AND THE LOVELIEST AFTERNOON OF THE YEAR. Volume/mona.pdf · [21] violence in john guare’s a day...
Transcript of AND THE LOVELIEST AFTERNOON OF THE YEAR. Volume/mona.pdf · [21] violence in john guare’s a day...
[21]
VIOLENCE IN JOHN GUARE’S A DAY FOR SURPRISES, SOMETHING I’LL TELL YOU TUESDAY AND THE
LOVELIEST AFTERNOON OF THE YEAR.
Dr. Mona F. Hashish.
Department of Languages and Translation.
College of Arts and Science.
The Northern Borders University. Rafhaa City, Saudi Arabia.
Email: [email protected]
Abstract
The study deals with three plays of the American playwright John Guare (1938- ): A Day for Surprises
(1971), Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday (1967) and The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year(1966). Guare wrote them in
an early phase of his dramatic career. Violence is a common theme in the three plays. Guare believes that his drama
belongs to the Theatre of the Absurd. He presents violence without justification or logical context. He means to
display disorder that suggests certain meanings since absurd plays are chaotic and suggestive. He is a social satirist
as well. He ridicules the modern way of living of the American citizens. He shows characters that live under
pressures and do not enjoy their lives. Such characters become psychotic and helpless. They exorcise their negative
feelings of anger, frustration and suppression by practicing or imagining violent actions. Violence in some of
Guare’s drama ends in murder. The research attempts to determine how Guare displays violence in his three plays
and searches for the motives beyond violence to come up with an interpretation. The protagonists of these plays are
abstract and bizarre. They are not individualized as normal human beings, and their speech and action mostly sound
strange. Guare deliberately uses the technical device of grotesquery in his drama to prove that life is not as
systematic as one might think. Guare, like other dramatists of the Theatre of the Absurd, believes that the world has
its irregularities and weirdness. The research mainly follows a psychological approach depending on Sigmund
Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis to analyze the protagonists’ violent attitudes or their stories about violence in
society.
The research tackles three of John Guare (1938- )’s
plays: A Day for Surprises (1971), Something I’ll Tell
You Tuesday (1967) and The Loveliest Afternoon of
the Year(1966). They belong to the Theater of the
Absurd, and they present various bizarre characters
and violent incidents. The research tries to analyze
violence as a phenomenon by searching for the
reasons of violence and studying the motives of the
violent characters. The paper also shows how John
Guare manipulates violence to satirize the American
society and depends on the Theory of Grotesquery to
do so.
These three plays in specific are chosen to be the
focus of the research because they best represent
John Guare’s drama in an early phase of the
dramatist’s career. Moreover, Phillis Hartnoll and
Peter Found remark that Guare “first attracted
attention when The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year
and A Day for Surprises were produced at the Café
Cino in 1966” (201). Besides, Don Wilmeth and Tice
Miller note that “some critics have found his
[Guare’s] plays too cerebral or abstract,[and] lacking
focus” (212). Significantly, the difficulty of
understanding Guare’s plays make them challenging
to researchers. Arnold Hinchliffe notes, “It [absurd
drama] challenges the audience to make sense of
non-sense” (12). Therefore, the researcher tries to
find order beyond violence that is not justified in
Guare’s plays.
Needless to say, violence is not a new theme. It
is reflected upon in drama throughout ages. It is
dominant in Greek and Roman tragedies where
[22]
murder is a major event. Similarly, sixteenth-century
tragedies highlight violence because Renaissance
dramatists like William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson
were generally influenced by the classical models.
Some modern dramatists throw light on violence as a
phenomenon in the modern societies. However, they
are mostly against employing the classical rules like
the division of a play into five acts, using classical
allusion and preserving the unities of action, time and
place. They experiment with modern techniques like
the Theatre of the Absurd, surrealism, impressionism
and the like.
John Fletcher observes,
[L]iterature… cannot help but
mirror the cruelty and violence of
the times,…the hysterical cruelties
inflicted by white suburbanites on
colored people protesting that race
should cease to influence real estate
sales, or the increasingly disturbing
phenomena of mass killings, or of
the collective rape of young women
by bands of youths, are horrors that
few artists could bring themselves
to deal with, at least at the present
time, but we should not be
surprised if writers or film-makers
do eventually examine them (164).
John Guare is one of the few contemporary
dramatists who choose to highlight violence in
drama. Guare deals with the theme of violence in his
three plays A Day for Surprises (1971), Something
I’ll Tell You Tuesday (1967) and The Loveliest
Afternoon of the Year(1966). The characters which he
portrays in these plays are often psychotic patients.
