row. In
1943, Steinbeck married his second wife, Gwyndolyn Conger, with whom he had two
children. 1948 was a particularly bad year for Steinbeck: Ricketts died, and Gwyndolyn
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left him. However, he found happiness in his (1950) marriage to Elaine Scott, with whom
he lived in New York City. Two year later, he published the highly controversial East of
Eden, the novel he called “the big one,” set in the “California Salinas Valley.
Steinbeck’s later writings were comparatively slight works, but he did make several
notable attempts to reassert his stature as a major novelist: Burning Bright (1950), East
of Eden (1952), and The Winter of Our Discontent (1961). However, none of these
works equalled the critical reputation of his earlier novels. Steinbeck’s reputation is
dependent primarily on the naturalistic, proletarian-themed novels that he wrote during the
Depression. It is in these works that Steinbeck is most effective at building rich, symbolic
structures and conveying the archetypal qualities of his characters, Steinbeck received the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, and died in New York City in 1968.
19.3 STEINBECK’S SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Social consciousness represents a basic element in the writings of Steinbeck’s

long residence in the Salinas valley covered years of both regional and national unrest. The
economic structure of the Salinas Valley altered, as small farms were replaced by larger
ones and the financial picture enlarged to include corporation, large investments and amassing
fortunes. As the gap lengthened between the little man working for the big man, discontent
also increased, with unemployment and threatened strikes. It was all part of the generalized
national situation which culminated in the stock market crash of 1929 followed by the
period of depression. His first novels which received serious critical attention were socially-
oriented. In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath
(1939) were post-depression novels and dealt with proletarian matter.
In Dubious Battle (1936) was a strike novel set in the California apple country.
The strike of nine hundred migratory workers is led by Jin Nolan, devoted to his cause,
who confesses before his death: “I never had time to look at things. Mac, never. I never
looked how leaves come out. I never looked at the way things happen”. One the characters,
Doc Burton, a detached observer, Steinbeck partly derived from his friend Ed Ricketts.
Later Steinbeck developed his observer’s personality with changes in such works as
Cannery Row (1945), which returned to the world of Tortilla Flat. The novel was an
account of the adventures and misadventures of workers in a California cannery and their
friends. Its sequel, Sweet Thursday appeared in 1954.
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Of Mice and Men (1937), a story of shattered dreams, became Steinbeck’s
first big success. Steinbeck adapted it also into a three-act play, which was produced in
1937. George Milton and Lennie Small, two itinerant ranchmen, dream of one day
owning a small farm. George acts as a father figure to Lennie, who is large and simple
minded. Lennie loves all that is soft, but his immense physical strength is a source of
troubles and George is needed to clam him. The two friends find work and start saving
money for their future. Annoyed by the bullying foreman of the ranch, Lenny breaks the
foreman’s arm, but also wakes the interest of the ranch owner’s flirtatious daughter-in-
law. Lenny accidentally kills her and escapes into the hiding place, that he and George
have agreed to use, if they get into difficulties. George hurries after Lenny and shoots
him before he is captured by vengeful mob but at the same time he loses his own hopes
and dreams of better future. Before he dies, Lennie says: “Let’s do it now. Let’s get that
place now”.
The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck’s epic masterpiece of social consciousness in

which he pictures the helpless people crushed by drought and depression. Like his other
works, here also Steinbeck’s focus is upon man; the nature of man and his success and
failures, rather than upon the mere detached picture of an indifferent society.
19.4 BIOLOGICAL THEORY OF MAN
Steinbeck’s biological theory of man developed out of his friendship with Edward
Ricketts. The marine biologist’s views on the interdependence of all life deeply influenced
Steinbeck’s thinking. Steinbeck relates human beings : his fictional characters- to plants
and animals: he seems to see analogies of man in nature. He emphasizes on the natural
over the supernatural; but nature is phenomena and cycles offer even more than simple
analogy, Steinbeck seems to suggest. It offers an almost spiritual comfort, and encourages
earth-founded optimism.
19.5 DREAM AND REALITY, A FANTASY WORLD
Steinbeck’s fiction belongs more to a fantasy or dream world than it does to

the real everyday world. Sometimes this element is found in the author’s choice of
protagonists from among the castoffs, dregs of society and the antisocial. Several
critics have accused him of “glorifying idiocy” and of “deifying the drunk”. For example,
in Of Mice and Men, the halfwit Lennie, Steinbeck stated that he intended to represent
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the “inarticulate and powerful yearning of all men... the dreams and pleasures of
everyone in the world.” Similarly, Danny and his friends (in Tortilla Flat) live, what
by ordinary standards is an unreal existence, surviving more through chance than by
planning, and “experiencing” life in a most random way. Similar objectives outside
realistic narrative, along the lines of allegorical symbolic meanings are there in The
Wayward Bus, which Steinbeck concludes with an epigraphic quoting from a well
known medieval morality play called Everyman, a drama, which chronicled the cycle
of everyman’s life from birth to death.
19.6 THE GRAPES OF WRATH-A REPRESENTATIVE NOVEL OF THE

GREAT DEPRESSION OF 1930’S.
Steinbeck derived the title of the novel The Grapes of Wrath from The Battle
Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe:
“Mine eyes have seen the glory. of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling
out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored: He hath loosed the fateful
lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. “
When The Grapes of Wrath was published on March 14, 1939, it created a
national sensation for its depiction of the devastating effects of the Great Depression of the
1930s. The 1930’s comprised a decade of crises, moral as well as economic, in which the
initial financial panic was followed first by depression and then by paralysis. Of all the
social novels that came out of the great depression, very few have condemned man’s
inhumanity to man with the persistence, and vividness as has been portrayed by Steinbeck
in The Grapes of Wrath.
John Steinbeck was shocked by the tremendous response to his novel. Almost
overnight, he was transformed from a respected, struggling writer into a public sensation.
Yet The Grapes of Wrath was bound to cause controversy in a country experiencing a
decade of major social upheaval during the Depression. With the novel’s publication,
Steinbeck found himself immersed in a great national debate over the migrant labour problem.
Many people were shocked by the poverty and hopelessness of the story, and others
denied that such circumstances could happen in America.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel of protest as it exposes the desperate
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conditions under which one group of American workers, the migratory farm
families, were forced to live during the 1930' s. These were the people, who, in
the depths of the greatest economic depression the United States has known to
abandon their homes and their livelihoods. They were uprooted because tractors
were rapidly industrializing the Southern cotton fields and erosion and drought
were creating Dust bowl in wide areas of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas
and Okhlahoma.
Many of these uprooted families migrated to California, Steinbeck’s home, where

their presence caused acute social stress and their poverty and means to sustain their lives
led to their exploitation. The land proprietors took advantages of their eagerness to work
and hired them at starvation wages. These people were contemptuously referred to as
“Okies”, were treated with great brutality and were denied even the most elementary
human and civil rights. In addition to this, the landowners tried to suppress all their attempts
to form a union for self-protection. Such were the sociological conditions, which formed
the basis of Steinbeck’s famous novel, and he reported them accurately, realistically and
sympathetically.
Amidst the national crises, American novelists saw only hunger and unemployment,
desperate struggle and brutal expression, and it appeared to him an ugly world in
which the individual, especially the victim of the depression, was at the mercy of
force, both social and economic, he could neither understand nor control. In response
to the nation crises, American novelists returned, by and large, to naturalism as the
mode of literary composition. The philosophy of naturalism had its origin in the
nineteenth century scientific thought, particularly in the theories of Charles Darwin.
The most notably placed literary exponent of this philosophy, from the American
viewpoint, was Emile Zola. Zola, who often placed his characters in certain
environments, as if they were undergoing a controlled scientific experiment, in order
to study their responses and behaviour, and his scientific fiction had a strong influence
upon the novels of Californian writers like Frank Norris, Jack London and Steinbeck.
In 1930’s, the emphasis of naturalism shifted form the individual to the group. The
naturalistic novel of the 1930’s described the struggles of various minority groups : the
Irish, Negroes, workers and Okies.
Like the naturalists, who often saw the bestial I.... man breaking through his veneer
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of civilized behaviour, especially at moments of tension and excitement, Steinbeck
emphasizes the close relationship between animal and human nature and shows a great
interest in what critics have called the biology of human affairs. Steinbeck portrays the
oppression and degeneration of the unfortunates but does not permit his characters to
succumb completely or to become mere pawns of their environment and their fate. Despite
all the sufferings, the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath, exhibit a deep, instinctive will to
survive with dignity.
19.7 SUMMARY OF THE GRAPES OF WRATH
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath tells the specific story of the Joad family in
order to illustrate the hardship and oppression suffered by migrant labourers during the
Great Depression. The novel begins with the description of the conditions in Dust Bowl
Oklahoma that ruined the crops and instigated massive foreclosures on farmland. No
specific characters emerge initially, a technique that Steinbeck will return to several times
in the book, just exposing descriptions of events in a larger social context with those more
specific to the Joad family.
Tom Joad, a man not yet thirty, approaches a dinner dressed in spotless, somewhat
formal clothing. He hitches a ride with a truck driver at the dinner, who presses Tom for
information until Tom finally reveals that he was just released from McAlester prison,
where he served four years for murdering a man during a fight. Steinbeck follows this with
an interlude describing a turtle crossing the road, which he uses as a metaphor for the
struggles of the working class.
On his travel back home, Tom meets his former preacher, Jim Casy, a talkative
man gripped by doubts over religious teachings and the presence of sin. He gave up the
ministry after realizing that he found little wrong with the sexual liaisons he had with women
in his congregation. Casy espouses the view that what is holy in human nature comes not
from a distant God, but from the people themselves. Steinbeck contrasts Tom’s return
with the arrival of bank representatives to evict the tenant fallers and the tractors to farm
the land. He raises the possibility of a working class insurrection, but cannot find an
effective target for collective action.
When Tom and Casy reach the Joad’s house, it has been deserted. Muley Graves,
a local elderly man who may not be sane, tells them that the Joads have been evicted, and
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now stay with Uncle John. Muley’s own family has left to find work in California, but
Muley decided to stay himself. That night, since they are trespassing on the property now
owned by the bank, the three are forced to hide from the police who might arrest them.
Steinbeck follows this with a description of the tactics that car dealers use to
exploit impoverished customers. They find that they can make a greater profit by selling
damaged jalopies than by selling dependable new cars.
Tom Joad finds the rest of his family staying with Uncle John, a morose man
prone to depression after the death of his wife several years before. His mother is a
strong, sturdy woman who is the moral centre of family life. His brother, Noah, ‘may
have been brain damaged during childbirth, while his sister, Rose of Sharon (called
Rosasharn by the family) is recently married and pregnant. Her husband, Connie Rivers,
has dreams of studying radios. Tom’s younger brother, AI, is only sixteen and has the
concerns belittling that age. This is followed by a more general description the sale of
items by impoverished families who intend to leave Oklahoma for California, as the
Joads expect to do.
The Joads plan to go to California based on flyers they found advertising work in
the fields there. These flyers, as Steinbeck will soon reveal, are fraudulent advertisements
meant to draw more workers than necessary and drive down wages Jim Casy asks to
accompany the Joads to California so that he can work with people in the fields rather than
to preach them. Before the family leaves, Granpa Joad refuses to go but the family gives
him medicine that knocks him unconscious and takes him with them. The subsequent
chapters describes the vacant houses that remain after the Oklahoma farmers leave for
work elsewhere, as well as the conditions on Route 66, the highway that stretches from
Oklahoma to Bakersfield, California.
Almost immediately into the journey, the Joad family loses two members.
The first victim is the family dog, which is run over during the first stop. The
second is Granpa Joad, who dies of a stroke. The Wilson family helps the Joads
when Granpa dies, and the two families decide to make the journey to California
together.
Steinbeck follows this with larger statement about the growing of a collective consciousness
among the working class, who shift their perceptions from “I” to “we.”
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The Wilson’s car soon breaks down, and Tom and Casy consider separating from
the rest of the family temporarily to fix the car, but Ma Joad refuses to let the family break
apart even temporarily. Tom and AI find the necessary part to fix the car at junkyard,
where the one-eyed ID who watches over the junkyard complains about his boss and
threatens to murder him. Before the Joads set out on their journey again, they find man
returning from California who tells them that there is no work there and the promises of
work in the flyers are a fraud.
The Joads and Wilsons reach California, where they are immediatly subjected to
intimidation by police officers who derisively call them other migrant labourers “Okies.” At
the first camp where they stay, Granpa becomes quite ill, but receives some comfort from
proselytizing Jehov who merely annoy Ma Joad. The police force them out of the camp,
but Wilsons choose the possibility of arrest instead, since Sairy Wilson is sick to continue.
The next time that the police stop the Joads on their travels, Ma Joad forces them to let
them pass without inspection. She does this to hide from the police the fact that Granma
has died.
Steinbeck follows this with a description of the history of California which he

