The Image of Man in Selected Plays of August Wilson

By Shamal Abu-Baker Hussein

Wilson's approach can be seen as a communal romanticism, dealing with ordinary people, language, and problems, giving the priority to the feeling and human dignity over logic, power and money, putting freedom and equity as a pivotal concern, almost presenting women and children as victims, and highlighting the importance of heritage, identity, and culture. As his self-revision message, all those three plays demonstrate scenes of black self-review, showing the blacks' part of responsibility in the situation they live in. It is a project of self-rehabilitation for the blacks. Since American society is a multicultural spectrum, there is not any certain legibly ascribed American identity. That is why Wilson does not submit to the claims of the dominant cultural trend by some white critics like Brustein. Wilson confidently presents the blacks identity typified with self-fulfilment and contribution to the American culture, as his alternative contributory image of man against the white dominant models, or the violent black ones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477247037

Shamal Abu-Baker Hussein

Shamal Abwbakir has taught at Sulaimani Univeristy, College of Languages since 2008, as a lecturer. He has also taught at the English Department at the College of Basic Education at Sulaimani University as a lecturer. He is a Teacher of English and teaches English in the Secondary School. He has been teaching there since 1998. He has a strong tendency in researching in the field of Modern Drama.

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© 2012 by Shamal Abu-Baker Hussein. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 11/17/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-4702-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-4703-7 (e)

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Abstract

Chapter One : Introduction

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

The Conclusions

Bibliography

Arabic.pdf

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful ۞

O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female,

And made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other

(Not that ye may despise each other).

Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah

Is (he/she who is) the most righteous of you.

And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things) 51229.jpg

THE HOLY QUR-ĀN

Al-Hujurat-(13)

Translated by: Abdullah Yusuf Ali

1400H-1980AD

DEDICATION

To the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), calling for

equal dignity and freedom among mankind . . .

To my highly skilled and intellectual father Abu-baker, and encouraging mother Zinat . . .

To all my teachers in the past, present and the future . . .

To both my daughters; Shayan and Sana.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My best thanks and gratitude are due to my supervisor Dr. Najdat Kadhim Mussa for his encouragement and suggestions helping me in the completion of this study.

My best thanks and gratitude are due to the Chairman of the College Committee of Post-graduate Studies at the College of Basic Education Dr. Solav Fayaq Muhammed for her guidance and support.

My special thanks and gratitude are due to the Head of Engilsh Department at the College of Basic Education Mrs. Najat Isma’eel for her ever encouraging and supporting spirit.

My special thanks to Dr. Latif Sa’eed, Dr. Muhammed Sa’eed, Dr. Wirya Omer, Dr. Dhahir Latif, Dr. Kawan Othman, and Mr. Zana Abdul Rahman for their sincerity and support.

My special thanks to my sincere friends Nabaz Hama Rasheed, Mariwan Hasan, Rebwar Abdulla, Ashty Anwar, Dlsoz Latif, and Aueen Salih for their giving and supportive roles in the completion of this thesis.

Finally, I am indebted to my dear wife Khoshy, dear sister Bekhal, dear brothers Haval and Oral for their continuous motivation, support and guidance.

ABSTRACT

This thesis entitled The Image of Man in Selected Plays of August Wilson attempts to portray the image of the African American man in three plays of the modern American playwright August Wilson (1945-2005). This image has been studied both as personal static and animated interacting representations by pursuing three major facets in each play participating in the portrayal of such a man, i.e. throughout psychological and physical, social and cultural, and finally theatrical and literary aspects demonstrating such an identity. Thus, this study probes into various models of males, females and children, as well as African Americans and whites presented by the author in the selected plays, which are almost studied and analysed psycho-culturally. Such an approach aims at analysing the interplay of the psychological elements of individuals, expressing and experiencing feelings, thoughts and behaviours, with the way the others look at, and treat them on the base of their cultural features and differences. The researcher tries to reflect the images throughout the chapters as they have been presented in the selected plays, and then to give his understanding about them when categorizing them into types or general models in the conclusion. He will discuss that those images are neither angels nor devils, and neither totally victimized persons nor masters of their psychosocial contexts. They are distinctive realistic images, that cannot be reduced or generalized merely to one or two images overall the selected plays.

The first chapter, the Introduction, presents a chronological account about the American and the African American dramas. First, the reasons behind selecting these three plays for this study are presented, followed by aspects of the image of man from Wilson’s point of view. Second, August Wilson has been studied as a playwright, dealing with his life, personal qualities, type of drama, sources of ideas, his metaphoric and symbolic style of writing, and his dramatic method and content. Then, the messages behind Wilson’s playwriting, his sources of influence, and his way of argument objecting ideas of some white critics are studied. Finally, his achievements, fame, and influence throughout the modern American literary context are presented.

