The American Dream Summary

The American Dream

Author: Edward Albee

Setting: An apartment.

Primary Characters: Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Young Man, Mrs. Barker

PLOT

• ·      Mommy and Daddy sit in an apartment, saying that “they” are late. The “they” refers to guests that, we presume, Mommy and Daddy are having over.
• ·      The pair gets into a discussion of Mommy’s experience earlier that day at a store, where she was buying a “beige” hat. She later ran into the chairwoman of her women’s club, who said she liked Mommy’s “wheat” hat. Mommy, after hearing this, promptly exchanged the hat for a beige one at the store, getting satisfaction.
• ·      Daddy cannot get satisfaction, according to Mommy.
• ·      Grandma enters the room and dumps a bunch of boxes on the floor. Mommy comments about Grandma’s nice wrapping jobs. Grandma laments about old age.
• ·      Mommy reveals that she just married Daddy for his money, and she’s allowed to do so because she is an outlet for Daddy to “bump his uglies.”
• ·      Doorbell rings, and Grandma asks if it’s the “van people”. It is actually Mrs. Barker.
• ·      Mommy and Grandma start fighting about the boxes, and Mommy threatens to have Grandma taken away. Grandma says she knows why Mrs. Barker has come to visit.
• ·      Grandma informs Mrs. Barker about Mommy and Daddy’s evil acts against their former adopted child, and reveals why Mrs. Barker is there – she is the adoption lady. Of course, the story is all in hypotheticals, and Mrs. Barker doesn’t understand.
• ·      The doorbell rings. It’s the Young Man. After commenting on his good looks, Grandma reveals that she won $25000 in a baking contest. Her pseudonym was “Uncle Henry” and the cake was “Uncle Henry’s Day-Old Cake”.
• ·      The Young Man says he’ll do anything for money, and Grandma is curious as to why he’d do such a thing. He replies that he is “incomplete” and tells a story of his childhood that is eerily similar to the earlier story of Mommy and Daddy’s treatment of their adopted child.
• ·      Grandma has the Young Man carry her boxes outside after introducing him to the others as the “van man”. She then exits.
• ·      Grandma appears off to the side of the stage (out of the action) as Mommy, Daddy, and Mrs. Barker celebrate with the Young Man in the apartment. She comments on the scene to the audience, saying that things should be left alone while everyone thinks he has satisfaction.

QUOTES

“When you get old, you can't talk to people because people snap at you. That's why you become deaf, so you won't be able to hear people talking to you that way. That's why old people die, eventually. People talk to them that way.” – Grandma

            This quote from Grandma illustrates the damaging power of speech in modern society. Furthermore, it underlines her role in the play as the sage, ironic, and disillusioned old woman.

“WHAT a masculine Daddy! Isn't he a masculine Daddy?” – Mommy

            This quote follows Daddy’s opening of the door for Mrs. Barker, and emphasizes his femininity, helplessness, and overall role as the victim to Mommy’s dominative wrath. Daddy’s infantile behavior is a major part of the play, for it reverses the stereotypical gender roles that would be expected and serves to seriously confuse the audience as to Mommy’s goals.

THEME

            Edward Albee’s The American Dream is an absurdist work that demonstrates a butchering of the stereotypical American Dream by those who stand to benefit most from it, and shows his disapproval of an increased level of materialism in contemporary America.

·      The fact that such an absurd plot is titled as “The American Dream” is an effective means of mockery on Albee’s part.

·      Grandma seems to represent the views of Albee, seeing modern America through the lens of the past and not hesitating to pass judgment on it.

Hamlet Summary

Hamlet

Author: William Shakespeare

Setting: The royal family’s castle, Elsinore, in Denmark.

Primary Characters: Hamlet, Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius

PLOT

• ·      King Hamlet of Denmark has been killed, and his wife (Gertrude) has just married Claudius, the former King’s brother, and now the King of Denmark.
• ·      Two watchmen and Horatio spot a ghost of the recently deceased King Hamlet.
• ·      Horatio tells Prince Hamlet of it, and Hamlet sees the ghost the next night.
• ·      The Ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered the former King and orders that Hamlet seek revenge for his father’s death.
• ·      Hamlet slips into a state of apparent insanity, pondering how he will kill Claudius and avenge his father’s death.
• ·      Claudius and Gertrude invite old friends of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to visit Elsinore in the hopes that they will figure out what’s wrong with the Prince.
• ·      Polonius and Claudius spy on Hamlet and Ophelia, in an attempt to prove that he’s madly in love with her (and that is the cause of his behavior). The plan fails, and Hamlet shouts at Ophelia to go to a nunnery.
• ·      A band of actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet has them play a scene that closely resembles the supposed murder of his father. Claudius leaves the room when he sees the scene, and Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt.
• ·      Hamlet attempts to murder Claudius while Claudius is praying in the chapel, but he decides this would be too fortunate for Claudius, who would die sin-free, as opposed to his father who was unable to clear his sins before death.
• ·      Hamlet fights with Gertrude in her bedroom, where Polonius is hiding behind a curtain. Upon hearing Polonius, Hamlet stabs through the curtain with his sword and kills the man.
• ·      For his murdering Polonius, Claudius sends Hamlet to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He includes a sealed letter to the King of England, ordering that Hamlet be put to death.
• ·      Ophelia drowns herself in a river after finding out about her father’s murder.
• ·      Laertes returns from France and Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is the cause of the death of his sister and father.
• ·      Laertes decides to fight Hamlet in a fencing match, and Claudius poisons the tip of Laertes’ sword in order to kill Hamlet. Should this fail, he also poisoned the drink in a cup that he will offer to Hamlet, should the Prince get the first or second hits.
• ·      Hamlet gets the first hit, but refuses to drink from the cup offered by Claudius.
• ·      Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup, and promptly dies.
• ·      Laertes hits Hamlet, but the poison doesn’t immediately kill him.
• ·      The poisoned sword cuts Laertes, who reveals that Claudius is responsible for Gertrude’s death before dying.
• ·      Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink the rest of the poison from the cup.
• ·      Fortinbras, a Norwegian prince, enters and announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. He then tries to take power of the Danish kingdom.
• ·      Horatio tells Fortinbras Hamlet’s story, and Fortinbras demands Hamlet to be treated as a fallen soldier would.

QUOTES

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” – Marcellus

            This is an excellent quote from Hamlet, as it’s simple enough to remember and incredibly important in the play. It links the Danish King to the state of Denmark as a whole, implying that problems in the royal family affect the health of the entire nation.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”

–Hamlet

            This quote, while slightly longer than the first, is more monumental and famous in the English language. Hamlet weighs the logical arguments for suicide, which ties into a larger theme for the play involving the moral righteousness of killing oneself.

THEME

            With Hamlet, Shakespeare shows his audience the complexity and inherent difficulty in making decisions, and he implies that human nature is innately impulsive and largely unaided by excessive deliberation.

           

• ·      Hamlet’s excessive deliberation about killing Claudius is the greatest evidence for this message in the play.
• ·      Other characters’ decisions, such as Laertes’ fighting with Hamlet at the end and Hamlet’s stabbing of Polonius, further support Shakespeare’s message. 

Ceremony Summary

Ceremony

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

Setting: Laguna Pueblo reservation (Nevada)