frames as one marked by oppression and slavery, however, predicts an imminent revolution,
for the people there have been deprived such a great degree that they must take what they
need in order to survive.
At the next camp where the Joads stay on their search for work they learn about
Weedpatch, a government camp where the residents do not face harassment by police
officers and have access to amenities including bath and toilets. When more police officers
attempt to stall a fight with Tom and several other migrant workers, Tom trips him and
knocks him unconscious. To prevent Tom from taking the blame, for he would be sent
back to jail for violating his parole, Casy accepts responsibility for the crime and is taken
away to jail. The rest of the family begins to break apart as well. Uncle John leaves to get
drunk, Noah decides to leave society altogether and live alone in the woodlands, and
Connie abandons his pregnant wife. Before they must move on, Tom does retrieve Uncle
John, who is still consumed with guilt over his wife’s death. They head north toward the
government camp.
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At the government camp, the Joads are shocked to find how well the other residents
treat them and how efficiently this society in which the camp leaders are elected by the
residents’ functions. Tom even finds work the next day, but the contractor, Mr. Thomas,
warns him that there will be trouble at the dance at Weedpatch that weekend. Since the
police can only enter the camp if there is trouble, they intend to plant intruders there who
will instigate violence.
The Joads settle into a comfortable existence at the government camp, and during
the dance that Saturday, Tom and several other residents defuse the situation, preventing
the police from taking control of the camp, to nurse him back to health. Nevertheless, after
a month in Weedpatch none of the Joads have found steady work and realize that they
must continue on their journey. They arrive at Hooper Ranch, where the entire family picks
peaches. The wages they receive are higher than normal, for they are breaking a strike.
Tom finds out that the leader of the labour force that is organizing the strike is Jim Casy.
After his time in prison, Casy realized that he must fight for collective action by the working
class against the wealthy ruling class. Tom, Casy and the other strike leaders get into a fight
with strike breakers, and one of them murders Casy with a pick handle. Tom struggles
with the man and wrests away the weapon. He, in turn, kills the man who murdered Casy,
and barely escapes capture by the police.
Although Tom wishes to leave the family to spare them from taking
responsibility for him, the Joads nevertheless decide to leave Hooper Ranch for a
location where Tom can be safe. They reach cotton fields up north, where Tom hides
in the woods while the family stays in a boxcar. Although the family attempts to keep
Tom’s identity and location a secret, young Ruthie Winfield reveals it during a fight
with another child. When Ma tells Tom about this, he decides to leave the family and
go off alone, determined to fight for the cause for which Casy died, and vows to
return to his family one day.
The raining season arrived almost immediately after Tom left the family, causing
massive flooding. The Joads are caught in a dangerous situation: they cannot escape the
flooding because Rose of Sharon suddenly goes into labor. While other families evacuate
the camp near the rapidly rising creek, the Joads remain and attempt to stop the flood
waters. Without the aid of others, the Joads are unsuccessful, and they seek refuge on the
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top of their car. Rose of Sharon delivers a stillborn child that Uncle John sends in a box
down the creek. The family, eventually, reaches higher ground and finds a ban for shelter.
Inside the barn is a starving man and his young son. In the final act of the book,
Rose of Sharon commits the most selfless and beautiful act to be found throughout: she
breast feeds a starving and dying man, laying all her social inhibitions aside to save a life.
This final act illustrates the depravity the’Okies’ were forced to submit to but also, the
endurance of humanity.
19.8 CHARACTER SKETCHES
Jim Casy
Jim Casy accompanies the Joad family on their journey from Oklahoma to California.
He is a former preacher who has given up both Christian fundamentalism and sexuality,
and is ready for a new life dedicated to helping people like the Joads. He is honest,
compassionate, and courageous. Casy’s new “religion” is based on love and a belief in
each person’s soul as well as the “Holy Spirit” of humanity. As critics have noted, these
non-secular views of humanity can be traced to the transcendentalist philosophy of WaIt
Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Casy is a new convert to this transcendentalism.
After his period of meditation in the wilderness, Casy abandons his beliefs in
the personal conversion aspect of Christianity with its emphasis on the intermediary
roles of Christ and the Spirit and opts rather for a half evolved Emersonian doctrine
of the Oversoul. In his view, man’s soul is but a part of a greater, more universal soul,
or Oversoul, to which it will be reunited in the after-life. From this insight Casy proceeds
to reason that if all men have souls which are parts of the one great soul, then all men
are good, since they come from the same good source and will return there. And,
Casy argues, if all men are good then their actions must be good eating, drinking,
talking, fornicating and all things are holy, because they are done by man and man
himself is holy.
Casy’s initials (J. C.) have been cited as evidence that his character is a symbol of
Jesus Christ. Moreover, his words and actions in the novel parallel those of Jesus Christ.
For instance, he takes the blame for the deputy’s beating at the Hooven’ille, and is taken
to jail instead of Tom and, finally, goes to his death with the stinging rebuke which sums up
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the whole human tragedy: “You fell as don’t know what you are doing. You are helping to
starve kids.”
Tom Joad
Tom Joad is the protagonist of the novel, who undergoes a painful process of
searching for his own identity and gradually becomes a combined embodiment of his
mother’s sympathy and of Casy’s thought. Towards the end of the novel, we feel that Tom
is ready to go forth and put his love of mankind and his socio-political philosophy into
action.
Before reaching the pinnacle of development, however, Tom must endure a hard
series of trials, which literally transform his personality from that of a hot-tempered, cruelly
tough, egocentric to the one approaching the humanitarian serenity of his saint-like mother.
When Tom comes out from prison, we see he is interested mainly in his own personal
comforts and needs. He does not feel the least bit guilty about having killed a man, believing
himself to be fully justified in pleading self-defence.
Having grown accustomed to the relatively comfortable prison life with its
showers, clean sheets and regular meals, Tom is annoyed as well as disappointed when
he finds his home half destroyed and his people gone. Still proud, he refuses to sleep in
a cave on his own family’s land. Later, in California, after killing the deputy who slew
Casy, Tom is only too happy to find a cave-like hideaway. Such ironic little twists of fate
pursue him continually.
While Tom remains hardened against any representatives of the law and prone to
sudden fits of violence, he is still fascinated by Casy’s philosophical notions which appeal
to his better nature. For, in spite of his somewhat callous exterior, Tom possesses a deep
tenderness, which he reserves, at first, for members of his own family. Ma is fully aware of
her favorite son’s potentialities for good, and she is afraid that something may have happened
to him in prison to make him “mean -mad” like “PUlly Boy Floyd”. She is continually trying
to restrain his natural violence which, she knows, can erupt any minute. When stopped by
a mob near Bakersfield, Ma whispers conciliatory words to Tom and then praises him for
not trying to light the authorities. After Tom has killed Casy’s murderer, Ma tries to hide
him and keep him fed.
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Tom’s stay in the cave marks a very significant change in his personality, symbolized
in his smashed and hence altered face. The symbolic return-to-the womb results in a very
real psychological rebirth. Mulling over Casy’s words and thinking of the example of the
government camp at Weedpatch, Tom begins to grasp the value and necessity for concerted
action. Up until this point he has relied almost entirely upon his own strength and native
abilities in an attempt fight for a decent living, but he has met with nothing but abuse and
mortification at the hands of landowners and the deputies. Now he realizes that man cannot
live alone, that man must join together with other men because there is strength in unity. He
knows that he must move away from his own personal family and accept the whole world
as his family. He is ready to carry on the work begun by Jim Casy.
Ma Joad
Ma is an embodiment of strong women of proverbs. Her control and kindness are

mirrored in her face, and her eyes have that serene look of one who has somehow passed
beyond suffering and pain. Nothing disturbs Ma, at least outwardly, because she knows
that the whole family looks to her for guidance and stability.
In many ways, Ma embodies the philosophy of Jim Casy. She treats all creatures
with respect due to them. While always putting the needs of her own family first, she
willingly helps others people when she can. She comforts the Wilsons, shares food with
the starving Hooverville children, and finds works for the Wainwrights.
Ma holds the family together as long as humanly possible. She suffers greatly
when she sees Granpa die, then Noah leave, then Granma die, and then Tom forced to
hide and finally go away. But she hides her grief knowing well that Pa and the children
could know hurt and fear only if she acknowledged hurt and fear.
Ma understands the individual needs of each number of the family will collapse.
So, at times, she goads Pa into near frenzy, knowing that his anger will make him stronger
by strengthening his resolve. She knows how Rose of Sharon is troubled by her pregnancy,
and she threatens to slap her at times when she begins to feel too sorry for herself, but she
is always ready to control the poor girl when the need arises. She knows she can rely on
Tom, but not on Al who lacks Tom’s sense of responsibility.
As long as the family or some part of family is together, Ma will see to it that they
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survive. She feels instinctively that they are the people, that they are the ones who will
endure and populate the world. Though she speaks rarely, she expresses one of the most
comprehensive morals of the novel: “If you’re in trouble or HL111 or need-go to the poor
people. They’re the only ones that will help - the only ones”.
19.9 THE GRAPES OF WRATH AS A NOVEL OF JOURNEY
As a major literary figure since the 1930s, Steinbeck displays in his writing a characteristic
respect for the poor and oppressed. In many of his novels, his characters show signs of a
quiet dignity and courage for which Steinbeck has a great admiration. For instance, in The
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck describes the unrelenting struggle of the people who depend
on the soil for their livelihood. Steinbeck has the ability to bind two ideas into one story:
the never ending struggle to survive and primacy of the family. The journey of the Joads
serves as a suitable vehicle for the delivery of Steinbeck’s message and theme. In The
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck shows the Joads’ endurance by his use of extended metaphors
in intercalary chapters.
Steinbeck uses intercalary chapters to provide background for the various themes
in the novel. This effectively foreshadows upcoming events by telling of the general state of
the local population in the intercalary chapters and then narrowing it down to how it affects
the main characters of the novel, the Joads. Setting the tone of the novel in the readers’
mind is another function of Steinbeck’s intercalary chapters.
In chapter three, Steinbeck immaculately describes the long tedious journey of a
land turtle across a desolate highway. From the onset of his journey, the turtle encounters
many set backs. All along the way he is hindered by ants, hills, and oak seeds under his
shell. The turtle’s determination to reach his destination is most apparent when a truck
driven by a young man swerves to hit the turtle. The turtle’s shell was clipped and he went
flying off the highway. He struggled back to his belly and kept driving toward his goal, just
as the Joads kept diving toward their goal.
Much like the turtle from chapter three, the Joads had to face many great hardships
in their travels. The planes of Oklahoma, with their harsh summer weather, were the Joads’
desolate highway. They were driven by great motivating powers, poverty and hunger. Just
as the turtle searched for food, the Joads were searching for paradise, “the garden of
Eden.”
The Joads’ journey is second to none in terms of adversity and length. The Joads’
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incredible ability to overcome all odds and keep going is epitomized in intercalary chapter
three. Steinbeck uses his rendition of facts, the “turtle” chapter, to parallel the Joads’
struggle to reach the promised land. Just as the turtle endured, so the Joads never digressing
from their strait and narrow path to California.
1. Discuss The Grapes of Wrath as a representative novel of the great depression

of 1930’s.
2. Enumerate the themes of Steinbeck’s works with particular references to The

Grapes of Wrath.
3. Draw a character sketch of Tom Joad.
4. Draw a character sketch of Ma Joad and Jim Casy.
5. Discuss The Grapes of Wrath as a novel of journey.
1. French, Warren, ed. A companion to The Grapes of Wrath. New York: The
Viking Press, 1963.
2. Lisca, Peter. “The Grapes of Wrath.” The Wide World of John Steinbeck,
New Brunswick, New Jersy: Rutgers University Press, 1958.
3. Marks, Lester J. Thematic Design in the Novels of John Steinbeck. The hague:
Mouton, 1969.
4. Moore, Harry T. The Novels of John Steinbeck : A First Critical Study. Chicago:
Normandie House, 1939. reprinted Port Washington, New York: Kennikat
Press, 1968.
5. Watt, F.W. John Steinbeck, Evergreen Pilot Books, New York ,: Grove Press,
1962.
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AMERICAN LITERATURE-II UNIT-VI
MALAMUD’S LIFE AND WORKS

STRUCTURE
20.1 Objectives
20.2 Bernard Malamud – Life and Works
20.3 The Natural
20.4 The Magic Barrel
20.5 A New Life
20.6 Fixer
20.7 Pictures of Fidelman
20.8 The Tenants
20.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to discuss the life and works of Bernard
Malamud. The lesson briefly discusses Malamud’s few important works which are his
important writing, recognizing him as one of the most important writer of modern
American Literature.
20.2 BERNARD MALAMUD—LIFE AND WORKS
Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1914. He studied at