Chapter two deals with the first play, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. The psychological and physical features of the blacks are studied, as well as the social, cultural, and historical features, such as the racial concerns, separation, economical hints, the travelling lifestyle, the slavery, and the concept of death as a symbol for the blacks’ cultural absence, and the religious extensions all are reflected. Moreover, the literary devices in portraying the image of man are pursued, such as the songs, the foreshadowing, the setting, using metaphoric mad-like characters, the flashback, a heartrending climax, irony, repetition, and eventually the mix of language and identity.

Chapter Three is a study of The Piano Lesson. The same psychological, social and literary aspects of the portrayal of man as studied in the chapter two are applied in this chapter too, such as ownership, the past communal heritage, the collective selfhood and identity, social death and the new generation. In addition, the economical state, religious and spiritual criticism, racial concerns, some legal extensions, and then an African American love moment are highlighted. The metaphor of the bath and the piano, the usage of ghosts, the atmosphere, purposeful usage of selected character names are studied as well.

In chapter four, Fences is analysed, where also the psychological, cultural and literary features of the image of the black man are dealt with, such as foreshadowing, flashback, the fences’ metaphors, the songs, and finally the harmony.

Consequently, the study conclusions concerning Wilson’s drama, the image of the African American man, and then the image of the white men interacting with the blacks are presented.

CHAPTER ONE

: INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Section One

1.1 American Drama

The history of the American drama can be dealt with chronologically as the most important theatrical events happened within each century, starting from the 18 th century. In 1767, the first professionally produced play, a historical melodrama in verse called The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey, was unremarkable and closed after a single performance. In 1787, Tyler first introduced the Americans as a theatrical subject in The Contrast , a social comedy in the style of English Restoration comedies. Dunlap, in 1789, often referred to as the father of American drama, is best known for comedies and romantic, historical verse drama. In 1794, Rowson, also an actress, wrote patriotic melodramas, like Slaves in Algiers (1794), about Americans escaping from captivity in Algiers. The close of the century was known as the Gilded Age, this period referred to changes in the way theatres were organized and the number being built rather than to any great changes in artistic style. New York developed as a centre, with the creation of a group of theatres that became known as Broadway. There were also signs of higher-minded developers, strongly influenced by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s social realism. In 1890, James A. Herne’s tale, Margaret Fleming (1890), is considered the first American realistic play. It inspired others, like Edward Sheldon, to embrace realism. Sheldon contributed a number of realistic portrayals like The Nigger (1910), and Salvation Nell (1908). Other important writers from this period included Clyde Fitch and Rachel Crothers. Fitch wrote more than 50 plays—Crothers wrote more than 30 plays from the early success of The Three of Us (1906) to Susan and God (1937). O’Neill dominated the American drama from the 1920s into the 1930s as he graduated from the Little Theater groups to Broadway with Beyond the Horizon (1920), a naturalistic rural tragedy that won a Pulitzer and ran for an entire season. Thornton Wilder managed to blend comedy with a more serious undercurrent and new techniques that rejected old- style realism in his Pulitzer-winning plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). Robert Emmett Sherwood and Lillian Hellman also made important contributions from the 1930s onward.

Radical social change had profoundly affected the American viewpoint that had survived the Roaring Twenties, the Crash, and the Depression, followed by the impact of the Russian Revolution and World War II, alongside a surge of interest in the psychology of Sigmund Freud. The darker side of people had been revealed, and the nation faced moral, social, and religious crises as traditional values appeared to collapse. By the middle 1940s, we see the emergence of two major American dramatists—Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller—who would respond to the nation’s growing feelings of disillusionment and unrest. While Williams would explore psychological realism, Miller would expand the field of American social drama. The World War II economy had injected much-needed cash into American theatre, but it now had to combat the rise of the far more accessible television. In the 1950s, Off-Broadway and later Off-Off-Broadway were born in New York and helped to feed grassroots theatres in other major cities. Off-Broadway consisted of a variety of inspirational theatrical groups, including Living Theater and Circle-in-the-Square. The Theater of the Absurd had grown as a response to what many saw as a collapse of moral and social values in the twentieth century. Meanwhile, during the 1960s, theatres beyond Broadway were experimenting not just with the Theatre of Cruelty as well. An offshoot from Living Theatre, Joseph Chaikin’s Open Theatre, founded in 1963, emerged as the most influential avant-garde theatre of the 1960s and drew much acclaim. In 1967, Richard Schechner created an influential experimental approach that he called environmental theatre, which used nontheatrical venues for the performance space and, similar to the Theatre of Cruelty, would break down the supposed barriers between audience and actor. American Indian drama found its voice during the 1970s in the plays of Hanay Geiogamah, including Body Indian (1972) and 49 (1975), as well as in the work of groups like the Spiderwoman Theater Collective. Meanwhile, the same period saw both Latin American and Asian American theater gaining recognition. One of the best-known and inventive playwrights from the 1970s to emerge beyond Broadway is Sam Shepard. The Pulitzer-winning Buried Child (1978) brought him national acclaim. Several female playwrights also came to notice during the latter part of the century, mostly through regional or Off-Broadway theaters, including Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart (1981), Marsha Norman’s Night Mother (1983), Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1988), Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive (1998), and Margaret Edson’s Wit (1999). (For more information, see (Abbotson, 2005: 1-16)).