Primary Characters: Tayo, Auntie, Old Grandma, Pinkie, Harley, Leroy, Emo

Secondary Characters: Robert, Josiah, Rocky, Ts’eh, Night Swan, Tayo’s mother

PLOT

• ·      Tayo returns to the reservation from WWII with post-traumatic stress disorder.
• ·      Pinkie, Leroy, Harley, and Emo are also experiencing the symptoms of PTS, but they self-medicate with alcohol, a habit that Tayo doesn’t particularly enjoy.
• ·      Tayo’s friends constantly talk of the good times at war, and this bothers Tayo because they are becoming part of the “white” culture.
• ·      Just as Tayo is giving up hope for recovery, Old Grandma calls Old Ku’oosh, the medicine man, to aid him.
• ·      Ku’oosh performs an ancient ceremony that helps, but doesn’t cure, Tayo. They fear that the older ceremonies don’t apply to Tayo’s newer situation.
• ·      Tayo begins to think of the past:
• o   Rocky (Auntie and Robert’s son, Tayo’s cousin) and Tayo became good friends during high school when Tayo moved in with them. His mother had left, so Auntie and Josiah took him in.
• o   Auntie puts a lot of effort into keeping the two boys apart (due to Tayo’s reputation as his mother’s son), but it fails.
• o   Tayo and Rocky enlisted in the army the summer following high school.
• o   Josiah began having an affair with a Mexican woman, Night Swan, who encouraged him to buy Mexican cattle. Tayo helps him with the cattle that summer.
• o   When a drought occurs, Tayo performs a rain ceremony that cures the dry spell and prevents Josiah from visiting Night Swan.
• o   Because of this, Josiah has Tayo take a note to Night Swan, and the two end up making love. Tayo finds Night Swan to be irresistible.
• ·      Tayo sees a new medicine man, Betonie, in the hills atop Gallup, a nearby town full of poor Indians.
• ·      Betonie invents a new ceremony for Tayo’s situation, although Tayo fears this medicine man because of his supposed ties with white people.
• §  Emphasis on the implied tension between whites and Indians.
• ·      Betonie completes the first part of the ceremony and sends Tayo home.
• ·      Tayo begins to search for Josiah’s cattle in the countryside.
• ·      During the search, he follows the stars to a woman’s house (Ts’eh), where he spends the night.
• ·      The next day, Tayo finds the cattle fenced in a white man’s pasture. When he enters the pasture, the cattle run off into the distance.
• ·      As he continues to hunt his cattle down, a mountain lion approaches Tayo. He follows the animal’s tracks to his cattle.
• ·      Two white hunters find Tayo trespassing in the pasture, but leave him to go after the mountain lion instead. It begins to snow, and Tayo knows that it will cover the tracks of the lion and ruin the hunters’ plan.
• ·      Tayo returns home with the cattle, but the persisting drought reminds Tayo that his ceremony is not complete.
• ·      Tayo spends the summer with Ts’eh, before finding out that Emo (his former best friend, now representing evil in Tayo’s life) is spreading rumors about him. Furthermore, the “white police” are hunting down Tayo to take him back to the Veterans’ Hospital.
• §  Emphasis on the present dichotomy of Tayo and Emo (and their values)
• ·       Tayo meets up with Harley and Leroy thinking they are on his side, but finds out that they have joined Emo’s side and plan on killing him.
• ·      Running from his former friends, Tayo finds himself in an abandoned mine. He realizes that this is the last station of his ceremony (the mine represents white culture) and waits through the night, with the wind aiding him.
• §  Emphasis on nature’s relationship with Tayo
• ·      Tayo must watch as Leroy and Emo torture and kill Harley, and keep himself from saving his friend.
• ·      After the night in the mine, Tayo returns to Ku’oosh and informs him of what has happened since they last met. Ku’oosh reveals that Ts’eh is, in fact, A’moo’ooh, a Laguna spirit. She has blessed Tayo’s ceremony, and thus it is able to be complete.
• ·      With the ceremony complete, the drought ends and the devastation to the Natives caused by whites is over.

QUOTES

“Here they were, trying to bring back that old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during the war. They blamed themselves for losing the new feeling; they never talked about it, but they blamed themselves just like they blamed themselves for losing the land the white people took. They never thought to blame the white people for any of it; they wanted white people for their friends. They never saw that it was the white people who gave them that feeling and it was the white people who took it away again when the war was over.”

            This quote is a synopsis of Tayo’s thoughts on his friends after the war. It also links their actions to the overall behavior of white culture, which is an ever-present nemesis in the story.

“Old Grandma shook her head slowly, and closed her cloudy eyes again. ‘I guess I must be getting old,’ she said, ‘because these goings-on around Laguna don't get me excited any more.’ She sighed, and laid her head back on the chair. ‘It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the names sound different.’”

            Laguna culture emphasizes a cosmological cycle, and that is what Old Grandma is metaphorically commenting on. Though her commentary follows Emo’s killing of Pinkie (and she appears to be referring to that), it has a much deeper meaning in Laguna culture. The nature of the book – multiple stories being told simultaneously – follows this circular nature.

THEME

            Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony sheds light on a clash of cultures – whites and Native Americans – that is destructive, and she emphasizes the resistance of the Natives to such oppression while encouraging her people to adapt to the changes around them in order to keep their culture alive.

·      The title, Ceremony, refers to Tayo’s modern-day equivalent of an older ritual used to cure soldiers’ psychological illnesses after battle. His ceremony was modified to fit the changing nature of war, just as the Natives themselves must adapt to changing times to keep their culture alive.

·      Silko structures the novel in a nonlinear fashion, emphasizing the nonlinear element of nature that the Pueblo people believe in.

The American Dream Summary

Death of a Salesman

Author: Arthur Miller

Setting: Brooklyn townhouse

Primary Characters: Willy Loman, Linda Loman, Biff Loman, Happy Loman

Secondary Characters: Charley (neighbor to the Lomans), Bernard (Charley’s son)