the City College and Columbia University in New York. After his university education
Malamud joined as teacher at the Erasmus Hall Evening High School in Brooklyn.
It the same school where he had studied as a boy. Just as he started his teaching
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career, about the same time he had also started his writing career. His first attempt
was at writing short stories, which were published in the school magazine. He was
never quite happy in the city of New York. For a long time, at least since 1947 he
had been planning to move out of it, however, before his desired escape of New
York city where African American live. It was only in 1949 that his escape could
become possible, he also taught night classes at Harlen, a sector from New York
became possible. He joined Oregon State College where he remained member of the
English Faculty till 1961. After leaving Oregon, Malamud remained as the Bennington
College Faculty, with two years spent at Harvard.
As a professional writer of fiction, Malamud made a beginning with the
publication of his short-story, entitled ‘‘The Cost of Living’’ in 1949. He got recognition
and fame as writer with the publication of his second novel The Assistant in 1957.
The novel won him the Rosenthal Award the same Year. It was followed by more
awards and laurels. A Partisan Review Fellowship and Rockfeller grant enabled him
to spend an year in Rome, with his wife and two children. While in Rome Malamud
wrote his next work, named The Magic Barrel, which won him The National Book
Award for the year 1967. Thereafter, Malamud became a member of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters. By the end of the 1960’s he had established himself as
one of the most distinguished of American Jewish novelists.
Other notable novels that Malamud wrote include The Natural (1952), A
New Life (1961), The Fixer (1966), Pictures of Fidleman : An Exhibition (1969),
The Tenants (1971) and Dubim’s Lives (1979). Alongside of these novels he also
produced three collections of short stories, namely The Magic Barrel (1959), Idiots
First (1963) and Rembrandt’s Hat (1973). Except for Roy Hobbs, the protagonist
of Malamud’s first novel, all his heroes (or anti-heroes) are Jewish characters striving
to find a foothold in the flux of life they are destined to live in the post-war period.
It is through the persistent search of these protagonists for a qualitatively ‘new life’
that the novelist prefects his moral vision. Their struggle includes the perennial problem
of their relationship with the non-Jewish American society.
20.3 THE NATURAL
In his first novel, The Natural, Malamud presents the hero, Roy Hobbs,
aspiring to become a baseball champion. His sole and most intense passion is to
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become, in his own words, “the greatest there ever was” in the game. He is the type
of person whose consciousness would not aspire for “something over and above
earthly things.” When he finds that Walter (the whammer) Wambold, a leading American
leaguer, makes fun of him, Roy makes it a point to defeat him in an impromptu wayside
contest. The novel’s hero soon becomes an indispensable player for the Knights whose
leading hitter, Bump Bailing, participates in the game for self-glorification only and
never for the team as such. After the unfortunate death of Bailey, Roy remains the only
hope for the Knights, so much so that his magical hat, Wonderboy, comes to be
looked upon by both the other players of the team as well as the spectators a sort of
wonder in the history of the game. When the Knights reach close to the victory, the
press applauds Roy as the most valuable Player of the game. Just at that crucial
movement of the team when it is very close to the final victory, Roy accepts Memo
Paris’s invitation to a party where he makes the mistake of eating rather gluttonously.
As a result of that indiscretion he has to be hospitalized, since he has developed
serious discomfort in the stomach.
Roy’s tragedy is that while he has the vigour and appetite of a “natural”, he
lacks the perception and insight of an individuated person. His wants of wisdom and
insight make him an easy prey for the vicious trio of Judge Bammer, Memo Paris and
Gus Sands. His only saving grace is his female friend, Iris Lemon, who alone sustains
him in crucial moments of acute depression and ignominy. He does have two more
female friends, Harriet and Memo, but they are both rather predatory (like the
animals that prey on others). Only Iris is found capable of love and compassion,
which sustain the hero through the trying periods of his career as a player. Whenever
Roy feels broken inside, he looks upto her for help. And she never fails him in the
hour of need. It is she, and she alone, who explains to him the value of the experience
of suffering. She confidently tells him : “We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with
and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness.”
She goes on to add that the normative centre of suffering lies in teaching man “to
want the right things.”
When Roy finally comes out in an outburst against the vicious trio, it is
obvious that he has acquired consciousness of a different realm of values. Significantly,
the novel ends at this very point, showing a moral growth in the character of the
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hero. It is, in a way, a sort of transformation that Roy undergoes as a consequence
of his intense exposure to a trying experience of life. When we look back from this
vantage point of the narrative, we can see how, in the beginning, any “talk about
his inner self” was to him “like ploughing up a graveyard.” However, we find that
at the end of the novel he becomes conscious of the fact that he “has to suffer
again”. The significance of Malamud’s first novel is that it is these themes of (i) the
growth of inwardness, and (ii) the value of suffering, which he develops further in
his later novels.
20.4 THE MAGIC BARREL
Malamud’s next novel, The Assistant, our concern for detailed study, we
leave out of the present discussion. Its detailed analysis, examining the various aspects
of theme, plot, style, etc., will be taken up later. We, therefore, take up here the
work that follows this novel, that is The Magic Barrel, which is a collection of short
stories. Although just a short collection of thirteen stories only, it won its author the
first National Book Award. The citation for the Award read as under : “Compassionate
and profound in its wry humour, it captures the poetry of human relationships at the
point where imagination and reality meet.” Most of the stories in the collection relate
to the life of Jews and Gentiles living in New York. Only a few relate to Italian
situations. More important, however, than their ethnic colour is the resonance of life
these stories evoke. Certain situations in these stories are reminiscent of similar
happenings in the two novels that had appeared before The Magic Barrel. Others
foresee the novel to follow, for some of the stories and situations are dilated into
larger plots in the later novels. Splitting the stories into different groups would rather
only hinder the orchestration of a complex response to the variety of experience they
embody in their collective body. It is, in fact, on the basis of this varied experience
of life itself that, irrespective of its ethnic diversities, the book as a whole tends to
be ‘‘an affirmation of man’s ability to realize himself, even in the face of deprivation
and disaster.’’ While, on one hand, Malamud presents the anguish of the disinherited
and the injured bakers, shoemakers, tailors, grocers, and matchmakers, he also
presents, on the other, the feeble voice of human relatedness, connecting man to man
with compassion and sympathy.
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The theme of injustice, as usual in Malamud, is central to these stories in
The Magic Barrel. We find that most characters are fugitives, attempting evasion
of tyranny and injustice. Sitting hunchbacked behind sale counters they only dream
of better days ahead. At the same time, they are not unmindful of their grim
awareness that the price of aspiration is invariably suffering. And yet they do not
consider the bargain unprofitable for it is only this that they consider as evidence
of being a Feld, a Kessler, a Lieh, and a Panessa. The value of personal integrity
is heightened in the utterances of Isabella. George’s quiet resolve to gain responsibility,
too, is directed towards the same goal. Similarly, Henry Levin, by disowning his
past and describing it expendable, fails to grasp the purpose of life, which Rosen
is able to affirm through his large-heartedness. In the perspective of these stories
in The Magic Barrel, love of mankind seems a prerequisite to love of God, as Leo
Finkle realizes it after his training in the Yeshiva. In short what Malamud seems to
suggest through these stories is that man is capable of subordinating self-interest to
transfer human concerns.
20.5 A NEW LIFE
Malamud’s next book is his third novel, A New Life, which at first does not
seem to have any direct thematic link with his two earlier novels. However, on a
closer reading we come to see that this novel is only an attempt to extend and
recreate those moral concerns that do seem to constitute the core of his earlier
novels. In A New Life, we see that S. Levin, a New Yorker, comes to Cascadia in
the Western America as an instructor in English at Eastchester Community College.
Levin finds that in a metropolitan city like New York democracy seems to have
become inoperative. He feels that democracy would be found in its purest form in
his small college campus, away from New York. However, when he gets into the
small world of the college, he discovers to his dismay and disillusion that instead of
democracy, it is faculty intrigues and factional politics that dominate the functioning
of the college. There is no democratic functioning even among the various faculties
and departments. His own liberal arts have to live in subordination to the faculties of
agriculture and forestry. Just as he joins the college, he is warned against having
affairs with girl students and faculty wives. But human nature being what it is, such
prescriptive pieces of advice seldom work. Levin, during his one year stay in the
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college, does nothing but what he had been advised against. And when he leaves the
college after one year, he does so with his Composition Director’s wife, Pauline,
promising never to return to the business of teaching.
Considered as an academic novel, A New Life comes out with an incisive

commentary on the petty-mindedness and infantile interests of the learned educators
at the college. We are shown how at formal faculty get-togethers, Professor Fairchild,
the Department Chairman, pontificates on the virtues of research and the pursuit of
higher research. However, his rhetoric for achieving academic excellence ends just as
the meeting ends. While in private he confides to Levin that his priorities are as
under : “We need forestry, farmers, engineers, agronomists, fish-and-game people,
and every sort of extension agent ..... You can’t fell a tree, run a four-lane highway
over a mountain, or build a dam with poetry.” These priorities come as a sort of
bedrock on which Levin’s ideals shatter. In sharp contrast to the Chairman’s priorities,
Levin’s ideals include acquainting his students with deeper moral concerns. For
effecting these ideals he wants courses in philosophy to be introduced. In his view,
literature must constitute the core of the college curriculum. These courses, he thinks
educate his students about the dangers to democracy. Levin’s considered view is that
“the human, the good and innocent” need to be protected against the menace of
McCarthyism, the Cold War, Loyalty Oaths and the Korean War. He looks upon the
people on his college campus as representatives of the American public, a sort of
mini America. As such, couples at the Cascadia College, like the Fairchilds, the
Gilleys, and the Bullocks epitimize the national crisis of leadership and bankruptcy of
ideas. Consequently, Levin’s urge to begin a new life is intensified by his college
experience. His commitment to human relationship is stronger than his activity of
teaching. He does not hesitate to quit teaching, when it comes to making a sacrifice
for the greater cause of strengthening human bonds. Hence we find at the end of the
novel that Levin renunciates academic career.
Malamud’s A New Life was followed by another collection of short stories

under the title Idiots First, which shows the author’s further explorations into newer
experiences of human life. A central theme of these stories seems to be the inhumanity
of man. Another, equally central to this collection, is the theme of racial prejudices
between the two leading minority communities in America, the Blacks and the Jews.
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The emphasis behind it all remains on the “sanctity of human life.” The book offers
an impressive account of destitution on one hand, and of commitment to the value
of love, on the other. The stories come out with a 'scathing expose’ of hypocrisy as
well as a fervent concept of human responsibility. An animating contact between art
and life can be seen delineated in the Fidelman stories. The author very clearly seems
to suggest that unless related to life, art remains an empty exercise in technocracy.
In the story called “Suppose a Wedding”, we are shown Maurice explaining the value
of tragedy in reminding people “that they are human”. Then, in the stories of “the
German Refugee” and “The Jewbird” we are shown the horrors of anti-Semitism.
Implied in these stories exposing social ills and human failures is the author’s alternative
attitude of sanity, which identifies a corresponding humanity in others. The accent of
“the anxious humanist” in Malamud is always found to inform his stories, long or
short. That is precisely what the present collection, too, demonstrates.
20.6 FIXER
The next novel that came from Malamud’s pen, The Fixer, is focused on an
incident of anti-Semitism which takes place in Zarist Russia. The novel articulates
once again the author’s abiding allegiance to the ethics of humanism, to a meta-
Jewish secular ideal of life. The novel’s story is located in a Jewish village falling in
the Russian Pale (marking the restricted territory for Jews).
The novel’s protagonist, named Yakov Boc, is a Jew by birth. The story’s
dramatic interest springs from the Jewish history of the Passover. The central impulse
in the novel, however, transcends the Jewish framework, the purely ethnic interests,
penetrating to the universal human core that resides in every human heart. The
narrative opens with the protagonist going on the familiar quest for a “new life”, which
involves a clear and conscious decision to discard the past and a serious search for
a promising future. He would be able to improve his prospects in life. However, as
the irony of life would have it, he soon finds himself implicated in a false murder
charge. The organization of bigoted Russians, called the Black Hundreds, prepares
false evidence in order to consign him to a solitary confinement. There in the prison
every possible instrument of torture is used to compel him to make a confession.
However, Yakov remains undaunted by the brutal treatment meted out to him, and
refuses to make a confession. After remaining in prison for two and a half years, he
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receives the indictment. When the novel comes to an end, we see Yakov escorted
in a closed carriage to court for trial.
The Russian authorities claim to have discovered correspondence between

Yakov and Mendel Bellis, whom the government had earlier arrested in 1913 on a
similar charge of ritual murder. Since the novel was meant primarily to be an indictment
of injustice, it did not intend to become a “factual reportage” on an historical happening.
As Malamud himself said, he did not ‘‘want it to be tied to the Bellis case. In his
discussion of Spinoza with Bibikov, Yakov sums up the teachings of the Dutch
philosopher in a pithy sentence, ‘‘life could be better than it is.’’ It is owing to his
commitment to reason that Yakov shuns the rhetoric of the synagogue and decides
to become a free thinker. Malamud’s view of different races or ethnic groups is not
simplistic or prejudiced. For instance, not all the Jewish characters in the novel are
honest and above board, nor all the Christians racists and reprehensible. His perspective
clearly demonstrates that the book’s intention is not to defend or justify Judaism, nor
to disparage or undermine Christianity. The issue of injustice located at the centre of
the novel is non-racist and non-ethnic. The novelist treats the subject in secular
terms, making his hero’s struggle against injustice, showing the tremendous human
capacity for suffering and endurance. As has been aptly observed, ‘‘it is the seeking
after living that is affirmed, and is Malamud’s theme, one undeniable characteristic of
human living is human suffering.’’
20.7 PICTURE OF FIDELMAN
In his next novel, Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition, Malamud uses an

altogether new narrative technique. While the novel apparently seems to offer a set
of disparate episodes, presenting six separate pictures, it actually demands the reader
to reconstruct the events to form a linear and logical movement into a coherent story
about the life of Arthur Fidelman in Italy. Despite this experimental attempt, however,
Malamud is not one of those ‘‘disruptionists’’ who fragment the narrative to embody
their postmodernist view of life. In this view, life is unstable and unrelated, having no
logicality or wholeness. Malamud remains, one might say, one of those ‘‘old timers’’
for whom life is not yet meaningless and can be lived meaningfully, relating individual
to society, and society to the whole of humanity, assimilating all individuals and
societies into a grand universal unity. Here, in the present novel, the unity of the
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narrative is achieved through the thread of the hero’s consciousness, which is continuously
growing, having a beginning, middle, and end. It is through the growth of Malamud’s
rather ‘‘unheroic’’ heroes that we discover the thematic kinship among his various
novels. Here, the growth in the hero’s character is depicted in psychological terms.
As we move through the narrative, we notice a continuous shaping of certain mental
attitudes in the character of the central figure of Arthur Fidelman. We see how, after
his utopian quest into the realm of art, he finally returns to, what he had always
viewed, the imperfect world. In this graph of his life-journey Fidelman shows his
clear kinship with the earlier heroes of Malamud’s novels, such as Roy Hobbs, Frank
Alpine, and S. Levin.
Taking a backward look on all these novels we have discussed, we can

