No Death!
For the remainder of the semester I want to try and remove the useless commentary and focus on the elements which will help prepare myself and others for the final exam.
Act 1: John persistently answers all of Miss A’s sentences or finishes them rather abruptly. More on this topic in class.
Act 2: John’s commentary is seemingly random. He’s always interjecting simultaneously. The girl at the shopping mart who gave John an account is magical.
Theme of the chapter: money, illness, or love.
John must be magic because not only can he predict everything everyone is going to say but he also knows the things that they do without them even knowing it, he’s magical…or just nosy.
This revenge against the dead is kind of a sadistic theme. In the game I play, once someone is dead that’s it…all bets are off and all losses are adopted. To fight against the “spirit world” is asking for what I refer to as a mind-f*ck. There’s no way to win because the only one to fight against is yourself.
“séance” – I had to look that one up to remember what it meant. A meeting of people to receive spiritualistic messages. Ok then. John: You invent a contact…some spirit medium.
That’s all you have to do. Greed fills us all. That’s why these guys want the fortune.
Act 3: “spiritual story” Boston shopkeeper in Boston, Samuel Hawks, tobacconist. The captain and Hawks who later becomes “I” fight to gut busting death.
Miss A is right, there is no mercy in the world (but only in the long run)
I don’t know what to think about the shall in Act 3.
Act 4: What is this ending? Maybe I just don’t understand but that was one of the weakest endings ever. “I do not know. That is all I saw.” Where’s the death? No Sex? I thought the consistent theme was that theatre needs violence, theatre needs action, suspense, and Death!
posted by Anonymous @ 10:54 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Hmm, by the end there, you seem to be lapsing into - well, I wouldn't call it "useless" - commentary.
The ending of the play is curious. Death, action, suspense, sex ... all popular elements, and many of them present in The Shawl (with the possible exception of action). One final certainty is that the relationship between John and Charles (such as it is) is dead. Is the ending hopeful or despairing? If the themes of the play are money, illness, and/or love, what happens to these at the end?
To put this another way - perhaps without being too analytical - maybe this is Mamet's way of ending the play with a "twist." It's a hook that keeps Miss A interested - and it keeps the audience interested, too. The TV series Lost is pretty good at this - it's a good tactic to recognize. How genuine is John being, do you think? ... or Mamet, for that matter?
Thanks for keeping the running ... um ... thanks for sharing your notes!
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