They live and work under social pressures; and so
they are unhappy.
Gene Plunka proposes,
The resulting sense of alienation and agoisse often leads Guare’s protagonists into violence as a means of expressing their frustrations. Life in Guare’s world, much of it expressed in New York City as a microcosm for the craziness of contemporary urban life, is synonymous with violence and teeming hostilities. When Guare’s characters ultimately realize their unfulfilled
dreams, the consequences are often
brutal. Guare reminds us through
the violence that our wounds never
disappear and that this modern
neurosis is never pleasant (16).
Suzanne Dieckman also points out, “Several critics
have been shocked by the cruelty in Guare’s work,
but the majority have praised his wit and theatrical
inventiveness, particularly his ability to blend two
genres: outrageous farce and tragedy into a pointed
critique of modern culture” (246).
It may be contended that John Guare is an absurdist American playwright who is talented in presenting the tragic event in a humorous manner. This is obvious in the three plays under study in this paper. The violent characters look strange and funny. In A Day for Surprises, the stone lion leaves its perch in the street and enters the library to eat Miss Pringle (17-18). In Something I’ll Tell
You Tuesday, Hildegarde is too talkative to stop
talking about problems (8).
Last but not least, in The Loveliest Afternoon
of the Year, Maud, the young man’s disagreeable
wife is fat, ugly and aggressive(27). Jean Stine et al.
suggest, “Linking Guare with this [Theater of the
Absurd] movement is his use of exaggeration, shock,
ludicrousness, and black humor….Placed in
unpleasant situations or environments, Guare’s
characters… display negative aspects of human
nature” (203). Guare himself admits to the
interviewer John DiGaetani that his plays are not
postmodern but absurd (108);
Guare says,
It is impossible not to be influenced
by the absurd….That’s just a handy
label for that which has existed for
all time from Aeschylus on
down…. I think Theater of the
Absurd is just a critical label for
something that has existed since
ancient Greece. Euripides’ The
Bacchae is one of the greatest
examples I know of the Theater of
the Absurd (108).
Anne Cirella-Urrutia states that symbolism is a
dominant feature in the Theater of the Absurd (7-8).
The fierce lion in A Day for Surprises stands for the
capitalist American society. The librarians work for
long hours and consequently feel isolated and
dehumanized. For example, Mr. Falanzano is unable
to express his emotion naturally like other human
beings—he talks about his affair with Miss Pringle in
terms of books, data and information. He does not
[23]
use love words. His speech takes the form of a long
monologue. He tells Miss Jepson,
She said I’ve never loved anybody
so I want this to be good. I said oh,
I had never loved anybody before
either. So I took a copy of Love
Without Fear and she took a
Modern Manual on How To Do It,
and we wrapped—like Christmas
packages for people you love—
wrapped our bodies, our
phosphorescent, glowing, about-to-
become-human bodies around each
other. And began reading (20).
At the end of the monologue, Falanzano laments his
fate as a librarian: “My life has been lived in books. I
had become a book…Library paste…we all would’ve
been better off if we’d never opened a book” (22).
This absurd play opens with violence and ends
in violence. Arnold Hinchliffe proposes, “absurd
literary means out of harmony” (1). Miss Jepson tells
Mr. Falanzano at the beginning of the play, “It’s
sitting in the Ladies’ Room with Miss Pringle’s feet
sticking out of its mouth—out of the lion’s mouth. I
know it’s Miss Pringle as I’d been admiring her blue
beaded shoes only this morning” (18). Mr. Falanzano
ran to the ladies’ room and returned sadly with a pair
of blue beaded shoes (18). At the end of the play,
Miss Jepson tells Mr. Falanzano, “The lion’s on its
perch now. You’d never know he moved. Except for
that little piece of pink garter on its tooth dangling
like a salmon” (22).
This love story is sad because Mr. Falanzano could
not marry Miss Pringle as he had planned. Jack Kroll
points out, “The glory of Guare is his unabashed (or
perhaps abashed) romanticism, his bifocal vision of
the tragic and the absurd” (206). However, Kroll
adds that Guare’s characters often search for certain
‘utopias’ (206). Mr. Falanzano indeed searches for
remedy after he has lost his beloved. Miss Jepson
consoles him. She touches him seductively and sings
for him to show him her love. Both Mr. Falanzano
and Miss Jepson dream of establishing a humanized
love relationship away from book and library. Gene
Plunka notes,
Guare is interested in exploring how we can remain true to the ideals on which American Society was originally established …. The fragmented life of modern urban society may corrupt us and channel us into disingenuous behavior, but the utopian spirit and our personal dreams can still exist…. We must gain the self-understanding and spiritual self-awareness that once
defined our greatness and created
high culture. Guare thus often
allows his protagonists to dream,
even if their utopian desires are
ultimately dashed by the brutalities
of the real world (17).