PLOT

Note: Italics denotes events in a flashback

ACT I

• ·     
Biff and Happy, now grown, are visiting their parents in Brooklyn and reminiscing on the past.
• ·      Willy is talking to himself (a habit he has developed, something we learn from his sons’ discussion) when the scene cuts to a flashback.
• o   Willy is praising Biff and Happy for washing the car as he returns from a sales trip, and he tells his sons that he’ll someday start a company of his own.
• o    Willy claims his future company will be greater than that of Charley, their neighbor. This sets a tone of competition and subtle hostility between the two men for the rest of the play.
• o   Bernard enters the scene, and after he leaves Willy emphasizes the importance of being “well-liked” (like Biff) rather than being book smart (like Bernard).
• §Emphasis on Willy’s values, and the irony of Biff’s failure later on
• o   Linda enters, and Willy, though at first claiming his business trip to be wildly successful, eventually admits that he may not be able to cover the bills on the appliances and car for that month. He also claims that people don’t like him and that he’s bad at his job.
• §  Emphasis on the difficulties of capitalist society and Willy’s difficulty with self-acceptance
• o   After fighting with Linda, who tries to calm him down, Willy plays cards with Charley and begins thinking about his brother, Ben. He causes confusion when he refers to Charley as “Ben”.
• §  Emphasis on Willy’s desire to have success, but not necessarily to work for it
• ·      Linda enters, and informs her two sons that their father has tried to commit suicide recently.
• ·      Biff tells Linda that Willy is a “fake”.
• §  Emphasis on the unexplained tension between Biff and Willy
• ·      After fighting with their father over their lack of success, Biff and Happy agree (fairly optimistically) to open a sporting goods store. They plan to borrow money from an old employer of Happy’s, Bill Oliver.
• §  Emphasis on the optimism in Biff and Happy, and its effect on Willy, who goes to bed content only because his sons have a plan for success (Willy lives through his sons)

ACT II

• ·      Willy is eating breakfast, looking forward to the future. He then becomes angry about his appliances again. 
• ·      Linda informs Willy that Biff and Happy are planning on taking him out for dinner that night, and he is once again excited for the future. He exclaims that later that day he’ll demand his boss (Howard Wagner) to give him a New York job, rather than the traveling salesman job he currently has.
• §  Emphasis on Willy living through his sons, and his overconfidence.
• ·      Willy is sitting Howard’s office, and Howard is making him listen to a recording of his children and wife on his new wire recorder. Willy and Howard enter into a heated conversation because Howard doesn’t offer Willy a New York job, and Howard ends up telling Willy to take some time off.
• ·      Ben appears, and invites Willy to come to Alaska. Willy is hopeful once again.
• §  Emphasis on Ben’s presence, and its effect on Willy.
• ·      After being let go, Willy enters the offices of his neighbor Charley. Bernard is there, and it is revealed that he is a lawyer about to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. His success is daunting to Willy, and Bernard wonders what happened to Biff to cause his lack of success.
• ·      Willy meets his sons for dinner, but ends up crying in the bathroom before the scene cuts to a flashback.
• o   Willy is cheating on Linda while on a business trip in Boston. Biff enters, a high school senior at this point, and he discusses his plans to go to summer school to make up a failed math class. This would allow him to graduate.
• o   He then realizes that his father is with another woman, and immediately leaves. It is revealed that this scene is a possible reason for Biff’s failure, as he never took the math class that summer.
• ·      Biff and Happy leave Willy at the restaurant and Linda scolds them for doing so.
• ·      Biff finds Willy in the backyard, planting seeds and talking with Ben, and attempts to say goodbye to his father. Willy is talking about a $20,000 proposition.
• ·      Biff and Willy start yelling at each other, and the fight moves into the house. Willy is thinking about how much better off Biff will be with $20,000 in (life) insurance money.
• ·      As the family goes to bed, the sound of Willy’s car driving off is heard.
• ·      At Willy’s funeral, Happy vows to validate his father’s death. Biff says Willy had the wrong dreams. Charley says Willy was a victim of his profession.
• §  Emphasis: All are important observations of Willy’s life

QUOTES

“Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.” – Willy Loman

            After leaving the restaurant, Willy decides to plant seeds in his sunless backyard. This represents a last-ditch attempt at success and reconciliation for both Willy’s and Biff’s failures in life.

“He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine . . . A salesman is got to dream, boy.” – Charley

            At Willy’s funeral, his neighbor Charley says the above quote to defend Willy’s actions and integrity. This depicts Willy as a hero, completely counter to what Willy actually was, and serves to idolize the career of salesman.

THEME

            Death of a Salesman emphasizes the importance of finding the right path in life, rather than bowing to societal pressure or focusing too heavily on stereotypes that are counter to one’s true desires.

• ·      The setting of Death of a Salesman is a middle-class Brooklyn townhouse, which was fairly stereotypical of that time. The appliances and the family car emphasized the middle class lifestyle (and revealed the struggle of the Lomans to live it).
• ·      The play’s title foretells a story of American stereotypes being shattered, and they are.
• ·      The symbols and motifs of the plot – the softly playing flute, the car that constantly needs fixing, seeds, “Ben” – distinctly reinforce a message of despair, failure, and lost hope that Miller is aiming for.