notice a significant consistency in the entire corpus of Malamud’s work. The pattern
emerges from the growth of his protagonists, which his novels so effectively dramatize.
Here, in the case of Fidelman, he eventually realizes during the progess of his journey
that since he cannot ‘‘invent’’ art, he must ‘‘invent’’ life through love. In his genuine
acceptance of his failings lies his redemption. His return from Europe to America
acquires a symbolic significance, suggesting a shift in his stance from pretence to
reality. The novel’s comic tone may put a question mark in the reader’s mind about
the status of the hero and the significance of his symbolic change. But we cannot, at
the same time, afford to miss that in Malamud, here as well as elsewhere, comedy
remains a means of survival for his central characters in the face of severe despair
of life. Moreover, comedy confirms the author’s allegiance to the imperfect world. In
fact, Malamud seems to endorse Mark Twain’s comment that, sorrow being an
indistinguishable component of comedy, no humour is possible in heaven. Hence the
return of his hero into the unheavenly world of imperfect life.
20.8 THE TENANTS
Malamud’s next novel, The Tenants, returns to his familiar theme of racial or
ethnic relationships. In the present novel, it is the case of the Jews and the Blacks in
America as to how the two minority communities manage to cope with each other and
with the majority community of the Anglo-Saxon Americans. Malamud had prominently
dealt with the American blacks in two short stories, namely, ‘‘Angel Levixe’’ and
‘‘Black is My Favourite Color,’’ where he brought out the complexity of responses
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between the blacks and the Jews. Here, in The Tenants, he once again takes up the
theme on a larger scale of the novel and gives it greater treatment than was possible
on the limited canvas of the short story. The novel presents one Harry Lesser, a Jewish
writer and one Willie Spearmint, a black writer, both of whom make attempt to establish
themselves as writers. However, before they are able to produce their masterpieces,
they bitterly fall out. Although the novel’s conclusion is blandly realistic, its intention
comes through in the Rabbi’s sermon in which the possibilities of mutual understanding
are heightened : ‘‘Some day God will bring together Ishmael and Israel to live as one
people. It won’t be the first miracle.’’ However, placed against the background of the
novel’s events, including Willie’s destruction of Harry’s manuscript and Harry’s hacking
of Willie’s typewriter, the sermon sounds highly sentimental, even highly unrealistic. The
novel ending with the two writers killing each other, in fact, belies the vision embodied
in the sermon. We have to look at the novel, just as we look at a tragedy : not taking
the events as a model to be followed, but as a warning to avoid such events. Here, too,
we are invited by the author to take the example of these two writers as a case of ethnic
fanaticism, serving as a warning against the bitter consequences of ethnic or racial
prejudices. As Malamud himself put it, the novel ‘‘is a sort of prophetic warning against
fanaticism.’’
Malamud’s last significant work comes under the title Rembrandt’s Hat,
which is a collection of eight short stories. As usual, the narratives are neither wholly
cheerful nor wholly depressing. The stories deal with the familiar aspects of modern
living in America, addressing some of the most sordid and brutal aspects of life in that
society. The book seems to seek a resolution to Howell’s “riddle on the painful earth”
through a candid stocktaking of their limitations and an enduring respect for the
sanctity of being. The author’s imagination engages itself “in the service of how men
should live so as not to cause pain, so as to be the best they can be. And in the no-
man’s land between that hope and the small achievements it gives rise to Malamud
weaves his fables,” says Herbert Leibowitz. In these stories, once again, we encounter
men and women who are confronted with the perennial problem of life – to accept
retirement as well as rejection, despair as well as despondence, as a part of life.
Confronted with such situations, Malamud’s characters are compelled to reconcile to
the harsh reality of life. They are also made to see the two polarities of humanist
approach to life, of freedom and necessity, as to how the two are inevitably interlinked
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and neither can wish away the other. The overriding issue that always arises in
Malamud writings arises here as well, the issue of regulating one’s life in order to
reconcile to the realities therein. Most fail to regulate and reconcile and hence undergo
pain and suffering; but some are able to regulate and reconcile, and hence acquire
poise and balance. It is this familiar pattern that permeates all through the novels and
stories, we have scanned here in this brief discussion.
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THE ASSISTANT
STRUCTURE
21.1 Objectives
21.2 Bernard Malamud and Jewish Literature in America
21.3 Jewish American Fiction
21.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to provide a detail study of Jewish Literature

in America and focussing on Fiction as a mainstream representation of Self-Identification
and relocation within literature of Post Nazi Holocaust and Second World War.
21.2 BERNARD MALAMUD AND JEWISH LITERATURE IN AMERICA
Since Bernard Malamud is a Jewish novelist in America, it is necessary that

we acquaint ourselves with the growth of Jewish literature in America. It becomes
necessary to know this because a writer is properly understood and appreciated only
in his cultural context, which, of course, includes his national as well as sub-national
ethnic environment. Not that a writer has no universal meaning and message to
communicate in his book. Every writer worth the name would have the universal
course in his work, which lies beneath and beyond the surface coverings of cultural,
national and ethnic meanings. The universal core in the ethnic work, call it residual,
if you like, lies at its heart just as the human soul lies in the physical body. And it is
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for this universal meaning that we read literary works written in different countries
and in different periods of history. However, to have a comprehensive view of a
literary work we do need to take into account all of its aspects, including the
historical and cultural, biographical and psychological, as well as universal and lexical,
anthropological and sociological, rather than pick up just one of, these and argue to
prove the case of a part for the whole. Unfortunately, that has been the problem with
most (in fact, all) theoretical approaches that have been brought to the fore in the
history of literary criticism. All of these theories have been based each on just one
aspect of the literary work, carrying the whole truth about literature. We have to
stand apart from such a folly and adopt the eclectic approach of using all aids that
help understand and appreciate a literary work. Each work will require a set of these
aids to unfold itself to the readers. The reader’s (or critic’s) job is to keep an open
mind and see what aids seems helpful in getting into the world of the work to get its
feel and measure its meaning.
It is in the light of such an approach to writers and their work that we have
to take up the case of Malamud and his novel The Assistant. And to do that justly
and fairly we must begin with the beginning; that is, with the origin and development
of the Jewish literature in America, which over the years has acquired its own
individual and separate identity, separate from the Anglo-Saxon American identity,
which until recently had been passing for the monolithic identity of American nation
and narration. In the present era of post-modernist and post-structuralist emphases,
the hitherto minority groups or sub-nationalists have asserted their individual voices
and have demanded separate spaces in the global (or even national) spectrum of
literary discourses. Let us therefore begin with the advent and development of the
Jewish literature in America and try to place Malamud in that growth-chart wherever
he belongs.
There has been a wide critical assertion to the effect that the Yiddish concept
of menschlikeit is what qualitatively distinguishes the Jewish American literature. In
Yiddish (the language the Jews speak), a mensch connotes that man is not just a
man, the literal meaning of mensch, but a man is as a man should be. Also, not
necessarily a smarter man, he may even be a bit of a schlemiehl, that is a fool, or
a schlimazel, that is magnet attracting bad luck. The usual distinction is that when the
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schlemiehl drops his bowl of soup it lands in the lap of schlimazel, though it is not
uncommon to find a schlemiehl who is also a schlimazel. Thus, to be a mensch (man)
it is essential only that he be a man of heart and ethical responsibility, that he pursue
ideals but never beyond human limits. In that sense, a mensch is neither a creature
reduced to its material needs nor a divinity able to alter a world to its heart's desire.
On the contrary, a mensch must fulfil his obligations in the world as it is, though
sometimes making attempts to improve it, frequently with somewhat ludicrous results.
We can see how there are problems with the concept. One of the oblivious of these
problems is that by definition it leaves out women. Another problem is that the
concept has a certain reactive quality, which is that the cultural function of the
European Yiddish version of the schlemiehl was to dramatize the persistence
of faith in the most adverse circumstances, whereas the Jewish American
schlemiehl is
an expression of heart, of intensive passionate feeling, in surroundings

that stamp out individuality and equate emotion with reason. The
schlemiehl is used as a cultural reaction to the prevailing Anglo-
Saxon model of restraints in action, thought, and speech ..... The
American schlemiehl declares his humanity by loving and suffering
in defiance of the forces of depersonalization and the ethic of enlightened
stoicism.
It is no wonder, then, that the decade of the 1950’s was the Jewish decade
since the heart was in, responsibility was in, and Jews were specialists in both,
emotionally expressive but ethically restrained. As has been noted by Irving Hope,
one man’s sentimentality can be another man’s menschlikeit. As he puts it, ‘‘in
Yiddish culture there is a greater emotional permissibility, a greater readiness to
welcome tears or laughter, than in American culture. The desperate reliance upon
blandness and composure, the cult of understatement, the assumption that it is good
to feel but bad to show one’s feelings - these attitudes are quite alien to the Jewish
ethos.’’
The construction of the 1950’s was, that though the South might be the
heart’s true home, the Jew was its natural spokesman, an interrelation (between the
South and the Jews) was argued as late as 1972 by a Southern writer: ‘‘In so far
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as the twentieth-century novel in this country has consisted of the South and the Jews
.... it has been the product of two profoundly similar cultures - God and family
centred ... gifted with unashamed feelings and eloquence, supported by ancient traditions
of sorrow and the promise of justice, a comic vision of ultimate triumph.’’ Whether
or not it is actually the case, it seems quite significant that a number of Southern and
Jewish writers think it to be. Also, there seems to be an approximate equivalence in
the critical fortunes of the two literatures. In any case, the theme of menschlikeit has
helped the critics to have a way of resolving the recurrent dispute over who is to be
considered a Jewish American writer. As has been aptly put forth by Robert Alter,
‘‘It is by no means clear what sense is to be made of the Jewishnes of a writer who
neither uses a uniquely Jewish language, nor describes a distinctly Jewish milieu, nor
draws upon literary traditions that are recognizably Jewish.’’ What complicates the
issue is the explicit refusal of the three important Jewish writers - Saul Bellow,
Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth that they can be labelled ‘‘Jewish writers,’’
although it is these three who have been known in America as ‘‘the Hart Schaffiner
and Mark of our trade.’’ They have been considered all along the prototypes of the
Jewish writer. The refusal to accept the label puts the whole concept in jeopardy. At
the same time it cannot be denied that each of these three great American Jewish
writers has invested in the theme of menschlikeit, though Roth satirizes it in a
postmodernist fashion. Closer to Malamud and Bellow is Cynthia Ozick, who uses
postmodernist techniques against the postmodernist ethos in a wry (dry mocking)
defence of American identity as problematic, but it does remain a prominent issue in
much of their fiction.
Then there are other writers who are in one way or another Jewish but who
do not use Jewish protagonist or centre on Jewish themes and so are treated rather
differently. These writers are Norman Mailer, J.D.Salinger, and Joseph Heller. These
writers are considered more American than Jewish. Hence, just because one is born
of a Jewish family one cannot be brought under the label of the Jewish writer. This
question of origin in terms of nationality or ethnicity is rather ticklish. In one sense,
it undermines the postmodernist attempt to pin down writers in terms of their cultural
identity, ethnic origin, or national affiliation. The writers will be better understood and
justly appreciated if they are discussed in terms of what they write about and what
perspective they bring to bear upon that material. Since there are several writers in
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America who have hailed from the Jewish families and have written about the problems
of the Jews in the American milieu, they have to be labelled as Jewish writers and
have to be understood and appreciated as such, whatever their discomfort in being
so labelled. The basis for their refusal to be so labelled seems to be their fear that
it would limit their status as writers to only that of a sectional writers and deny them
the status of being Americans writer or great writers.
21.3 JEWISH AMERICAN FICTION
There is no denying the fact that the Jewish American fiction becomes
a major critical category in the 1950’s, ‘‘the Jewish decade’’ as it has been
often described. And it is rightly so described because there came in that
decade an emergence of highly talented and original writers matched by an
equally talented and original support group of critics. These critics were centred
in New York, of whom Irving Howe and Alfred Kazin have remained the most
enduring. In the 1950’s it almost seemed that if a critic was not from the South
then he must be of Jewish origin. Irving Hope, like Reynolds Price, drew the
parallels :
In both instances, a subculture finds its voice and its passion at

exactly the moment it approaches disintegration. This is a moment
of high self-consciousness, and to its writers it offers a number of
advantages . It offers the emotional strength that comes from traditional
modes of conduct - honor for the South, ‘choseness’ for the Jews
- which the writers struggle to regain, escape, overcome, while
finding through this struggle their gift of tongue ... And it offers a
heritage of words, a wonderful richness of language, for the Southern
writers every-thing from Ciceronian courtroom rhetoric to the corrupt
vividness of redneck speech, and for the Jewish writers everything
from the high gravity of Yiddish declamation to the gutter sparklings
of the street.
In the case of the South, the development of the writers was ahead of
the critics. The reason why there came a belated recognition of William Faulkner,
the greatest writer the South has produced so far. The Jewish American critics,
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on the other hand, arrived just in time for the Jewish writers. It was for this
very reason that the Jewish writers received rapid recognition, and reaped the
harvest of institutional rewards. Saul Bellow’s National Book Award of 1953,
Malamud’s same award in 1958, and Philip Roth’s in 1559, came in quick
succession, which projected them as the major American novelists of the post-
war period.
The climate for the Jewish writers was fully ripe. The need for a major
expansion of college faculties to serve the enrolment boom fuelled by the GI Bill
shattered the old barriers against hiring Jews in the English departments. The
casual, sometimes vicious anti-Semitism of the 1920s reflected in the works of
Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Eliot, Pound, and Cummings, conceded ground to a
post-holocaust ‘‘Philo-Semitism.’’ A wonderful example in this context is of Elizabeth
Hardwick, a Kentucky woman, who had gone to New York to become a literary
critic. She boldly opted against identification with the New Critics of the South
to become a volunteer secular Jew. This can be taken as a remarkable turn in
cultural history. Her announcement at the moment is pertinent : ‘‘I do not consider
myself a Southern writer. Even when I was in college ‘down home,’ I’m afraid
my aim was ... to be a New York Jewish intellectual.’’ Thus, by the 1950’s,
readers were in a position to decide whether to be Southern or Jewish as a
matter of individual choice, quite as voluntarily as they would choose where and
what to wear or eat. In other words, both than Jewish. Hence, just because one
is born of a Jewish family one cannot be brought under the label of the Jewish
writer. This question of origin in terms of nationality or ethnicity is rather ticklish.
In one sense, it undermines the postmodernist attempt to pin down writers in
terms of their cultural identity, ethnic origin, or national affiliation. The writers will
be better understood and justly appreciated if they are discussed in terms of
what they write about and what perspective they bring to bear upon that material.
Since there are several writers in America who have hailed from the Jewish
families and have written about the problems of the Jews in the American milieu,
they have to be labelled as Jewish writers and have to be understood and
appreciated as such, whatever their discomfort in being so labelled. The basis for
their refusal to be so labelled seems to be their fear that it would limit their status
as writers to only that of a sectional writers and deny them the status of being
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Americans writer or great writers.
In universal terms, the Jew came to be redefined as a response, to