Hildegarde’s frequent fights with her husband
George is the source of violence in Something I’ll
Tell You Tuesday. Hildegarde always complains to
her parents Agnes and Andrew of George and
expresses her dissatisfaction with his deeds. She
enrages and provokes George to reply back. This also
leads her parents to get bored. The parents do not
want to drive with Hildegarde or George to the
hospital where Agnes will receive treatment. Andrew
tells Agnes, “Ah, it hurts me the way they fight” (6).
Though Agnes is bothered by the fights, she thinks
fighting is healthy because it indicates love, youth
and vivacity and it releases tension (16). She reminds
Andrew of one of their old fights:
That streak on the wall.
Remember? …
The painters had just finished
painting this room and the walls
were still wet and we were fighting
about something and I got mad at
you and threw the grapefruit I was
eating at you and you ducked and
the grapefruit stuck to the wet wall
and slid all the way down to the
floor (6).
Hildegarde’s harsh speech is obvious when she
furiously blames George for knocking over yellow
markers on the bridge while driving and insists to
drive her parents to the hospital instead of him (7).
George cannot control his manners and say in front of
Hildegarde’s parentst, “I do not know where she gets
her voice from. She screams and it does something to
[24]
your ears” (8). Hildegarde resumes the fight saying,
“He called me the worst names once we got off that
bridge. Names you wouldn’t call the lowest scum on
earth he called me” (8-9).
Violence in this play is incarnated not only in
words but also in gesture and action:
Hildegarde: Okay, George, drive
me insane. If that’s what’s going to
make you happy, you go right
ahead and drive me insane.
(George stands up disgustedly.
Hildegarde covers her head with
her arms.) Don’t you dare hit me!
(Andrew starts for her. Agnes pulls
him back.) Papa, help! (8)….
(Whispering.) He’d hit me. He has.
He will. (9).
Then Hildegarde complains that George bought
an expensive fancy dress to their daughter Monica
and he knows that her underclothes are torn with
holes. George accuses her of being jealous (11).
Agnes and Andrew use the chance of the departure of
Hildegarde and George to fetch the car and walk to
the hospital. They want to go to the hospital in peace.
Agnes enjoys walking by Andrew because she misses
intimacy. She tells him, “We haven’t been out
together like this in a very long while. This is like a
date. I feel very young” (15).
Agnes urges Andrew to go to a café to take two
cups of coffee before going to the hospital. In the
café, Andrew expresses his worry about Hildegarde’s
marital life, but Agnes assures him that she is okay.
She explains to him,
You know what I’m gonna tell her
Tuesday when she comes with the
kids?.... I’m gonna tell her she’s
lucky they still fight. That’s the
worst part of getting old, I decided
…Not even a hot bath or a cup of
tea can make you feel as clean as
when I’d finish yelling at you and
you’d finish yelling at me….You
just don’t have the energy to fight”
(16).
Guare’s perspective on violence in A Day for
Surprises and Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday is not
quite different from his in The Loveliest Afternoon of
the Year. In the three plays, Guare shows that
violence can be positive in healing people’s
psychological problems. In The Loveliest Afternoon
of the Year, young man and woman meet by chance
at a public park. Her way of feeding the pigeons
attracts him to her. He startles her when he asks her
to stop because he has seen pigeons foaming at the
beaks at another place.
She thinks him a mugger because he
approaches her closely and talks nonsense (21). The
man assures her he is not a mugger and begs for one
crackerjack (21)! She is scared and hits him with her
bag. She believes he is richer than her for he wears a
fancy sport coat (22). His advances are considered
sexual harassment because the lady does not
welcome them. Alison Thomas argues, “Like many
feminist sociologists, I see acts of sexual harassment
…as instances from a continuum of male behaviors
through which men consciously or unconsciously act
to assert and maintain their dominance over women”
(135). Rosemarie Skaine agrees with Thomas saying,
“sexual harassment… is not about love or romance, it
is about social control…[and displaying] male
power” (11-12).
