america is number one

Author: The American Dream was written by Edward Albee and first performed in 1961, when the Absurdism movement was well underway. Having written other Absurdist pieces, including The Zoo Story and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?, Albee was prominent in the movement.

Setting: The play takes place in an apartment, presumably in some city. The time period is never specified, though one can assume it takes place in the 1950s. The apartment itself has many problems (the john, icebox, and doorbell are broken) but Daddy is supposedly rich, so it isn't clear how nice the apartment is. The vague details about setting allow the play's themes to be applied more widely.

Plot: Mommy and Daddy are sitting, complaining about their late visitor. Mommy begins to recall her conflict at the hat store, despite Daddy's apparent lack of interest. She commands him to listen to her rant about the store passing a wheat hat off as beige, and he does. Grandma enters the room, carrying a lot of nicely wrapped mystery boxes. She rants about being old. Mommy tells Daddy the story of the phrase "day-old cake" in which she deceives her schoolmates to get free food. Grandma calls Mommy a gold-digger. The bickering subsides, and Mommy and Daddy's guest arrives. For some reason, sexual tension mounts as Daddy prepares to open the door, until it's broken by Grandma. Mrs. Barker then enters. They all make pleasant conversation, and a subtle power struggle begins between Mommy and Mrs. Barker, and to a lesser extent, Grandma. Mommy suggests that Mrs. Barker take off her dress, which she does, creating some more sexual tension. By now, everybody has forgotten why Mommy and Daddy called Mrs. Barker in the first place. It comes to light that Daddy had an operation, and then more bickering. Eventually, Grandma is left alone with Mrs. Barker. Grandma tells Mrs. Barker about the child Mommy and Daddy adopted and mutilated. They want to adopt another child. A Young Man comes to the door, and Grandma invites him in. She refers to him as The American Dream, and after some fawning, she asks him to help her move her boxes outside. Grandma leaves, leaving the Young Man in her place. Grandma watches from the audience as Mommy, Daddy, Mrs. Barker, and the Young Man celebrate their satisfaction.

Characters:

1. Mommy is an immature, superficial control freak. She will do anything to get what she wants, including throwing fits, using sex, and killing babies. She butts heads with Mrs. Barker and occasionally Grandma when she feels she isn't in control of the situation. She values money and power. She clearly wears the pants in her marriage, regularly asserting dominance over the effeminate Daddy.
2. Daddy is spineless. He is easily manipulated by Mommy when she essentially holds his masculinity in front of him like a carrot in front of a horse, if that's a valid simile. He sticks up for Grandma at times, but still bows to Mommy in the end. He had an operation and may or may not be literally emasculated.
3. Grandma is the only character with any depth. She rants about how badly old people have it, and is constantly berated by Mommy. She has a moral base, and is capable of logical thought. She is the only character that knows what is really happening over the course of the play. Going into the audience, she seems to transcend reality at the play's close. She represents the original American Dream.
4. The Young Man is a physically attractive character who says he would do anything for money. The murder of his twin brother by Mommy and Daddy stripped him of his ability to feel. He represents the new American Dream, focused on money, and the fall of the old American Dream.
5. Mrs. Barker is a condescending character much like Mommy. She is materialistic, like Mommy, and controlling, like Mommy. For one reason or another, she is always referred to in the third-person. She is described as a professional woman.

Style: The American Dream is not considered Absurdist because the story has a resolution: Grandma leaves and the Young Man stays. Despite this, it still features many Absurdist elements. The story is full of repetition, from certain phrases to topics. It's frequently said in the play that "you just can't get satisfaction these days," for example (76). Everything also always returns to Grandma's boxes. The play doesn't exactly have a point of view. It's just dialogue and stage directions. The tone of the piece is lighthearted and jolly; awkward or morbid topics are talked about in a way that doesn't dampen anybody's spirit. Symbols include Mommy's hat, Grandma, the Young Man, and the mutilated bumble of joy, representing consumerism, the pure American Dream, the corrupt American Dream, and the death of moral values, respectively. Not much imagery is present in the play.

