American Theatre from the 1940s to 1990s and Contemporary Afro-American Literature

1. American Theatre from the 1940s to 1990s and Contemporary Afro-American Literature June 8, 2012

2. Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)

3. Long Day’s Journey into Night (1953)

5. Characters: Mary Cavan Tyrone James Tyrone Edmund Tyrone James Tyrone, Jr. Cathleen O'Neill posthumously received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

6. The action covers a fateful, heart-rending day from around 8:30 am to midnight, in August 1912 at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones - the autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents at their home, Monte Cristo Cottage. One theme of the play is addiction and the resulting dysfunction of the family. All three males are alcoholics and Mary is addicted to morphine.

7. Arthur Miller

8. Major works: All My Sons (1947) Death of a Salesman (1949) The Crucible (1953) A View from the Bridge (1955)

9. Death of a Salesman(1949) • Characters: Willy Loman, Linda Loman, Biff Loman, Happy Loman • Setting: Late 1940s • Venue: Willy Loman's house; New York City and Barnaby River

10. Tragedy: a counterexample to Aristotle's characterization of tragedy as the downfall of a great man. Greatness: the play's protagonist is himself obsessed with the question of greatness, and his downfall arises directly from his continued misconception of himself--at age 63--as someone capable of greatness, as well as the unshakable conviction that greatness stems directly from personal charisma or popularity. Shattering of dreams:

12. Edward Albee (1928-) • Notable works: The Zoo Story (1958) • The Sandbox (1959) • The American Dream (1960) • Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1961-1962) • Box (1968) • The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2002) • Notable Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1967,1975,1994);Tony Award (2002)

13. Early stage: theatre of the absurd The image of limited space, eg. Box, sandbox, and cage, Death: death of dream, death of people, and death of tradition Significance

14. Albee

15. The Sandbox (1959)

16. The American Dream

17. Afro-American literature • Older generation: James Baldwin(1924-1987), Richard Wright(1908-1960), Ralph Waldo Ellison(1914-1994) • Younger: Alice Walker(1944-), Toni Morrison(1939-) • Invisible Man, 1953 winner of National Book Award for fiction, with The Old Man and the Sea and East of Eden by John Steinbeck as the finalists: • Toni Morrison: Sula was nominated National Book Award in 1975. • 1983, Walker’s The Color Purple won the National Book Award.

18. Invisible Man (1952)

19. Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)

20. Invisible Man • 'I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination indeed, everything and anything except me. (Ellison, 1990: 3)

21. Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision.

22. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It’s when you feel like this that, out resentment, you begin to bump people back…. You ache with the need to convince yourself you do exist in the real world, that you are part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's seldom successful. (Ellison, 1990: 3)

23. Toni Morrison (

24. The Bluest Eye (1970) • The Bluest Eye is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer as a child and an adult, as well as from a third person omniscient viewpoint. • Themes: Whiteness is beauty • Sense of loss • Sacrifice • Roots, Identity and community

25. Claudia and Frieda MacTeer live in Ohio with their parents. The MacTeer family takes two other people into their home, Mr. Henry and Pecola. Pecola is a troubled young girl with a hard life. Her parents are constantly fighting, both physically and verbally. Pecola is continually being told and reminded of what an “ugly” girl she is, thus fueling her desire to be a caucasian girl with blue eyes. Throughout the novel it is revealed that not only has Pecola had a life full of hatred and hardships, but her parents have as well. Pecola’s mother, Pauline only feels alive and happy when she is working for a rich white family. Her father, Cholly, is a drunk who was left with his aunt when he was young and ran away to find his father, who wanted nothing to do with him.

26. Both Pauline and Cholly eventually lost the love they once had for one another. While Pecola is doing dishes, her father rapes her. His motives are unclear and confusing, seemingly a combination of both love and hate. Cholly flees after the second time he rapes Pecola, leaving her pregnant. The entire town of Lorain turns against her, except Claudia and Frieda. In the end Pecola’s child is born prematurely and dies. Claudia and Frieda give up the money they had been saving and plant flower seeds in hopes that if the flowers bloom, Pecola's baby will live; the marigolds never bloom.

27. Conditions of the people • Our house is old, cold, and green. At night a kerosene lamp lights one large room. The others are braced in darkness, peopled by roaches and mice. Adults do not talk to us --- they give us directions. They issues orders without providing information. When we trip and fall down they glace at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they ask us are we crazy. When we catch colds, they shake their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration. How, they ask us, do you expect anybody to get anything done if you all are sick? We cannot answer them. Our illness is treated with contempt, foul Black Draught, and castor oil that blunts our minds. (10)

28. Whiteness as beauty, and blue-eyed Baby Doll as the loving gift for children: Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs --- all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. (20)

29. Blackness as ugliness: You looked at them closely and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted t without question…And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it. Dealing with it each according to his way…And Pecola. She hid behind hers. Concealed, veiled, eclipsed ---peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and they only to yearn for the return of her mask. (39) And it is the darkness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes. (49)

30. Pecola came to stay with Claudia when her father Dog Breedlove had burned up his house: …I listened to her downstairs in the kitchen fussing about the amount if milk Pecola had drunk. We knew she was fond of the Shirley Temple cup and took every opportunity to drink milk out of it just to handle and see sweet Shirley’s face. (23) Pecola has been in a family full of violence: “Pecola, on the other hand, restricted by youth and sex, experimented with methods of endurance. Though the methods varied, the pain was an consistent as it was deep. She struggled between an overwhelming desire that one would kill the other, and a profound wish that she herself could die. (43)

31. The deep hurt brought about on the child by the family violence: …if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. …If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they'd say, “why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things on front of those pretty eyes.” Desire to be identified as “white”, in the case of Mrs. Breedlove as an example: “They go to land-grant colleges, normal schools, and learn how to do the white man’s work with refinement: home economics to prepare his food; teacher education to instruct black children in obedience; music to soothe the weary master and entertain his blunted soul. (83)

32. Misdirected and disoriented mother to be unqualified for her own children, while giving the love to the white girl: Mrs. Breedlove does not care about the housework back at home as she does at her employer’s house. When Pecola visits her mother in the white family, she spills the dish and the white girl is scared into tears. Mrs. Breedlove scolds her own child, while soothing the white girl: “In one gallop she was n Pecola, and with the back of her hand knocked her to the floor. Pecola slid in the pie juice, one leg folding uner her. Mrs. Breedlove yanked her up by the arm, slapped her again…” “Hush, baby, hush. Come here. Oh, Lord, look at your dress. …(109)

33. The damage to the family by the identification with white values: “…she avenged herself on Cholly by forcing him to indulge in the weakness she despised.”(126) “More and more she neglected her house, her children, her man --- they were like the afterthoughts one has just before sleep, the early-morning and late-evening edges of her day, the dark edges that made the daily life with the Fishers lighter, more delicate, more lovely.”(127)

34. The Black being uprooted by the industrialization: Pauline and Cholly went to Lorain, Ohio, in the hope that Cholly may work in the mills there. Pauline got uprooted from her folks:" Everything changed. It was hard to get to know folks up here, and I missed my people. I weren’t used to so much white people.”(117) Discrepancy between White women and Black women:" But later on it didn’t seem none too bright for a black woman to leave a black man for a white woman….she tole me I shouldn’t let a man take advantage over me. That I should hae more respect, and it was my husbands duty to pay t he bills, and if he couldn’t, I should leave and get alimony.”(120)

35. Obscure sense of right and wrong: Soaphead Church Pecola’s mother:" They say the way her mama beat her she lucky to be alive herself.”