a large degree, to the Nazi denial of humanity to the Jews. It may be a
delayed reaction, but there emerged in America a wish, in reaction against
the pre-war prejudices and against the 1945 photographs and accounts of
the death camps, to do away with racial and cultural differences. As an
influential 1950’s book of photography put it, the differences got dissolved
into ‘‘The Family of Man.’’ And just as the Jew came to be known, mostly
through Jewish writing, as a ‘specialist in alienation,’’ it added to the perception
of universality, since in the post-war era of Camus’s The Stranger and
Riesman’s ‘‘lonely crowd,’’ alienation seemed representative of every man’s
situation in the post-war world. Even the Jewish-type character of the luft
mensch, the man who lives by words, unattached to tradition or community,
as light as air, seemed to reflect the circumstances of a growing sector of
the American middle class. This said middle-class consisted of specialists in
self-presentation and the persuasive language of advertising, promotion, political
imagery. As a Malamud character chooses to put it, ‘‘Believe me there are Jews
everywhere.’’
It may be true that the Jewish American identity as well as Jewish American
literature became a victim of its own success. We can recall here how the
universalization of Jewish identity in the concept of menschlikeit led to various
complications. One of these is : if suffering is intrinsically Jewish, is everyone who
suffers a Jew? In metaphoric terms, the conclusion is, of course, logical. No one,
on that premise can contest its validity in modern world. It is true, no doubt, that
Frank Alpine supplements suffering with circumcision. But since the 1930’s most
American stand circumcised, thus removing another ground of distinction between
the American and the Jew. However, there are other problems raised about the
universalization of Jewish suffering. For instance, questions have been asked as to
the psychology of this suffering. One of the questions raised is : is the Jewish
embrace of suffering rather perverse, open to the suspicion of masochism? We
have the great example of Bellow’s novels, which do an elegant toe-dance around
this question. For example, how would one take Tommy Wilhelm’s suffering heart
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is quite a dilemma in Bellow’s Seize the Day. In the case of The Adventures of
Augie March, the hero emerges more of an American Adam, who evades the pain
almost gratuitously shouldered by Tommy Wilhelm and several of Malamud’s characters.
At the same time it is pain that makes Augie Jewish, primarily Bellow’s Yiddish-
inflected patter.
The danger is that if even this identity marker (suffering) goes the way of the fast-
disappearing Southern accent, then what will be left to distinguish a specific Jewish quality
to American fiction? No doubt, there will always remain a number Jewish American
writers, and some of them would surely be able to write notable fiction. But suppose the
books were kept anonymous, shall we be able to see the marked Jewish stamp on those
books? Already, we have quite a few examples of the kind before us. For instance, could
we really tell about Salinger, Mailer, or Heller from their books alone that they are Jewish
writers? Heller did, of course, write a novel, Good as Gold, which is about a Jewish
American diplomat, but the hero of the novel seems no more than Updike’s Bech.
Moreover, besides the problems of a dubious essentialism and an overextended universalism
ikn grounding Jewish identity in menschlikeit, there is at the same time a limiting factor
as well - the now embarrassing gender specificity of it. Cynthia Ozick, being a feminine
and feminist writer, supplies the lack in her comic and judicious version of it in Putter
Messer. However, Putter Messer’s wish for civility, however ardent, does not seem
adequate as an ethnic differentiating mark.
Looking at all these aspects of the problem of Jewish identity, the question
is still left open to the poststructuralist deconstructions of Philip Roth, who is sceptical
about any form of integral identity. Moreover, most American Jews have become so
culturally assimilated as to disappear into the American melting pot. Leslie Fiedler
claims to have parlayed his identity as ‘‘literary Fiedler on the roof of academe,’’ to
an assimilative success that threatens to cancel out its origins. It is quite possible that
the Jewish American literary identity will continue to find a motive simply in trying to
prove it exists. Also, there are signs of a renewed interest in their Judaic heritage
among the younger generation of Jewish Americans. However, in the apparent absence
of an emergent figure with the force of Malamud, Bellow, or Ozick, the question
seems to remain open.
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THE ASSISTANT : A CRITICAL SUMMARY

STRUCTURE
22.1 Objectives
22.2 The Assistant : A Critical Study
22.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to provide a comprehensive critical analysis of
the novel The Assistant discussing the major characters of the novel.
22.2 THE ASSISTANT : A CRITICAL STUDY
The Assistant is generally considered the most popular of Malamud’s novels.

Written in the 1950s it was published in 1959. Although one of the early novels of
Malamud (it is only the second), it has been considered by critics perhaps his most
representative. Although the novel’s hero, named Frank Alpine, is an Italian and
initially a Jew-hater, he gradually comes to discover an affinity between a Jew and
a Christian. It is rather unusual with Malamud, as well as with most of the American
Jewish writers, to have a non-Jew as the hero of his novel. The novel, nonetheless,
is as jewish in its spirit as any other novel of Malamud. In fact, to make a Christian
recognize affinity with a Jew works all the more effectively to promote the Jewish
cause. Of course, The Assistant is not the first, nor the only, novel of Malamud
to have a non-Jewish protagonist. His very first novel, The Natural, too, has in
Roy Hobbs a non-Jewish hero. In fact, in the first novel, the protagonist is not even
concerned with the problem of religion in the first instance; it is only later that he
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realizes the typical Jewish realization of seeing in suffering the true value of life. This
realization comes partly through experience but also when Iris Lemon explains to
him that suffering has an instructive role, for it ‘‘teaches us to want the right
things.’’
The Assistant, like many of Malamud’s stories and novels, focuses on

the theme of suffering. Before we go into an elaborate analysis of the novel, we
may recall what Malamud himself has to say about it. After all, the author’s
intention cannot be completely ignored, whatever be the force in the postmodernist
declaration of the death of the author. In our own times, there are critics like
E.D. Hirsch also who equally strongly insist that a literary work means only
what its author intended. Between these two positions we can also quietly
depose that a literary work is as much shaped by the author’s intention as by
the cultural context of the author. Considering, therefore, the author’s intention
as one of the relevant factors in the interpretation of a literary work, let us take
note of what Malamud has to say about his novel, The Assistant. His disclosure
about his work is that
After completing my first novel, The Natural, in essence mystic, I

wanted to do a more serious, deeper, perhaps, realistic piece of
work. The apprentice character interested me, as he has in much of
my fiction, the man who, as much as he can in the modern world,
is in the process of changing his fate, his life. This sort of person,
not at all complicated, appears for the first time in my writing in the
short story, ‘The First Year’ ... and thought I would like to develop
the possibilities of his type.
As intended, Malamud develops in Frank Alpine an apprentice character, the

‘‘assistant’’ to one Maurice Bober, a poor Russian Jew who is struggling to run a
grocery store. One night Maurice gets a call from one Julius Karp, who owns in
Maurice's neighbourhood a flourishing liquor shop that he feared a possible hold up,
and that just in case it does happen, then Maurice should ring up the police for help.
However, it so happens that the robbers reach Maurice’s store rather than of Julius.
The two robbers, named Ward Minogue and Frank Alpine, rob Maurice of fifteen
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dollars - all that he had at the moment. Ward views his act of robbery as a measure
of anti-Semitism. But for Frank it is a heinous deed, for which he is repentant. He
wishes to expiate the sinful act through free service at the store of the man (Maurice)
whom he robbed.
Thus, begins Frank’s ‘‘assistantship’’ with Maurice. He works free of

cost (without salary) in the store owned by Maurice. During his days at
Maurice’s, he gets to know Maurice’s twenty-three years old daughter named
Helen and falls in love with her. Helen herself is working in a garment store
to help out the family with her earnings. Helen’s mother, Ida, becomes suspicious
of Frank’s designs, more so because he is a goy, a non-Jew. During his
assistantship, working for Maurice, Frank has been regularly stealing money
from the store where he works. Being a ‘‘gentle thief ’’, he has been putting
back part of his stolen money whenever the business went bad at the store.
One day, when he is stealing in the store, he is caught red-handed by the
owner, and hence dismissed from his ‘‘assistantship’’. As the chance would
have it, Frank saves the same night Maurice’s daughter Helen from being
raped by Ward. Soon after the event, however, Frank himself almost rapes
Helen, leaving her rather in a state of hysteria caused by her discovery that
he was an ‘‘uncircumcised dog.’’ A sort of love-hate, helpful-hateful relationship
continues between Frank and the family of Maurices. He may not be very
desirable, but he has also become almost indispensable for the family. In the
course of time, he has become the mainstay of the Bober family. When their
fortunes go down, he keeps the store open, takes up a night job to raise
enough money for Helen’s admission to college, hoping that in due course he
would be able to win back her trust and love. His involvement with the family
of Maurice effects an internal transformation in Frank. He goes all out to
become acceptable to Helen and her family. He even gets himself circumcised
after the Passover.
Looking into the significance stressed in the story, one of the things Malamud
seems to suggest, is that people have to move beyond their orthodox heritage, for
you can not keep living by the attitudes that have become outmoded, irrelevant, even
pernicious. The novel clearly explores the grounds of conflict between orthodox
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Judaism and Christianity. In the development of Frank’s character from Jew-hater to
Jewishness and in Maurice’s forbearance, we are shown that the value of suffering
is of crucial significance. In a way, Maurice emerges the moral centre of the novel,
for it is he, who embodies in his life style the essential spirit of Jewishness and of
humanity. It is important to note here that Frank’s being an ‘‘assistant’’ to Maurice
gains an added meaning in the context of this central theme of the novel. In this
respect, while Maurice plays the role of the tutor, Frank does that of the tyro. The
tyro-tutor relationship clearly points to the growth that Frank experiences from an
unethical position to an ethical one. What Frank aspires to achieve, first through self-
purgation and then through conversion, is what it means to be human in a society
dominated by dogma and doctrine.
Of all the Jewish characters in the novel, it is Maurice alone who remains a
tutor-like figure, not for Frank alone, but also for the other Jewish brothers in
America. Others easily seem to forget or neglect the primary role of being a Jew in
a competitive social order that America has come to establish. Even the other Jews
in Maurice’s neighbourhood do not come to his rescue. These other Jews are notably
the Karps and the Pearls. In fact, they are more of detractors than friends of Maurice
: ‘‘The Karps, Pearls and Bobers, representing attached houses and stores, but
otherwise detachment, made up the small Jewish segment of this gentile community.’’
Morris opens his store early every morning, so that he can supply a three-cent roll
to the Polish lady, who is invariably his first customer. If a buyer ever forgets his/her
money on the counter, Morris runs after him/her to hand that over. He becomes, thus,
a representative honest, hard working and suffering Jew. As Malamud, the author of
The Assistant, describes,
He labored long hours, was the soul of honesty - he could not

escape his honesty, it was bedrock; to cheat would cause an explosion
in him, yet he trusted cheaters - coveted nobody’s nothing and
always got poorer. The harder he worked - his toil was a sort of
time devouring time- the less he seemed to have. He was Morris
Bober and could be nobody more fortunate. With that name you
had no sure sense of property, as if it were in your blood and
history not to possess, or if by some miracle to own something, to
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do so on the verge of loss. At the end you were sixty and had less
than a thirty.
Morris is one of those, who would be called luckless. Malamud relishes such
characters. He specializes in them. They are his representative characters, those who
work hard and yet fail, those who go down and yet never despair, those, who never
succumb to cynicism.
Malamud once explained that a Malamud character is ‘‘someone who fears

his fate, is caught up in it, yet manages to outrun it. He’s the subject and object
of laughter and pity.’’ In other words, his typical characters are great survivors;
they outlive the dragons of destruction. As for Morris, a typical Malamud character,
he seems to relish what Emily Dickinson (an American poetess of later nineteenth
century) has called ‘‘banquet of abstemiousness.’’ However, he retains at the same
time his belief that morally he is superior to one-dimensional Jewish go-getters who
flourish in business but know not ‘‘the tragic quality of life.’’ We have in Sam Pearl
such a one-dimensional Jew who, with all his prosperous candy store can only
discuss race horses. Morris finds it difficult to strike any conversational chord with
such characters. Whenever he sees Sam or his like, his favourite expression is,
‘‘Der oilem ir a goilem,’’ which in English would translate as ‘‘people are stupid
and the world is an idiot.’’ The other side of Morris’s personality is that he shows
infinite sympathy and compassion for the poor who suffer like him. For instance,
he always offers a glass of tea to Brietbart, who is a destitute pedlar selling light-
bulbs. Once feeling deeply moved by Brietbart’s plight Morris reflects, ‘‘The world
suffers. He felt every schmertz.’’ Similarly, he is truly distressed to know that Helen
has to supplement her family income by taking up a job, abandoning her studies
at the college.
Morris’s wife Ida, Helen’s mother, though a minor character in status, is also
a memorable character. She displays some interesting qualities of character. She is
a loving woman, but a nagging wife. She is quite efficient as assistant to Frank, but
also queer of temperament. Unlike her husband, she is keenly conscious of the
competition offered to their own store by the neighbouring flourishing ones. Constantly
tossed about she might be (with her husband) in hope and despair, she does not,
unlike her husband, easily lose hope in life. Her love for her daughter is a source of
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strength for the young girl. Helen knows it is there, and that makes life meaningful
for her.
One of the features of Malamud’s fiction is that he always attempts to bring

