A Study Guide for Robert E. Sherwood's "The Petrified Forest"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Robert E. Sherwood's "The Petrified Forest," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535838825

Book preview

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The Petrified Forest

Robert E. Sherwood

1935

Introduction

The Petrified Forest, first performed in 1935, is one of the frequently performed plays of Robert E. Sherwood, one of America's best-known playwrights, winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1936, 1939, and 1941. One of the reasons the play is so well known is that the 1941 movie adaptation is considered a classic of the gangster genre. Like the Broadway production, the movie starred Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart. The role of Duke Mantee, a bitter and complex sociopath, made Bogart a movie star, and his performance helped define how Hollywood was to portray gangsters ever after.

The story concerns three characters who move between love and despair: Alan Squier, a penniless intellectual who has come to the desert to die; Gabby, the cafe waitress who believes that her life would be rich with meaning if she could leave the cultural wasteland of America and go to France to study art; and Mantee, a desperate criminal who stalls his escape to reunite with a woman he never talks about. Sherwood uses them, along with the other characters who are held hostage by the gangsters at a small diner on the edge of the desert, to explore the American myths of the sensitive artist and the gangster, finding that they are not as different as they might at first seem.

Because of its blend of lively dialog, colorful characters, and psychological understanding, The Petrified Forest has remained a perennial favorite and has continuously been revived since it was first written. It is often included in anthologies of American drama and is available from Dramatists Play Service of New York.

Author Biography

Robert Emmet Sherwood was one of the most well recognized and prolific writers of the mid-twentieth century, winning awards in several major fields. He was born in 1896 in New Rochelle, New York, and educated at Milton Academy in Massachusetts and then at Harvard. In 1917, he left Harvard to join the Canadian Black Watch and fight in World War I. He was gassed twice and injured in both of his legs. Like many writers who found their worldview changed by participating in World War I, Sherwood came home disillusioned and virulently opposed to war. He earned his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard in 1918. After college, he worked for several important magazines, as a drama critic for Vanity Fair, as editor-in chief for Life, and as a literary editor for Scribner's.

Sherwood's first venture into writing for the movies came in 1925, when he was hired to rewrite the title cards for the silent film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. His first professionally produced play, The Road to Rome, was a success on Broadway in 1927, allowing him to