The man swears he is poor and tells the lady
weird stories about his life. He narrates to her how
his wife takes his coins and subway token and bends
them in her teeth. He adds that she shoots his feet
with her rifle that has a silencer whenever he comes
home late (22). Moreover, he narrates to the lady
about his sister Lucy whose arm was stuck in the
cage of a polar bear, so the bear bit it off. Though
[25]
doctors could set back the arm by a surgical
operation, white bear hair grew on Lucy’s body (23-
24). The lady does not take his horrible stories
seriously and calls them “awfully funny” (23). She
finds the man amusing. He starts to love him.
The lady says a long monologue that shows she
has been suppressed by society:
SHE: I have been in this city
eleven months now and you are the
first person I’ve spoken to. That’s
spoken to me. Eleven months of
silence—till now. I feel like I’ve
just been released from a
convent—a goddam convent. No,
I’m not laughing at you. I’m a
young girl and I’m pretty and
nobody ever speaks to me—not
even to ask directions—and you’re
the funniest man I’ve ever met and
I thank you in all the languages
there are. Thank you for speaking
to me (22).
Here, an accusing finger turns against the capitalist
American society again. People under the capitalist
system are too busy to make friendship with
strangers. They
work like machines to make money and lead a
comfortable life. They suffer from loneliness though.
The lonely man and lady are happy to be
companions. They meet every weekend in the park.
They fall in love before they know each other better.
The lady suspects that the man’s strange stories are
true. She tells the audience, “He has his life and I
have mine… mugger or not—I like him very much”
(23). The lady is weak enough to submit to the man’s
advances. If she had been psychologically balanced,
she would have never loved such a weird man.
In the meanwhile, the man submerges her in a
romantic atmosphere. He sings loudly and sweetly to
her. He also assures her that he does not have a wife.
He adds, “You’ve saved my life. I’ve never picked
anybody else up before but something about you—
the way you fed those pigeons—I wanted to know
you, and now…now it looks like I’d better thank
you” (25). He feels he is cured of certain
psychological illness.
However, the last part of the man’s love song
shocks the lady. He sings, “We saved both our lives/
Which should lead to husbands and wives/ But since
we must part/ Feed the pigeon that cries in my heart”
(26). That message demonstrates that he cannot
marry the lady he loves. The young lady is shocked
more when she sees a fat woman pushing a stroller
where two ugly fat babies sit. She realizes that that
woman is the man’s wife especially when she finds
her holding a blind dog by a leash.
The young man is scared of his violent wife
Maud. He asks the young lady to hide with him
otherwise Maud will get her rifle from beneath the
children and shoot them (27). Without thinking, the
young lady replies, “And would that be any worse
than you leaving me, me leaving you, you going back
to her, me going back to my empty apartment” (27-
28). This means that she cannot imagine living
without him.
The lady’s courage and sincerity give the man
spiritual support. He immediately overcomes his
fears and decides to face his fate. The couple happily
courts violence. They enrage the wife by calling her
and kissing in front of her.
[26]
7Once she notices what they are doing, she shoots
them, and they fall dead (28). Suzanne Dieckman
remarks,
Violence in Guare’s dramatic world
is never merely gratuitous—it
seems to be the only course of
action for people trapped in a
cellophane-wrapped society….
[T]he couple [in The Loveliest
Afternoon of the Year] chooses to
be murdered by the man’s
grotesque wife rather than separate
and return to their isolated, dreary
existences (244).
On a point suggestively relevant, violence in
these three plays sounds illogical and is unjustified
by John Guare. In A Day for Surprises, it is not
mentioned why the hungry lion leaves the people in
the street and library and chooses to eat Miss Pringle.
In Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday, nobody knows
what kind of marital problem is there between
Hildegarde and George. And in The loveliest
Afternoon of the Year, the man’s wife is abnormal for
carrying a rifle under her children’s seat in the
stroller and shooting her husband and the young
woman without even talking to them. Edmund
Thomas and Eugene Miller says that absurdity is
“[s]omething that is foolish, ridiculous…,plainly not
true , not sensible or contradictory” (249).
Guare’s violent characters seem dangerous and
grotesque. Gene Plunka determines, “critics have
accused him [Guare] of creating cartoonish
characters whose eccentricities bear little
resemblance to reality…..[However, Guare] finds the
sources for his ‘bizarre’ material in everyday life [as
he admits]” (17-18). In fact, avant-gardist writers like
Guare use the grotesque to prove that life is irrational
and full of irregularities.
In The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year, the
young man tells the young lady in the park that life is
full of “weirdness” (24). Here, he is Guare’s
mouthpiece. Gautam Dasgupta points out, “Horrific
and bizarre incidents clutter the plays [of John
Guare], and …they seldom stray from the realistic
premise on which they are grounded. Although
danger lurks at every corner, and events unfold
without the least provocation, there is a sense that
such things belong to normal everyday life” (204).