out the recurring aspirations of even his most dubious characters to become better
human beings. They may or may not succeed in their aspirations; mostly, they do not.
But the author’s emphasis is that most humans do have those aspirations, and it is
only an abnormal minority that remains incorrigibly irremediable. What Malamud
seems to suggest about the development of character is that it is not simply a matter
of change of direction on the highway, but often a tangle of advances and retreats.
For instance, when Frank Alpine hangs around Sam’s joint after the holdup, he is
seen closely examining St. Frank’s of Assisi’s picture in a magazine. When Sam
enquires about Frank’s engagement with the picture, the latter replies that he is a
great admirer of the saint :
The picture was of thin-faced, dark-bearded monk in a coarse

brown garment, standing barefooted on a sunny country road. His
skinny, hairy arms were raised to a flock of birds that dipped over
his head. In the background was a grove of leafy trees; and in the
far distance a church in sunlight.
As Frank explains to Sam, the picture shows St. Francis preaching to the
birds. When Sam wants to know why the saint was great, Frank’s reply is, ‘‘he gave
everything away that he owned, every cent, all his clothes off his back. He enjoyed
to be poor. He said poverty was a queen and he loved her like she was a beautiful
woman.’’ And it was on account of being poor that he ‘‘took a fresh view of things.’’
In Malamud’s novel, The Assistant, the author seems to offer a “fresh view
of things” emanating from the poor like Morris and Frank. The two come to acquire
a certain nobility of character which makes them saintly in their approach to life.
Here, poverty seems an ennobling influence at least on these two characters. It raises
their soul as if, makes them purified of whatever grossness there was in their characters.
Thus, the novel offers a fresh look on the relationship between Jews and Catholics,
as also between Jews and Anglo-Saxon Protestants. A good deal of emphasis is laid
in the novel’s narrative on the value of fellowship between man and man, faith and
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faith, between men of different races and faiths. His novels always, as here in The
Assistant, search for common grounds between different cultures and nationalities,
faiths and ethnicities. Malamud, himself married to an Italian, is reported to have
remarked in one of his interviews that “Italians and Jews are closely related in their
consciousness of the importance of personality, in their emphasis on the richness of
life, in their tremendous sense of past and traditions.” Here, one may question the
correctness of this observation in historical and sociological terms. However, that
seems beside the point. For what Malamud is trying to do here is to seek similarities
between them, to bring them together, and to minimize the differences between them,
to obliterate those differences, to dissolve them into reconciliation. Thus, it is not the
authenticity of what is discovered that matters here, but the intention behind the
effort. Malamud’s novels are to be appreciated, therefore, for this very vision of
union and reconciliation between and among various ethnic, racial, and religious
groups in the American society. In the pursuit of his vision, he may at times contrive
his plot or sentimentalise a character—minor artistic faults–but he never falters on the
consistency and coherence of his vision. It is in such a context that Malamud refers
to the different religious background of his wife, adding, “Through her family opened
Italian life to me. Her background is richly Italo-American. When we lived in Rome,
I fell into Italian family life there.” In other words, every happening of his life becomes
an opportunity for another exploration of the human ties behind cultural or ethnic
appearances. Malamud’s search is unending. The Assistant amply bears it out.
The point being hammered here is that in the author’s perspective in The
Assistant, as well as the other novels, the immateriality of being a member of this or
that religious or racial group is that Malamud’s secular and humanistic vision of life
stubbornly refuses to deflect in the face of ethnic or racial tensions and conflicts. We
see in the novel how both Frank and Morris have an equal share of reversals and
setbacks. We see that Morris ‘‘waits’’ for a buyer of the store or a customer to show
up. Similarly, Frank ‘‘waits’’ for a change in the dismal pattern of happenings, for ‘‘he
moves into a place with nothing and moves out with nothing.’’ Helen, too, ‘‘waits’’
to be educated, although in the end she gets ‘‘tired of anticipation, of ‘‘waiting’’ for
nothing.’’ Circumstances so conspire in each of these cases that all their aspirations
are thwarted, frustrating their attempts to fight want and depression.
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The choice of setting and character in The Assistant seems to have been
influenced by the Depression and the leitmotif of Yiddish literature. Some of the
sources for the central character in the novel seem to be Michael Gold’s ‘‘Jews
without money’’, Edward Dalberg’s ‘‘bottom dogs’’ and ‘‘the dispossessed’’, Jack
Conroy’s ‘‘the disinherited.’’ All of these writers of the decade of the 1930’s (The
Decade of Depression) had projected disenchantment with American capitalism by
adopting a polemical tone. Malamud did not, of course, share their economico-
political philosophy, but he did draw inspiration from them for creating certain
character types in his fiction. The common theme between them is the human
misery, especially of the Jews and other unprivileged people in the American society.
He never becomes polemical in his literary presentation, and he is seldom
propagandistic. For example, in The Assistant, his compassionate presentation of
Morris and his fellow sufferers is not at all determined by any ideology, much less
by any propaganda, political or racial. However, he clearly shows his consciousness
of the characteristic themes of Yiddish literature, especially the works concerned
with the poor in Jewish folklore. Note, for instance, the following : ‘‘The virtue of
powerlessness, the power of helplessness, the company of the dispossessed, the
sanctity of the insulted and the injured - these, finally, are the great themes of
Yiddish literature.’’ Irving Howe sums up here the central concern of Malamud’s
fiction as well, especially The Assistant.
In The Assistant, the protagonist, Frank Alpine, presents a dismal picture

of poverty. He does not realize that even the disinherited can maintain an inner
composure through an understanding of the erratic functioning of destiny. He is,
therefore, not able to appreciate the human bond between Morris and himself.
When he succeeds in overcoming his initial impulse against the Jews, he starts
sharing his experiences with Morris. He also reveals to him his rather inglorious
past. Disclosing bits and pieces of his earlier life, he once tells Morris, ‘‘I could’ve
been a college graduate by now, but when the time came to start going, I missed
out because something else turned up that I took instead. With me one wrong thing
leads to another and it ends in a trap. I want the moon so all I get is cheese.’’
Going on with his biographical details, he further discloses to Morris that he did
hit some nice good spots in between, but they were rather few and far, and that
usually he ended up just as he had started out, with nothing. The gap between
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Frank’s aspirations and achievements does bring him closer to centre of the novel,
where there already occupies even more dignified position his own master, Morris.
Frank’s confessions are meant to purge his past which has been rather shady. Here
is one such confession :
What I mean to say is that when I need it most something is missing

in me, in me or on account of me. I always have this dream where
I want to tell somebody something on the telephone so bad it hurts,
but then when I am in the booth, instead of a phone being there, a
bunch of bananas hanging on a hook.
It is such thoughts that make Morris identify in Frank a search identical

with his own, which is for a decent footing in life. Although Frank is much
younger than Morris (only twenty five), the latter feels that the young man talks
like him (a man of sixty). He listens to Frank with keen interest when Frank
continues : ‘‘All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile - a thing
people will say took a little doing, but I don’t ... I don’t do what I have to -
that’s what I man.’’
We need to recall at this stage some Jewish stereotypes like schlemiel and
schlimazel, Yiddish terms for those unfortunate people who fail despite all their
efforts to succeed. Prone to misfortune, a schlemiel is recognizably inept or simple-
minded. The popular impression goes that when a schlemiel kills a chicken, it walks.
Another impression is that when he winds a clock, it stops. Still another is that when
he falls on his back, he breaks his nose. It is reminiscent of the traditional distincition
between a Jew and Gentile: ‘‘When a Goy has much thirst, he drinks a few pints of
beer. When a Jew has much thirst, he goes to the doctor to be examined for
diabetes.’’ We may see in certain Malamud characters some of these Jewish stereotypes,
but it will be inappropriate to dub any of his characters as stereotypes. For his
characters are always distinguished more prominently by their human traits and less
prominently by their ethnic or racial traits. He himself was never happy with the
delineation of such stereotypes in Jewish fiction. As he put it, ‘‘I dislike the schlemiel
characterization as a taxonomical device. I said somewhat that it reduces to stereotypes
people of complex motivations and fates. One can often behave like a schlemiel
without being one.’’
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If we keep in view the series of attempts that Frank makes to atone for his
crime, and his drama of conscience, it would not be possible to dub him as a
schlemiel, as a sort of an innocent soup-spiller, as a sort of witless football for the
gods to play with. Frank’s response (or reaction) to Morris and the Jews in general
inducts a good deal of complication in the novel’s plot structure. After listening to
Morris’s account of his escape from the Russian army, expecting to find freedom and
prosperity in America, Frank sympathises with Morris’s helpless existence in the
confinement of his store, ‘‘like a fish fried in deep fat.’’ Morris is so much sick of
his store-keeping that he advises Frank not to become a grocer, but to do something
which would allow him a life of open air. ‘‘It frustrated him hopelessly that every
move he made seemed to turn into an inevitable thing.’’ However, even though his
trials and setbacks may make him like a schlemiel, Morris’s self-awareness reveals
a complexity which remains beyond the reach of a schlemiel.
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NOVEL AS QUEST
STRUCTURE
23.1 Objectives
23.2 The Assistant – Novel as Quest
23.1 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to discuss the novel The Assistant as a form
of Quest.
23.2 THE ASSISTANT – NOVEL AS QUEST
Very much like their counterparts in the novels of Saul Bellow and Philip
Roth, characters in the novels of Bernard Malamud are very eager to begin a new
life. However, like so many American protagonists of contemporary fiction, they
soon find themselves involved in a compromised environment, which shows in store
for them a wide variety of frustration to their specific aspirations. All the same,
Malamud’s protagonists (heroes, if you like) are always keen to begin some form
of, what their creator has called, “new life”. No doubt, they meet with frustration,
they undergo lot of suffering in search of new life but they never abandon their
search. And it is this search that gives Malamud’s novels the form of quest. One
of the effects of their sufferings they undergo on way to their quested goal is to
make them redefine the form and content of that national new life. On first reading,
Malamud might seem to be a novelist, writing on common contemporary life,
relying on historical contingencies or actualities. For instance, his very first novel,
The Natural (1952), which is founded on the story of a baseball hero, who
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succumbs to corrupting influences at the height of his fame, sets up the parameters
of the quest form of his novels. The stories of his protagonists may end in frustration
and death, but the narrative is always patterned by the dynamics of the quest each
individual hero undertakes.
Malamud’s next two novels, The Assistant (1957) and A New Life (1963),
follow the same pattern. In the former of these two, a man takes over a failing
grocery store; in the latter, a college teacher takes the wife of a failing colleague.
These two are followed by another. The Fixer (1966), where a poor Jew gets
caught up in the virtulent anti-Semitism, which was on the rise in Russia in the early
years of the twentieth century. The next novel, Pictures of Fidelman : An Exhibition
(1969), is about an American who is a “self-confessed failure as a painter.” He goes
on a quest to Italy only to continue painting and failing. All of these novels appear,
on first encounter, studies in socialism, registering the power of historical actualities.
They seem to demonstrate an obdurate sociality of the given world, with mordant
clarity. But in point of fact Malamud’s novels are far from being documents of social
realism. Philip Roth, a fellow tough writer in America, speaking of the Jewish characters
in Malamud’s work, has made a pertinent observation. In his view, these characters
are not the Jews of Chicago or New York City, as they are in Saul Bellow. As a
matter of fact, he says,
They are a kind of invention, a metaphor to stand for certain human

possibilities and certain promises .... Malamud, as writer of fiction,
has not shown specific interest in the anxieties and dilemmas and
corruptions of the modern American Jew .... rather, his people live
in a timeless depression and a placeless Lower East Side; their
society is not affluent, their predicament not cultural.
Roth’s point in the cited statement is that Malamud only dramatizes his moral
concerns, separated from “the contemporary scene”. In this sense, to Roth, Malamud
is yet another example of the American writer who does not seem to draw his
fictional material from contemporary American society.
Roth’s observation is, of course, not without significance. But it is not without
fault either. It is not quite correct to say, for example, that Malamud does not depict
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contemporary American society, its historical actualities. He decidedly does that. The
only thing is that he also puts up resistance to history with his inventions. As Tony
Tanner remarks, “The pain experienced in time and place is eased by the timelessness
and placelessness conferred by his own style.” What Roth sees as limitation Tanner
views as distinctive achievement. Even though Malamud’s novels seem apparently
dissimilar, each embodying very different story from the other, they are not without
a common pattern informing them all. It is this common pattern which, in fact, links
them closely together and reveals a profound consistency. In other words, while the
facts change from novel to novel, the pattern remains unchanged and endures. As
Tony Tanner points out, “All his novels are fables or parables of the painful process
from immaturity to maturity—maturity of attitudes, not of years. This is unusual in
American literature, which tends to see initiation into manhood as a trauma, a disillusioning
shock, a suffocating curtailment of personal potential.” Tanner cites the example of
Harry Angrtrom in Updike’s Rabbit, Run, as a representative voice when he utters
the following: ‘‘If you’re telling me I’m not mature, that’s one thing I don’t cry over
since as far as I can make out it’s the same thing as being dead.’’ Tanner rightly
points out that Malamud’s characters, on the contrary, ‘‘discover that it is only by
this ‘dying’ into maturity that they can find the ‘new life’ for which, in their various
ways, they long.’’
If one looked at the entire spectrum of Malamud’s fiction, it comes out

