Trouble In Mind
Upon my first reading of trouble in mind, I found it to be one of the easier plays that we read. It seemed to me just to be a script written to be performed just for sheer entertainment reasons. Upon further analyzing, this was far from the case. Trouble In Mind is a representation of the relationships between two specific races in the U.S. during the time-period that it was written. The more I read and took the play apart, the relationships between the characters were never quite right. The words that they spoke to each other, especially that of the director to the cast, never seemed like what people with respect for one another would say. The conversations, that appeared like line after line of meaningless words, represented one of the biggest problems America has ever faced, racism. Mr. Manners, the director, eventually tears the entire play apart upon his discovery of both sexist and racist feelings (that were previously unknown to him). One begins to wonder if these were really his feelings of if they were just “installed” in his head by his parents who raised him to believe certain things. Because he didn’t know he felt this way, and it didn’t ever seem intentional, this was probably the case.
posted by jon weems @ 8:54 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I agree with alot that you had to say about this play. As far as Manners goes, do you feel like he was a racist to begin with or that he was completely oblivious to the racism in the play that he was directing? I felt that he probably was not racist himself, but at that time in society, whites were seen as superior to blacks and he probably didn't really know any better. He just grew where that was accepted.
Just to stir the water so Brad are you saying that it is acceptable to act in a racist or sexiest way just because parents might have raised you that way, and I am sure in that day and age their were people by that time of both black and whites races, people of male and female genders that know what the majority thought was wrong. So why do you think people feel the need not seek out ways to change but to instead seek out ways to justify or explain why they are a certain way?
I agree that Manners racism more than likely came from a historical standpoint. I believe the racism was most evident when Manners through the paper on the floor and demanded Willetta to pick it up. Manners, the one in charge, was creating work and making Willetta, the subordinate individual who was just trying to make ends meet in the real world, do his bidding. Even today, society perpetuates the problems of gender and race. Although the conditions are better I fear that we will never truly be able to escape the grip of discrimination.
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