Theme: Materialism and self-centeredness have corrupted the moral American Dream.
Many of the themes of the piece are common in the Theatre of the Absurd as well: the "sterility and lack of values in the modern world, breakdown of communication, [and] civilized people acting in uncivilized and barbaric ways" (that one existentialism/TOTA handout). Grandma's replacement by the Young Man illustrates the theme of lost values, and sterility is a doubly fitting word, given Daddy's emasculation. The breakdown of communication is evident in the fact that nobody other than Grandma knows what's happening, and most of the dialogue is insincere. Infanticide is also apparently totally normal in the world of The American Dream because nobody bats an eyelash at the grotesque way in which Mommy and Daddy killed their baby. All of these tie together into the statement above. As said earlier, the vagueness of the setting doesn't restrict the application of the themes. The lighthearted tone and cryptic nature of the play make it hard to vehemently attack it. The title's relation is a no-brainer.

Two more quotes that I didn't work into the thing above:
"Boy, you know what you are, don't you? You're the American Dream, that's what you are." (108)
There's some repetition in this quote, like the rest of the piece. It also establishes the symbols of the Old and New American Dreams.
"bumble of joy" (wherever)
The bumble of joy could represent how this alternate world is still different from ours, but oh so similar as well.

second close reading

http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/10/16/when-a-daughter-dies/

In "When a Daughter Dies," the narrator tells the story of his daughter's brief battle with insurmountably aggressive cancer in two ways: as a father, and as a doctor. The style of the piece is very concrete and precise, much like a medical report. The sentences are short and free of fluff, the diction is emotionless, and the details provided are almost exclusively on the illness and procedure. His description of the chronicle is emotionless; he himself puts it best: "Although painful, I am capable of describing the events of my daughter’s illness.  When I try to describe my despair and grief, words fail." However, while emotion may not be overtly expressed in the piece, its presence is implied by the narrator's use of syntax, imagery, and specific details.

Levitt's use of the passive voice shows how impersonal the hospital care system is: "A relationship is formed with a local oncologist, the neck mass is biopsied, and my daughter is discharged to await biopsy results.  Four days later, the biopsy is read as non-small cell carcinoma of the lung.  We are told that in young women who have never smoked this tumor occasionally may have a favorable genotype that renders it susceptible to chemotherapy." The lack of agents for these actions shows that they are dealing with some distant, faceless entity instead of friendly doctors.

Some of the diction in the piece also conveys Levitt's frustration. In a particularly strong example, he says that "... the MRI result has converted my daughter into an ambulance case and me into a very nervous, distressed father. " The system converts his daughter into something other than a human with a family; she's another patient, or a number. Levitt and his daugther are dealing with an impersonal system that doesn't care about them.

The information Levitt presents, and often the way he presents it, also hints at his emotions. The closest Levitt comes to expressing his fears overtly is when he creates the image of the illness being "a genetically altered monster [that] is running rampant in my daughter’s body." Additionally, Levitt expresses his thoughts in a very short sentenced, specifically placed at the end of a long paragraph for emphasis in the following excerpt: "The response to my son-in-law’s query if some treatment can be started immediately is that no treatment is better than mis-directed treatment.  She is scheduled to return to the referral center in four days to begin chemotherapy.  I fear there will be no return visit. " The final sentence is a chilling conclusion to the preceding paragraph, and begins to show how chilling the situation was for Levitt. Essentially in the same vein of thought is Levitt's attempts to get ice chips for his daughter: "Immediately upon arrival, my daughter  asks for something which, with difficulty, I determine to be ice chips.  I ask the nurse for ice chips.  Her response is that nothing can be “administered” until ordered by the doctor.   I tell her I am the doctor, and I want the patient to have ice chips.  I am told I am not the admitting physician and cannot give orders.   She ignores my request to show me the location of the ice machine. "

second prompt essay

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

author's note: oh my god this essay is a rambling, nonsensical disgrace to A Clockwork Orange and the English language. I can't concentrate on anything right now, I'll see if I can fix it later.