Grotesquery is, in fact, one feature of the
Theatre of the Absurd. J. A. Cuddon remarks, “In
literature one is most likely to find grotesque
elements in caricature, parody, satire, invective,
burlesque, black comedy, the macabre and what is
known as the theatre of the Absurd” (295). Jonnie
Patricia Mobley points out, “plays in the absurdist
tradition attempt to show the irrational and illogical
aspects of life through absurd characters, dialogue
and situations” (1).
Rodney Simard also notes that the absurdist
dramatists try “to expand the definitions and
boundaries of dramatic reality beyond the limits
imposed by naturalism… [and] destroy
reader/audience identification and have the effect of
forcing subjective interpretation” (22). Therefore,
writers of absurd drama employ imagination and
exaggeration to make what is familiar looks
‘grotesque.’ Accordingly, the audience get alienated
and detached. They feel that the play they watch is
not a real life but mere imagination.
Philip Thomson determines, “The grotesque is
the expression of the estranged or alienated
world…(…this strangeness may be either comic or
terrifying, or both). The grotesque is a game with the
absurd, in the sense that the grotesque artist plays,
half laughingly, half horrified, with the deep
absurdities of existence” (18). Emma Brockes states
[27]
that John Guare is against Naturalistic drama that
shows reality as it is and avoids imagination” (n.p.).
She quotes Guare, “What I hate about kitchen-sink
dramas is that the set is real, therefore, you’re going
to be seeing truth….Naturalism believes by just
replicating a thing you give the truth, rather than
earning the truth” (n.p.).
Hence, violence in Guare’s drama functions as a
psychological remedy. Guare does not exhibit
violence haphazardly. It is a measured violence.
Guare deliberately portrays grotesque figures like the
stone lion, Hildegarde and the young man’s wife to
perform violent deeds that exorcise or drive out
charges of anger. Clive Barnes asserts that Guare’s
drama belongs to the Theatre of the Absurd for
involving organized irrationalities or as he mentions
“calculated irrelevancy” and “astonishingly logical
illogicality” (203).
Guare’s characters whether initiators or victims
of violence are city-dwellers.
They all suffer from social ills like capitalism, heavy
workloads, utilitarianism,….etc. Gautam Dasgupta
thinks that Guare has specialized in city drama
because he was born and raised in New York City
and so he “is acutely aware of the many problems
that face urban man…” (204). Dasgupta describes
Guare’s city characters’ attitudes as follows:
Down-and- out characters, forever
arguing or complaining about lost
opportunities, inhabit shabby
middle-class dwellings and display
extreme forms of urban paranoia….
Clinging desperately to dreams of a
better life, they continually chase
after their visions, only to be drawn
deeper and deeper into frustration
and despair….More often than not,
they express their anguish through
senseless violence or festering hate
(204).
Guare is considered a social critic. He criticizes
urban communities for putting psychological
pressures on American citizens at home and work.
Guare criticizes society in a humorous way. He
cannot be called a serious writer. Suzanne Dieckman
says that “Guare creates a cartoonlike dramatic world
that at its best is both agonizing and outrageously
funny” (243).
Though the characters are funny, they stand for
sad frustrated individuals. For example, Miss Jepson
in A Day for Surprises loves Mr. Falanzano and is
jealous of Miss Pringle. When Mr. Falanzano tells
Miss Jepson that he used to love Miss Pringle and
planned to marry her, Miss Jepson gets shocked. She
says a long monologue that reflects her suppressed
love at-one-side:
Well, you sneakies! You and Miss
Pringle! Why don’t you let
anybody know! Isn’t this a day for
surprises! You and Denise
Pringle—It’s like all the surprises
of the world store themselves up
for a day when the one thing you
do not need is a surp…you and
Denise Pring…sonofagun…(18).
In that monologue, Miss Jepson expresses her
subjective unpleasant feelings. Her psychological
disturbance is reflected in the elliptical telegram-like
phrases that form a compressed syntax and
incomplete or unintelligible words like “surp” which
stands for “surprise.” Besides, “sonofagun” is a
nonsensical word. Non-conventional discourse often
has such slipping and sliding of language.
Furthermore, Miss Jepson’s consolation to Mr.
[28]
Falanzano for the loss of his beloved proves that she
is emotionally attracted to him. “She touches his
shoulder comfortingly” (19). “She begins pasting him
with paste from the paste pot. She pastes her hand to
his cheek.. She pastes his hand to her breast” (22).