clearly that there is a continuity of this vision in his work, which is amply evidenced
by the involvement of his main characters in a quest. Each one of his novels is
sharply focused on the searching and travelling of the central figure. Significantly,
every Malamud protagonist is seen on a journey or just has completed one. For
example, The Natural (1952), Malamud’s first novel, begins with an account of
Roy Hobbs’s train ride bringing him from the Pacific Coast to Chicago where he
hopes to break into big-time baseball. We find that this journey is narrated in such
a manner that it echoes the whole process of birth. Roy Hobbs, we are told, is
travelling to America with high hopes and big demands, ‘‘I feel that I have got it
in me - that I am due for something very big.’’ Similarly in The Assistant (1957),
Frank Alpine, the protagonist, ‘‘had lately come from the West,’’ we are told,
‘‘looking for a better opportunity.’’ In Malamud’s next novel, A New Life (1963),
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Sam Levin makes one more exhausting trans-continental trip from New York to the
West Coast searching for a ‘‘new life’’. In the same way, the protagonist of The
Fixer (1966), Yakov Bok, is moved by very much the same yearnings and expectations
when he leaves the Shtell and sets out for Kiev, ‘‘The truth of it is I’m a man full
of wants I’ll never satisfy, at least not here. It’s time to get out and take a chance.
Change your place, change your luck, people say.’’
It is very important to note here that for all of these quests mentioned above,
the change of luck in material terms is usually for the worse. After a short period of
fame Roy Hobbs succumbs to sickness and corruption. Frank Alpine ends up running
a sinking little grocery shop. Significantly, the grocery store in the novel is always
mentioned as a prison. Sam Levin soon finds himself involved in marital tangle which
ends his dearly cherished hopes of an academic career. Yakov Bok lands into a real
prison where he is subjected to all sorts of humiliations and indignities. Thus, this
Malamudian quest for better (or new) life always terminates in some sort of prison.
It must also be recognized here that, despite the sad termination of the quest, Malamud
does not show any sign of pessimism in his outlook on life. All he seems to stress
in his novels is that, for one thing, how a man may help to imprison himself; for
another, how an imprisoned man can resurrect a new self in his reaction to, or revolt
against, the forces that imprison him. In Malamud’s world, the bad luck, which nearly
breaks a man, may also make the same man. We find that while these heroes of
Malamud get ruined by bad luck and undergo severe suffering, they also emerge out
of suffering to discover ‘‘new life’’. Of course, the logic of the quest requires that you
cannot retreat into past.
It needs to be noted that like other Malamud questers and travellers Roy
Hobbs in The Natural suddenly wishes to retrace his steps; he wishes to get back
to a time before time. But, as has been stated earlier, you can’t go home again. A
related discovery, in a similar image, is made by Yakov Bok in The Fixer: ‘‘Once
you leave you’re out in the open; it rains and snows. It shows history, which means
what happens to somebody starts in a web of events outside the personal.’’ It need
to be underlined that the snow is a root metaphor for Malamud. In The Assistant,
the last act of Morris Bober is the attempt to shovel away the ever-falling snow
outside his failing shop. It is in no way different in A New Life : When Levin falls
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in love with a colleague’s wife and finds shattered his well-protected self-sufficiency,
we are told, ‘‘It snowed heavily.’’ We read a similar thing about the protagonist of
a story in The Magic Barrel that ‘‘the world had snowed on him’’ and so on. In a
way, in Malamudian world, snow means everything that falls on you when you leave
the room, or womb, and are left out in the open, exposed, unprotected.
In the world of Malamud’s fiction, if a character fails to face up to the act

of snowing, he fails also to came into possession of the meaning of his life; fails, that
is, to turn a new leaf, to discover a new life. On the other hand, Iris Levin is shown
‘‘tied to time’’. Although she undergoes suffering, here suffering has a significance
which lies in her devotion to her children. She is also the one who gives to Roy
Hobbs the most important teaching of his life. Like so many of Malamud’s characters,
when Roy complains of his unlucky fate, she tells him :
‘We have two lives, Roy, the life we learns with and the life we live with after
that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.’
‘I had it up to here.’ He ran a finger across his windpipe.
‘Had what?’
‘What I suffered - and I don’t want any more.’
‘It teaches us to want the right things.’
‘All it taught me is to stay away from it. I am sick of all I have suffered.’
She shrank away a little.
We can see that Roy is far from evil. He is repentant of the corrupt deal he
had made with the gamblers, but it is too late to mend matters, which have gone out
of his control. He no longer possesses the potency he once had. His bat, too, has
split into half. He not only repents his deal with the devil, so to say, he turns rather
violent. Rejecting the dirty money to be paid to him for throwing the match, he beats
up the dark conspirators. The concluding message of the book springs from the
sentiments he shows while leaving his last baseball game in a mood of intense ‘‘self-
hatred.’’ ‘‘He thought, I never did learn anything out of my past life, now I have to
suffer again.’’ George Santayana’s insight seems to have a pertinent relevance here,
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that those who ignore past history will have to live it through again. The only hope
for man is to learn from his suffering, otherwise - ‘I have to suffer again.’ Roy Hobbs
does learn at least that much.
Malamud’s major work, The Assistant, has for its main preoccupation just
what a man can learn from his experience of suffering, and what are the possibilities
available to him for a second (or new) life. This preoccupation, in fact, continues in
his subsequent novels also. In the present novel, Malamud seems to have moved
closer to the style of realism. The novel records with great accuracy the economic
facts about Morris Bober’s fading attempts to keep running his little grocery store.
The facts are depressing enough to leave the reader rather sad. Morris is a poor Jew.
His luck is as consistently bad as his conduct is good. Much of history has happened
to him. Much of snow has fallen upon him. Even his newspaper is ‘‘yersterday’s’’ -
he is shown continuously floundering and sinking in time. He remains posted in his
store quite like an unmoving statue, as if he were ‘‘entombed’’ in the shop. This store
is, in fact, an effective symbol in Malamud’s fiction. It is just one of the many dark
and constricted spaces in which so many of his character have to live out their
suffering. Malamud’s characteristic style of writing is that even the realistic facts of
his characters must acquire the nature of a fable or a parable. He must narrate them
in such a manner that they gain larger, or representative, character, becoming a part
of everyone’s life. Here, again, Malamud comes close to the style of Hemingway, in
whose fiction also the narrative remains specific and solid and yet acquires the edges
of a parable or a fable.
In his typical style, the story of Morris Bober’s family (not excluding Frank
who does become a member of it), though real enough, quite effortlessly moves
towards the territory of the fable or parable. First, Morris loses his only son. Then
he himself is decline rapidly, fast moving towards his end. Although Frank stumbles
into Morris’s life rather strangely, he ends up by replacing the grocer’s son for all
practical purposes. Frank comes to the grocer’s store the first time as member of a
squalid hold-up, in which Morris is literally felled. It is a sort of ritual killing of Morris
that is enacted in the novel. And it is not long after that the grocer actually dies. Partly
out of remorse and partly for the love of Helen, Frank has returned to the store only
to gradually take over all the responsibilities of the work at the store. In view of the
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failing health of Morris, Frank has come to become an indispensable assistant to the
old man. After the old man’s death, Frank takes over the responsibilities of not only
the old man’s store as the sole manager but also of his family. It is significant to note
that when the old man is being buried, Frank accidentally slips into the grave, thus
inadvertently dancing (so to say) on the coffin of the dead father. From now on Frank
assumes the role and responsibilities of the head of the family. Like the father who
is no more, he becomes the provider protector, living for all members of the family.
The assumed role sharply contrast to Frank’s earlier role (before he came in contact
with Morris) as a self-centred individual caring very little for others.
We need to note here carefully that Frank’s transformation from the one living
for himself to the one living for others has not been a matter of an easy transition.
Like Roy Hobbs, he begins as a man having a lot of selfish hungers in him. But he
also shows, and quite early in life, an aspect of moral aspiration revealed by his
growing desire “to change his life before the smell of it suffocated him.” As an
indication of this aspect, note the following : “He stared at the window, thinking
thoughts about his past, and wanting a new life. Would he ever get what he wanted?”
We do become curious as to the nature of new life he is looking for. After all, what
kind of “new life” does he want? Is it to help himself to more of the goods of life,
as he helps himself to the cash register even while working for the store, and as, in
a moment of desperate frustration, he helps himself to the daughter of his master—
Morris’s daughter Helen? But by no can extension of the that be called ‘‘a new life’’.
It would only be an extention of the old, for sure. For a real new life requires a
radical change of attitude towards your own self as well as towards other people.
The actual drama of the book, it can be legitimately concluded, is the painful emergence
of selflessness from selfishness in the person of Frank Alpine.
We come to know early in the novel that Frank Alpine has always been
feeling attracted to St. Francis of Assisi, ever since he had heard about him in the
orphanage where he had been brought up. The attraction for the saint could not have
been for no reason. Frank must have some positive quality which would make him
feel attracted towards the saint, and such a quality cannot be any other but saintly
in some way. This quality gets reflected in certain activities which he has instinctively
liked to undertake from early childhood. For instance, he has always liked to feed
247
birds. He has also shown a talent for carving wooden flowers. These inclinations are
quite positive and can be called, without hesitation, saintly in their own right. And it
is these very inclinations in him which finally prove stronger than his worldly appetites.
One of the radical changes that takes place in his character, after his positive or
saintly inclinations start asserting themselves, is the change in his attitude towards the
Jews. To begin with we find him often disgusted with Morris’s Jewish attitude of
resignation: ‘‘What kind of man did you have to be born to shut yourself up in an
overgrown coffin? .... The answer wasn’t hard to say - you had to be a Jew. They
were born prisoners.’’ Such prejudiced views about the Jews are quite common in
the early part of the novel, which Frank keeps dropping every now and then. His
racial prejudice is not his alone. It has larger representation in it. It is typical of the
common gentile to carry that prejudiced view as a matter of habit. In the Anglo-
American literature, this sort of representation of the Jews right from Chaucer has
been persistently present. Even the greatest of writers like Shakespeare and Eliot are
not free from such a prejudice.
But there is, at the same time, another side of Frank’s personality. He is also
increasingly drawn towards something in the Jewish way of life. He asks Morris as
to the definition of a Jew. Rejecting the orthodox stuff about Jews, Morris says that
the only important thing for a Jew is that he believes in ‘‘the Law’’. ‘‘This means to
do what is right, to be honest, to be good.’’ When Frank complains that the Jews
are given to ‘‘suffering more than they have to,’’ Morris replies, ‘‘If you live, you
suffer. Some people suffer more, but not because they want. But I think if a Jew
don’t suffer for that Law, he will suffer for nothing.’’ Further, when Frank asks him
what he suffers for, Morris answers, ‘‘I suffer for you.’’ This confuses Frank, who
asks for further clarification. Morris then adds, ‘‘I mean you suffer for me.’’ On the
face of it, it sounds quite a simple lesson - people suffer for one another. However,
for the characters in Malamud’s novels, especially The Assistant, it is learned the
hard way; they learn only through pain and suffering. They also learn this lesson much
resistance to commitments and responsibilities which ultimately do override the acute
appetites of self. As the rabbi proclaims at his funeral, Morris Bober is a Jew because
‘‘he lived in the Jewish experience ..... He followed the Law .. He suffered, he
endured, but with hope .. He asked for himself little - nothing.’’
248
If we look into the nature of change that comes about in the character of
Frank Alpine, we shall see that he becomes the kind of Jew the rabbi has described
above. It is paradoxical that he finds the ‘‘better life’’ he was searching (questing) for
only by identifying himself with the same Jews whom he earlier called figures of
imprisonment. It is only by undergoing their kind of suffering that he finds this ‘‘new
life’’. Helen is the first to notice this change in Frank. She discovers that he works
all night to feed her family and to support her at school. He is no longer the same
hungry man who once raped her. ‘‘It came to her that he had changed. It’s true, he’s
not the same man, she said to herself ... It was a strange thing about people - they
could look the same but be different. He had been one thing, low, dirty, but because
of something in himself ... he had changed into somebody else, no longer what he had
been”. As is clear from the narrative, the novel’s main emphasis is not on the economic
hardship of the family of Morris Bober, but rather on the moral transformation of
Frank Alpine. In taking on the shop after the death of Morris, replacing (symbolically)
the father, and becoming a Jew (essentially), Frank has really come up as a matured
man, who has decidedly, and finally, put away his immature things. While in earlier
life he made others suffer for him, now he suffers for others. And in this sense, he
becomes the ‘‘new man’’ he has been wanting to become. He has finally come to
learn what Roy Hobbs had failed to learn. He has earned now his ‘‘new life’’. Thus,
realism becomes parable in Malamud’s fiction, just as it does in Hemingway’s, without
losing its concreteness and specificity.
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249
THEME OF LOVE AND COMPASSION