In his 1962 novella A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess questions the merits of moral righteousness in a situation where there are no alternatives.

The protagonist, Alex, is a teenage delinquent with a posse and a love of classical music. After a burglary is botched by the actions of a mutinous minion, Alex is sentenced to undergo a particular sort of aversion therapy for his severe, repeated transgressions. Rendering him incapable of reverting back to his violent habits, the treatment makes Alex less than human. He is victimized by society and subjected to a few beatings, but he's been conditioned to feel intensely sick when exposed to negativity (and classical music). Ultimately, the spell is broken, so to speak, and Alex returns to his criminal life, only to find that he has outgrown his taste for violence and decides he wants to settle down with a family, and then he reflects on life and stuff.

After the treatment is finished, the newly-reformed Alex is essentially thrown out onto the streets. He goes home to his parents' house, and his mother assumes he has broken out of prison illegally. She and her husband inform Alex that all of his belongings are gone, and they have rented out his room and can't accommodate him anymore. The new boarder berates Alex, causing him to break down and leave. He then goes to a library, where a bunch of old people beat him, and then some former gangmates-turned-policemen break up the violence and take Alex out of town where they beat him more themselves as revenge for their treatment under Alex's leadership. Burgess means to show that "evil" must always be a viable option, or "good" won't mean anything. Alex is nice and reformed, but society still abuses him because of his passivity to it.

After being brutally beaten, Alex wanders until he finds a familiar-looking house. The resident is very hospitable, and sympathetic to what Alex has been through, and opts to allow Alex to stay. They both come to realize that this is the house in which Alex murdered an old woman and got sent to prison. The man realizes Alex killed his wife, and acts to both exact revenge and show the faults in Alex's treatment. He traps Alex and forces him to listen to Beethoven's Ninth, prompting Alex to attempt suicide. Once fully recovered, he discovers the treatment has worn off and he can now choose to be violent again, though he also discovers he's lost his taste for it.

While the treatment is in effect, Alex becomes a hollow shell. His superficial goodness (or rather, his lack of badness) means nothing because acting badly is an impossibility. When the treatment is broken, he is free to act as he pleases, but at this point he is truly reformed. He entertains the idea of settling down with a family, and imagines that his son will act out in the same ways he did, and he'll tell his son to behave, but he won't, and he shouldn't, because the ability to choose "evil" is what makes us human.

Second response to course material

I'll probably address things here with no respect to sequence. Sorry if that's confusing.

I like the "board captain" activities that we do. They take a skill that I thought I had down pat, and show me that I actually need to think about it a little more. Learning the difference between facetiousness and sarcasm in the one about proper gift-giving was useful, and I hope I learn to differentiate between more of those similar-but-still-different words that I like to use interchangeably this year.
The textbook reading was mostly a summary of what we'd done with the packets. It helped to see an analysis of a text laid out in steps in the book for comparison, but it didn't present any new information. Other than the names of different types of sonnets and a strict procedure for writing a paper. All-in-all, the textbook may not have added much, but it was readable and not too much of a chore.
I hated that long handout on comedy theory. Nothing will ever be funny again. It took the joke too far, so to speak.
I think Absurdism and Existentialism are neat. That's all I have to say about that.
The American Dream was very strange. That type of disorienting, what-the-heck-is-happening-right-now kind of story can turn me off sometimes, and I can't figure out precisely why, but I liked it in The American Dream. Grandma's character was really what kept it interesting, and I loved the surprising profoundness of the play. I figured the only meaning to it was gently mocking American materialism, shown in the part with the beige hat, but as it turns out, the whole old/new American Dream thing makes a lot of sense.
I'm looking forward to focusing on applying what we're learning about DIDLS and the critical lenses to literature more, rather than still learning them, but you have to walk before you run and all that jazz.