All such gestures show Miss Jepson’s love to Mr.
Falanzano.
The stage direction in Something I’ll Tell You
Tuesday show that tension and unhappiness appear
on Hildegarde and George’s faces: “Hildegarde’s
hair is askew. George looks like he’s on the brink of
either murder or an ulcer” (6). And in The Loveliest
Afternoon of the Year, both young man and lady
suffer from loneliness. The lady says that no-one
wants to communicate with her for eleven months, so
her life has changed into “a goddam convent” that
lacks fun and entertainment (22).
The young man also needs to have a good
partner. He is disempowered as a man by his
domineering wife. It seems she abuses him and
reduces his job only to having sex and guiding her
blind dog (26). He redeems his feelings of being
coerced by his wife by dominating the young lady.
First, he harasses her, and then he tells lies saying he
is not married to make the lady fall in love with him.
We can see even more clearly that the
characters in Guare’s three plays—A Day for
Surprises, Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday and The
Loveliest Afternoon of the Year—are neurotic.
According to Sigmund Freud, the cause of the major
neuroses is the disorder in one’s “contemporary
sexual life or in …[one’s] past [sexual] life” (149).
Gene Plunka confirms, “Freud’s clinical
investigations convinced him that childhood or adult
sexual disorders formed the basis for all types of
neuroses—mental disorders characterized by anxiety,
insecurity, depression, or unreasonable fears” (93).
Miss Jepson and Mr. Falanzano suffer from
neurotic problems. First, Miss Jepson is occupied
with fear on discovering the disappearance of the
stone lion from the street. She gasps and stammers
while telling Mr. Falanzano about the incident. She
says, “Ppppppardon me, Sir—bbbbbbbbut you have
got HAVE GOT to llllloooook out your window”
(17). She picks up the word lion in an encyclopedia
saying “LLLLLLLLLLLinnaeum Linoleum Lion—
Lion” (18). All these unintelligible utterances mark
an absence of linguistic poetics. Slipping and sliding
of language are forms of non-conventional discourse.
Second, Mr. Falanzano looks insane when he
“has a fit and rips all the books in the room in
pieces” (146).Then he tells Miss Jepson that once he
was in a bad need of communicating with anybody,
so he goes to search for a good book and met Miss
Pringle by chance among the stacks. They developed
a relationship because she too badly needed to have
human company(147). This past sexual experience
has psychologically troubled Mr. Falanzano since it
had a sad end. Miss Pringle became pregnant and
“did not want the child” (21). So, Mr. Falanzano read
about abortion and helped her to miscarry the baby
(21).
In Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday, it seems that
George is too cold to express his love to his wife.
Hildegarde’s ego makes her nervous and aggressive.
According to culture and society, a wife should be
decent and tolerant. The superego often resigns to the
will of culture and society and stands for one’s
conscience. In this play, Hildegarde’s ego is stronger
than her superego.
Further, both the young man and lady in The
Loveliest Afternoon of the Year are psychologically
troubled. They fear each other on their first meeting.
He is “[t]error-stricken” and talking nonsense (21).
He says, “pigeons were foaming at the beaks” (21).
[29]
She, on the other hand, thinks that the young man is a
mugger and searches for her “tear gas gun” in her
purse (21). Fear and uncertainty make both of them
aggressive. He asks for crackerjacks and the present
in its box (21-22). The man’s unsuccessful marital
life affects his mentality and makes him look insane.
Gene Plunka notes, “As is typical in Guare’s
plays, the frustration of being unable to connect in
any spiritual way because our fantasies or our egoism
interfere usually results in violence” (100). Plunka
adds, “As is typical in his plays, Guare demonstrates
the lack of compassion and spiritual connection may
exacerbate the insanity and violence so prevalent in
contemporary life” (93).
Therefore, frustration leads to violence in
Guare’s plays: Miss Jepson, before knowing about
the actual death of Miss Pringle, expresses her wish
to get rid of her by imagining that a stone lion ate her.
Her story of the lion is like a dream. Joan Mellen
states that according to Sigmund Freud dreams reflect
on people’s inner realities that lie in the unconscious
(57). Hildegarde’s unhappy marriage creates of her a
nagging wife. The young man’s wife, who is fat, ugly
and disagreeable, works to satisfy her ego by abusing
her husband and shooting anybody who enrages her.
Her superego is too weak to make her change to
become socially acceptable. Her failure to be as
attractive to her husband as the young lady creates of
her a miserable vindictive character.