STRUCTURE
24.1 Objectives
24.2 Theme of Love and Compassion
24.1 OBJECTIVES
The lesson discusses the major themes of love and compassion in the novel
The Assistant.
24.2 THEME OF LOVE AND COMPASSION
If there is one theme that runs through the entire corpus of Malamud’s literary
works, it is that of love and compassion. From his first novel to the last, as well as
from his first collection of short stories to the last, this central preoccupation of his
creative activity is always at the core of his fictional constructs, short or long. Decidedly,
its value for the author is immense. He puts the highest premium on it as a sort of
religion of man, a secular faith, so to say. In Malamud’s moral perspective or vision,
life loses its significance if the writers continuously depict the stories of uprooted and
alienated characters who always speak in terms of ‘no’ and ‘nothingness’. More than
many a times, Malamud clarifies his position in opposition to popular creative and
critical (even philosophic) fads. In a letter to Herbert Gold, for instance, he indicates
250
the value of art which lends meaning to the bewildering flux of life, and which
presages, indirectly, the author’s own crucial response in all his creative endeavours.
When asked how he would react to the problem of art in a world that was, in the
nineteen fifties, involved in a tormenting Cold War, his reply was : ‘‘Although the
fifties have a Cold War character, I would say that the problem of writing fiction in
this decade is basically no different from writing in the past. One struggles alone to
achieve art. The age makes no special demands except as it tends to devalue man;
that being so, I work on the assumption that the opposite is true.’’ At another time,
Malamud adopts a similar stance of an affirmative set of assumptions, although his
analysis of the economic and social maladies of his time remains highly realistic. When
Malamud was honoured with the National Book Award for his collection of short
stories, The Magic Barrel (1957), his speech on the occasion is revealing :
I am quite tired of the colossally deceitful devaluation of man in

this day; for whatever explanation; that life is cheap amid a
prevalence of wars; or because we are drugged by totalitarian
successes into a sneaking belief in their dehumanizing processes;
or tricked beyond self-respect by the values of the creators of
our own thing-ridden society .... or because, having invented the
means of his extinction, man values himself less for it and lives in
daily dread that he will in a fit of passion, or pique or absent-
mindedness, achieve his end. Whatever the reason, his fall from
grace in his eyes is betrayed in the words he has invented to
describe himself as he is now; fragmented, abbreviated, other-
directed, organizational, anonymous man, a victim, in the words
that are used to describe him, of a kind of syndechdochic irony,
the part for the whole. The devaluation exists because he accepts
it without protest.
Not being very happy with the popular thrusts in the American fiction,
Malamud continued with the conventional emphasis on the essential goodness of man,
his need for love, individual as well as societal (including the familial). We find his
characters beginning with petty activities of doing small jobs, stooping down even to
stealing or hold-up. But as the narrative progresses, the surface layers begin to peel
251
off, and gradually we are shown the very bottom of the heart of his characters. And
at bottom most, if not all, are found to be good. They are owners of sound humanity.
Only the contingent conditions or social circumstances drive them to desperate deeds.
But the ‘‘falling down’’ does not go on for long before their essential humanity starts
making its assertion. And it is with this assertion that their regeneration begins. They
start rising, stop doing mean and petty deals, and finally take to doing good and noble
things. Frank Alpine can be considered as the case in point. We know how he is
involved in stealing and hold-ups in the beginning of the novel. But we also see him
later rising and doing good and noble things. The secret of his regeneration is his love
for Helen. It is to win her that he starts transforming himself. Love pulls him out of
the bad world and puts him on the path of noble deeds. He rises above his self-
interests, his self-satisfactions, and starts caring for others, serving others, and finally
loving others. His love for Helen makes him almost a saintly person. His transformation
is almost total.
No less powerful an agent in effecting transformation in human character is

the feeling of compassion. A symbol of this sentiment in The Assistant is Morris, the
grocery store owner and the father of Helen, with whom Frank Alpine gets a job as
his assistant. Despite the fact that Frank is not a Jew, and that he is not a good man,
Morris treats him compassionately. He trusts Frank as he trusts every one else. Also,
even when Frank is discovered as a thief and as one involved in the hold-up, he still
forgives him and gives him fresh opportunity to work and reconstruct his life. Morris’s
compassion also, like Helen’s love, acts as an ennobling influence on Frank. He starts
feeling the slow but steady power of Morris’s compassion. He starts looking up to
Morris as his model. Silently but firmly Frank finds himself determined not to deceive
Morris any longer. He finds himself eager to reveal his entire past to Morris, to lay
himself bare before him. Finally, he does succeed in showing himself to Morris.
Gradually, the gulf between the two starts narrowing down - both in terms of
their weakening ethnic identities as well as in terms of their growing human ties. The
difference between the Jewish Morris and Gentile Frank gets finally eliminated. The
gap between the good and honest Morris and the bad and dishonest Frank also starts
narrowing, and finally gets almost obliterated. After Morris dies, Frank fully occupies
his senior’s position; not only in running the store but also in practicing human compassion.
252
His taking over from Morris, his replacement of his boss, is like the son stepping into
the shoes of his father. The replacement is both literal as well as symbolic. Here,
again, it is love and compassion between man and man, irrespective of their ethnic,
racial, or religious identities, that have effected a feling of community, of human
brotherhood, among them. The two represent the larger community of men and
women.
Irony and Humour
Malamud’s books are rescued from being described as ‘‘novels of protest’’

because of his ironic perception of life that he brings to bear upon his narratives. As
has been aptly suggested by an interviewer, ironic humour in his novels is a sort of
Malamud’s ‘‘mother tongue’’. He does, of course, make an artistic use of irony,
which is employed to unfold the gap between expectation and fulfillment. As we see
in Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus, Malamud’s characters struggle (like Sisyphus) to roll
the boulder which inevitably slips back, rolling them down with it. In this phenomenon
of rolling down, their fantasies about being the ‘‘chosen ones’’ leaven the bread of
deprivation. The base of their humour is fashioned by a fine blend of pain and
comedy; or, as Bellow surmises, ‘‘laughter and trembling are so curiously mingled
that it is not easy to determine the relations of the two.’’ Continuing his analysis of
this particular kind of humour, Bellow enumerates. ‘‘At times the laughter seems
simply to restore the equilibrium of sanity; at times the figures of the story, or parable,
appear to invite or encourage trembling with the secret aim of overcoming it by
means of laughter.’’ The blend of laughter and trembling tends to suggest, in The
Assistant, that the Jew, though a chosen one, is chosen also to receive more suffering
than the others. As Sheldom Norman Grebstein has asserted, ‘‘Consequently, Jewish
humour mocks sneers at human foibles and pretentions, and delivers ironic observations
about itself and its practitioners, the chosen people.’’
We can recall here, for instance, Morris’s struggle, in The Assistant with
adversity, which is adumberated through a subtle operation of ironic ‘‘camera eye’’,
unfolding to the reader sharply realistic images. The news of another store opening
in the neighbourhood comes to Morris ‘‘like a rock dropped on his skull’’, and his
‘‘troubles grew bananas in bunches.’’ The result is ‘‘that if he ever found a rotten egg
253
in the street, it was already cracked and leaking’’. It is through such a fusion of moral
sensibility and ironic perception that despite Malamud’s sympathy for Morris, his
store is presented as a ‘‘long dark tunnel’’ or ‘‘an open tomb’’. Malamud, despite
his sympathy for a character, always avoids sentimentality. Instead, he prefers to paint
even grim situations in light colours, which makes an intense impact on the reader.
More L. Ratner calls it essentially a ‘‘poetic technique’’, because Malamud prefers
to unfold the narrative with the ‘‘directness and simplicity of the folk story-teller’’,
and also because ‘‘his expression is contingent on his ironic view of reality.’’ Elaborating
his view of Malamud’s use of irony, Ratner adds : ‘‘The irony is often by juxtaposing
realistic description with fantastic incidents, or poetic imagery with ordinary occurrences.’’
Related to this moral-ironic perception is the role of seasons in the novel, which
starts in early November and ends in mid-April. While Morris is depicted as a
passionate dreamer of Spring and all that it promises, he is also shown suffering a
long winter of destitution. Helen, too, is shown realizing in the park that the month
of February can offer the illusion of Spring. As Jonathan Baumbach has observed,
the seasons in the novel play a symbolic role, as ‘‘they mirror the inner condition of
the central characters.’’
The irony of situation in the novel is, in fact, the irony of life, showing how
human beings come close to each other only in adversity, and how prosperity separates
them into rivals and competitors, even adversaries and enemies. Malamud’s focus on
suffering is a part of his presenting an ironic vision of life. It occupies a central place
in his perspective on life. Suffering in Malamud is invariably presented as a redemptive
force, perhaps the only means to define the basis of humanity: ‘‘If you live, you
suffer.’’ When Morris tells Frank that they necessarily suffer for each other, the
implication has a dynamic thrust. It seems to acknowledge the reciprocal responsibility
of man towards his fellow-beings, irrespective of their racial or religious identities. In
Malamud’s view, if a man does not suffer, he fails to grow, and without growth he
can neither comprehend life nor discover relationships between man and man. In fact,
suffering and sensitivity to life are so interrelated that the intenser the suffering, the
greater is the possibility of regeneration. In his novels, including The Assistant,
suffering shows the way to happy life, while search for happiness leads to suffering.
It is an ironic cycle of life, the wheel of fortune on which humans seem to be bound.
254
In the present novel, both Frank and Helen suffer while deeply and frantically seeking
happiness in life. However, as they go through the process of purgation through
suffering, they emerge ennobled, and take to the life of love and compassion.
All the leading characters in the novel - Morris, Frank and Helen - get their
revelations about the value of love and compassion, of human ties, through the trying
experience of suffering. They come to attain ultimately - an irony of life- the consciousness
of ‘‘planetary perspective’’ as a fruit of that experience. Norman Cousins, a Malamud
critic, regards the consciousness as the real education the Malamud characters finally
receive through their life-experience. As Cousins puts it, this education would reveal
that ‘‘the simplest reality of all was that the human community was one-greater than
any of its parts, greater than the separateness imposed by the nations, greater than
the divergent faiths and allegiances, or the depth and colour of varying cultures.” We
need to remember, however, that Malamud convey, this message, in the first place,
through a narrated experience; we only infer it all from the specific story of a set of
characters who of their own do not do any kind of surmonising or pontification, nor
does the narrator adopt any of these rhetorical modes. Secondly, Malamud also
places his specific story of a set of characters in a serio-comic mode, central to which
is his ironic perspective, causing humour and pathos appropriate to individual situations
and different characters. The immediate benefit of the serio-comic mode is that it
keeps the tone and tenor of the narrative to the level of the common way of life his
characters belong to. The mode is highly appropriate to the status of these characters
as well as to the author’s perspective on life - one that can see the comedy of
common life and yet can see as well the potential in it for higher possibilities.
1. Discuss Bernard Malamud as an American Jewish novelist.
2. Discuss Malamud as a contemporary or post-war writer.
3. Examine the theme of ‘‘New Life’’ in Malamud’s The Assistant.
4. Write a long note on the character of the Malamud hero, with special reference
to The Assistant.
5. Examine the ‘‘form’’ of The Assistant in terms of the journey motif and the
255
quest theme.
6. Is Morris Bober or Frank Alpine the hero of The Assistant? Substantiate

your argument with documentation from the text of the novel.
7. Compare the characters of Frank Alpine and Morris Bober.
8. Write a note on the women characters in The Assistant.
9. What are the salient features of Malamud’s prose style in The Assistant.
10. Discuss the significance of the title of the novel The Assistant.
1. Leslie Fiedler and Joyce Field (eds.). Bernard Malamud and the Critics.
New York: New York University Press, 1970.
2. Sheldon Norman Grebstein. Contemporary American Jewish Literature.

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1973.
3. Allen Guttmann. The Jewish Writer in America : Assimilation and the

Crisis of Identity. New York : New York University Press, 1971.
4. Ihab Hassan. Radical Innocence : Studies in the Contemporary American

Novel. Princeton, New Jeresey : Princeton University Press, 1961.
5. Marcus Klein. After Alienation: American Novels in Mid-Century. Cleveland

: World Publishing Company, 1962.
6. Philip Rahv. ‘‘Introduction,’’ A Malamud Reader. New York : Farrar, Straus

and Giroux, 1967.
7. Sidney Richman. Bernard Malamud. New York : Twayne Publishers, 1963.
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256

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Directorate of Distance Education

Course Co-ordinator : Teachers Incharge :

Lesson Writers : Proof Reading :

c Directorate of Distance Education, University of Jammu, Jammu, 2019.

• Printed by : Durga Printers / 2019 / 1000

Dear Distance Learners,

Prof. Anupama Vohra

Course Code : ENG-413 Duration of Examination-3 hrs.

Travis Bogard Contour in Time : The Plays of Eugene O’Neill.

Unit-II THE HAIRY APE (Eugene O’Neill) 45–88

Unit-III DEATH OF A SALESMAN (Arthur Miller) 89–142

Unit-IV THE INVISIBLE MAN (Ralph Ellison) 143–195

Unit-V THE GRAPES OF WRATH (John Steinbeck) 196-211

Unit-VI THE ASSISTANT (Bernard Malamud) 212–256

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND THE MYTH OF

1.2 Introduction : Tennessee Williams.

1.3 Tennessee Williams as a playwright

1.4 Myth of the South

1.5 Let us Sum Up.

1.6 Examination Oriented Questions

1.2 INTRODUCTION: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Tennessee Williams is considered the greatest Southern playwright and one of

In 1929, Williams enrolled in the University of Missouri. After two years he

1.3 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AS A PLAYWRIGHT

Tennessee Williams’ career as a playwright began in earnest in 1935, during the

In 1938, Tennessee Williams ceased to be simply a local playwright. He won

In all Williams’ plays, he gave American theatre goers unforgettable characters,

1.4 MYTH OF THE SOUTH

The impact of Industrialization of North was immense, ‘‘In the sphere of

1.5 LET US SUM UP

Tennessee Williams is one of the Southern writers of America. His perception

1.6 EXAMINATION ORIENTED QUESTIONS

1. Discuss Tennessee Williams as a playwright of South.

The Glass Menagerie : A Critical Study

2.2 Introduction to the play

2.3 Summary of the play with critical comments

2.4 Examination Oriented Questions

2.2 INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAY

The Glass Menageire is Williams’ first successful play, by which, he acquired

2.3 SUMMARY OF THE PLAY

Tom Wingfield is both a narrator and a character of the play. He dressed as a

The play is a domestic play dramatizing the effect of displacement on a family,

Scene five begins with screen legend ‘‘ANNUNCIATION’’, which indicates

2.4 EXAMINATION ORIENTED QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the plot of the play The Glass Menagerie.

2. Trace the autobiographical elements in the play The Glass Menagerie.

3.2 Amanda Wingfield

3.3 Tom Wingfield

3.4 Laura Wingfield

3.5 Jim O’ Connor

3.6 Contrast between Jim and Tom.

3.7 Examination Oriented Questions

3.2 AMANDA WINGFIELD

Amanda is too much a prisoner of her fantasies to sense reality inherent in a

3.3 TOM WINGFIELD

Tom has a strong sense of responsibility to the family, but it is constantly

3.4 LAURA WINGFIELD

3.5 JIM O’CONNOR

Jim is optimistic and thoroughly committed to a belief in “progress”. But he is

3.6 CONTRAST BETWEEN JIM AND TOM