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Tuesday, April 23, 2002

A Slightly Different Version of an Essay on American Theatre I Wrote for Class

According to my American theatre professor, “the fundamental subject of almost all serious plays of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the attempt to resurrect fundamental ethical certainties without resurrecting the fundamental spiritual certainty of a judgmental God.” This statement seems to hold true in many plays, for example, Our Town and The Zoo Story. While Albee’s The Zoo Story is antagonistic in its stance against God and religion as a whole, Wilder’s Our Town, though it seems friendly toward God, nonetheless simplifies the God of the Bible into a figure that has little relevance in daily life. Both plays argue that morality and human interconnectivity can be found without making God an active participant in human affairs.

In Our Town, God is reduced to religion and does not interfere in human affairs, but the play nonetheless attempts to create moral judgments. None of the characters in the play proclaim themselves to be atheists, but God seems to have little impact on their lives; the townsfolk go to church—there are six within the city limits—sing in the choir, and get married in the church, but outside of the confines of the building they do not talk to each other about God, pray, or evangelize. They try to tell the truth not because it is correct according to a higher authority, but because it seems to be the right thing to do; instead of ascending to heaven or descending into hell after death, the dead live in the graveyard in an altered state of consciousness, one that is preferable to living. There, they can finally see; they are no longer blind. The dead do not require God’s help in order to see—true sight automatically arrives with the advent of death, regardless of how one’s life was lived or whether or not one had a relationship with Christ. The church organist is an alcoholic, and though the people of Grover’s Corners seem to appreciate the Bible as an important literary work, alongside Shakespeare and the US Constitution, throughout the course of the play no mention is made of anyone actually reading the book. The people would doubtless say that they are Christians, but are practical atheists. Rather than search for perfect love in God, they search for it in each other: “All I want is someone to love me,” says Emily, to which George replies, “I will try." The play argues for the importance of living each day to the fullest, of really seeing; of love; and of truth; but nowhere are those ideals reconciled to the idea of a God who cares about the same issues. Yet the inhabitants of Grover’s Corners realize that “something is eternal," even though they cannot say what that something might be.

The Zoo Story, on the other hand, is blatantly antagonistic to the idea of the Christian God; it seeks to impart moral truths through Jerry’s secular gospel. According to Jerry, every human must affirm the intrinsic value of others, but the question he never answers is how humans came to have basic worth—some philosophers would argue that humans are no better than animals—if God does not value the race and has indeed “turned his back." Does he want to affirm something that does not exist or did humanity somewhere along the line decide that all humans have basic worth? Jerry also promotes what philosopher Charles Taylor called “the inner horizon”: modern man says that he is more than what can be seen on the outside, and to really know someone, one must delve into the inner thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears of the other. Jerry wants Peter to understand this inner part, to connect with him; however, Peter is clueless and would rather amble happily through life without truly connecting with another soul. At the heart of Jerry’s desires is a longing for companionship—a Christian would say that only God can know individuals to such a degree, even knowing the number of hairs on their heads, but without God, Jerry must search for intimacy with people. He is only partially successful; Peter comes to affirm Jerry’s humanity, but never reaches the depth of understanding, the knowledge of the inner horizon that Jerry longs for.

Thus, it is true that modern drama attempts to create moral absolutes while denying the existence or relevance of God to create the absolutes and set them in place. In the end, American theatre reveals the struggle that humanity faces in its desire to feel loved and understood by other members of the race.

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