All these characters are indeed imbalanced and
psychologically broken. Violence is a result of their
helplessness to communicate right. Society and
people are to blame for being intolerant and ruthless.
They degrade them to be grotesque clowns instead of
helping them to become sociable and agreeable.
Michael Steig defines the grotesque from a
psychological point of view. He notes that it reflects
on one’s “intrapsychic conflicts” through mixing
terror with humor (259-260).
For instance, Miss Jepson in A Day for
Surprises pretends to be scared of the stone lion (17).
Her story of the lion is funny and unrealistic. Thomas
Markus says that one critic remarks, “The impossible
is made casual [where] a 28,000 pound stone lion
walks through the Public Library without attracting
attention” (331). Hildegarde in Something I’ll Tell
You Tuesday is also dehumanized and looks graphic-
like for fighting over George’s slight mistakes. Her
ego makes her too proud to ask for attention in a
tactful manner. She looks jealous when she
comments on George buying her daughter a fancy
dress (11); and she appears ungrateful and rude when
George offers her a glass of sugared water and she
says the water tastes different (9).
In The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year, the
young man and lady communicate in an abnormal
way. He harasses her. She hits him, then she likes his
strange speech and accepts his eccentricities. She
tells the audience, “He’s really an odd person—an
odd duck. But he does tell me awfully funny
stories” (23).
Mona Abousenna asserts, “man’s imprisonment
through habit and egoism…prevents him from acting
in any meaningful or purposeful manner” (viii).
Guare, in fact, means to write about the
aspiration of such victimized Americans. Philip
Thomson points out that according to Arthur
Clayborough’s theory of grotesquery a writer
employs grotesquery to express either his conscious
or unconscious mind (17). Frances Locher asserts
that Guare writes consciously about social problems
(260). Locher quotes Guare, “Life is the unconscious,
writing the conscious” (260).
[30]
There is a need to recognize that Guare employs
the grotesque as a technical device to satirize society
in a humorous way. Andrew Stott notes,
“‘Grotesque’….include[s] anything across the arts
that contained elements of the ridiculous, the
horrifying, and the bizarre. The grotesque is a form of
exaggerated and ambivalent social commentary
produced by the violent clash of opposites, especially
those that are comic and terrifying, existing in a state
of unresolved tension” (87). In a sense, Guare is
realistic in referring to real strange events that occur
in society. Robert Brustein remarks, “we should be
grateful that at least one American playwright [like
Guare] is willing to create an [a] historical context for
his work” (209).
It cannot be disputed that Guare reflects the
American citizens’ agonies in one way or another.
Terry Fox argues,
Guare has always defined his plays
as being about the conflict between
dreams and the world. But it strikes
me that Guare at his best is about
much more than that. He is a man
at once furious at the imperfections
of the world…. Guare is not a
social critic standing on the outside
and laughing with slight disdain.
He is inside, and it is from this
particularly painful vantage point
that the laughter comes. It brings
not … righteous anger but a
desperate struggle against despair
(34-35).
In his three plays A Day for Surprises,
Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday and The Loveliest
Afternoon of the Year, Guare investigates the needs
of the American characters. He shows that they yearn
for certain utopias which they cannot attain in the
recent time. Guare illustrates this point to the
interviewer John DiGaetani, “Central concerns in all
drama are certainly the need to be happy, the inability
to face reality, the need not to be humiliated” (109).
For example, Miss Jepson in A Day for Surprises
complains of loneliness. She tells Mr. Falanzano,
“There’s a lot of lonely girls in this town” (19).
Hildegarde in Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday
dreams of marital happiness and George dreams of
peace at home. And in The Loveliest Afternoon of the
Year, the young lady aspires for social
communication. She loves the young man and wants
to stay in his company even when she learns he has a
wife (27-28). Moreover, the young man yearns for a
delicate nice wife. He wishes he could be able to
marry the young lady. He confesses to her he has
fallen in love at first sight once he saw her feeding
the pigeons (25).
To put it in a nutshell, the research tackles the
issue of violence in three of John Guare’s early plays:
A Day for Surprises, Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday
and The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year. Guare
demonstrates that although violence is an external
phenomenon, it has internal reasons which are
frustration, dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Hence,
the study offers an interpretation of the characters’
violent attitudes by referring to their psychological
motives. The paper also reveals the fact that Guare
highlights the element of the grotesque in his three
plays to reflect various cases of neuroses and prove
that there is weirdness in the world. As a social
satirist, Guare criticizes the American society for
pressurizing its citizens and consequently causing
some individuals to collapse under pressure.
Bibliography
I. Books:
[31]
Abousenna, Mona. “Introduction.” Waiting for
Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts by Samuel
Beckett. Cairo: The Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, n.d.
Barnes, Clive. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Eds.
Jean Stine et al. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research
Company, 1984.
Brustein, Robert. Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Eds. Jean Stine et al. Detroit, Michigan: Gale
Research Company, 1984.
Cuddon, J. A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms.
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd, 1985.
Dasgupta, Gautam. Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Eds. Jean Stine et al. Detroit, Michigan: Gale
Research Company, 1984.
Dieckman, Suzanne. “John Guare.” Twentieth-
century American Dramatists: Part 1: A-J. John
MacNicholas, ed. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research
Company, 1981.
DiGaetani, John. A Search for a Postmodern Theater:
Interviews with Contemporary Playwrights.
Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 1991.
Fletcher, John. New Directions in Literature: Critical
Approaches to a Contemporary Phenomenon.
London: Calder and Boyars Ltd, 1968.
Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.
Trans. James Strachey. Vol. 3. London: Hogarth,
1974.
Guare, John. Kissing Sweet and A Day for Surprises:
Two Short Plays. New York: Dramatists Play Service
INC., 1971.
……………Something I’ll Tell You Tuesday and The
Loveliest Afternoon of the Year: Two Plays by John
Guare. New York: Dramatists Play Service, INC.,
1967.
Hartnoll, Phyllis and Peter Found, eds. The Concise
Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Oxford: Oxford
University press, 1992.
Hinchliffe, Arnold. The Absurd. London: Methuen &
Co. Ltd, 1977.
Kroll, Jack. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Eds.
Jean Stine et al. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research
Company, 1984.
Locher, Frances, ed. Contemporary Authors:
Volumes 73-76. Michigan: Gale Research Company,
Book Tower, 1978.
Markus, Thomas. “Guare, John.” Contemporary
Dramatists: Third Edition. Eds. James Vinson and D.
L. Kirkpatrick. New York: St. Martin’s Press, INC.,
1982.
Mellen, Joan. Literary Topics: Magic Realism.
Volume 5. Detroit: The Gale Group, A Manly INC.
Book, 2000.
Mobley, Jonnie Patricia. NTC’s Dictionary of
Theatre and Drama Terms. Illinois: National
Textbook Company Publishing Group, 1992.
Plunka, Gene. The Black Comedy of John Guare.
Danvers, Massachusetts: Rosemont Publishing &
Printing Corp., 2002.
Simard, Rodney. Postmodern Drama: Contemporary
Playwrights in America and Britain. Lanham:
University Press of America, Inc., 1984.
Skaine, Rosemarie. Power and Gender: Issues in
Sexual Dominance and Harassment. North Carolina:
McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.
[32]
Stott, Andrew. Comedy. New York: Routledge Press,
2007.
Stine, Jean et al., eds. Contemporary Literary
Criticism. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research
Company, 1984.
Thomas, Alison. “Men Behaving Badly? A
Psychosocial Exploration of the Cultural Context of
Sexual Harassment.” qtd. in Sexual Harassment:
Contemporary Feminist Perspectives. Eds. Alison
Thomas and Celia Kitzinger. Buckingham: Open
University Press, 1997.
Thomas, Edmund and Eugene Miller. Writers and
Philosophers: A Sourcebook of Philosophical
Influences on Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1990.
Thomson, Philip. The Grotesque: The Critical Idiom.
Ed. John Jump. London: Methuen & Co ltd, 1972.
Wilmeth, Don and Tice Miller, eds. Cambridge
Guide to American Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Thomson, Philip. The Grotesque: The Critical Idiom.
Ed. John Jump. London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1972.
II. Journals:
Brockes, Emma. “John Guare: ‘Writing is a blood
Sport’.” The Guardian. London: Tuesday 5 January
2010. Published on guardian. Co. uk. At 21: 35
GMT.
Cirella-Urrutia, Anne. “Absurdist Trends in
Children’s Theater: The Case of Mary Melwood’s
The Tingalary Bird.” Bookbird; Winter 1998. 34, 4.
Fox, Terry. The Village Voice. Aug. 15, 1977. qtd. in
Modern American Literature: Vol. I. Fifth Edition.
Eds. Joan Cerrito et al. London: St. James Press,
1999. P. 456.
Steig, Michael. “Defining the Grotesque: An Attempt
at Synthesis.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism. Philadelphia: The American Society for
Aesthetics, Summer 1970.