1.2 African American Drama

Going back to the early history of the African American drama, it can be recorded that the first period, epoch, or era of recognizable African American theatrical development is the Plantation or Slave period, where Africans essentially provided the stimulus and motifs for what would become America’s first original and indigenous theatrical form (Williams, Shannon, 2004: 12).

The primary steps of the black cultural awareness can be traced starting from the nineteenth century:

In the early nineteenth century, free blacks in the United States undertook the task of studying and celebrating their African heritage, underscoring the achievements of African civilizations and emphasizing the role of Egypt in the construction and development of Western civilization. These African-American writers opposed slavery and castigated whites for their mistreatment of African peoples. Recognizing that history could play a powerful role in the psychological liberation of a people, they urged their readers to recover, study, and write about their past (Palmer, 2006: Introduction).

In this thesis, an African American writer is someone who must be of African American ancestry even if he or she is only partly black (or a white writer who has made exceptional contributions to the field), be an American citizen (including expatriates), and have written more than one notable play that has been produced at a professional venue (Hill, Barnett, 2009: xi).

The birth of the African American drama is considered to be in 1816. From 17th to18th Centuries, the blacks were depicted in farces and melodramas as glorified minstrels; servants/maids; comic raccoons; fools; ignorant West Indians; and shuffling, cackling, singing, and dancing darkies. In 1829, Thomas Daddy Rice, a white delineator first performs on a Washington, DC, stage in blackface. He influences the minstrelsy performance tradition (whites imitating negative portrayals of blacks) that lasted over 100 years. In 1865, The Ku Klux Klan Is formed in Tennessee after the Civil War to terrorize blacks and keep them in check. In 1898, Black colleges begin to encourage play production among their students. In 1899, Bert Williams and George Walker produce their first musical show on Broadway, The Sons of Ham, at the Grand Opera House. In 1923, Willis Richardson becomes the first African American to have a serious one-act dramatic play produced on Broadway, The Chip Woman’s Fortune. In 1925, 13 October, Appearances by Garland Anderson opens on Broadway. It is the first full-length serious drama to play Broadway. In 1953, 24 September, Take a Giant Step by Louis Peterson about the urban flight of middle-class blacks opens to critical acclaim on Broad. In 1954, Harry Belafonte becomes the first African American to receive the Tony Award. In 1959, 11 March, the decade of the l950s reached its zenith with A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s masterpiece.

In1964, 24 March, Dutchman by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) opens at the Cherry Lane Theater off Broadway. Jones’s manifesto The Revolutionary Theater heralds the black revolutionary drama of the 1960s. From 1967 to 87, a resurgence of black community theater groups takes place around the country, most notably in Boston; Buffalo, NY; Chicago; Cleveland, OH; Detroit: Los Angeles: New Orleans; Harlem; Philadelphian; and Washington, DC. It is about a fictitious meeting between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. In 1982, Charles Fuller receives the Pulitzer Prize award in drama for A Soldier’s Play. In 1984, August Wilson makes his Broadway debut with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. It wins the New York Drama Critics’ Circle best play award. This is the first play in Wilson’s 10-play cycle about black existence in America set in every decade of the 20th century. In 1985, Alice Childress receives the Audelco Pioneer Award. In 1987, August Wilson’s Fences is awarded Pulitzer Prize for drama, the Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the Tony Award, and the American Theater Critics/Steinberg New Play Awards and Citations. In 1988, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson wins the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. Larry Leon Hamlin organizes the first National Black Theater Festival in 1989, held in Winston-Salem, NC. In 1990, August Wilson is awarded his second Pulitzer Prize for The Piano Lesson and receives the American Theater Critics/Steinberg New Play Awards and Citations. In 1991, Tow Trains Running by August Wilson wins the American Theater Critics/Steinberg New Play Awards and Citations. August Wilson is named Pittsburgher of the Year by Pittsburgh Magazine in 1992. By 1993, George C. Wolfe is appointed director of Joseph Papp’s NYSF/ Public Theater in New York as the first black director.

In 1996, June, August Wilson gives his The Ground on Which I Stand speech before the National Convention of the Theater Communications Group, advocating black theater for black people sending reverberations throughout the theater community. In a national setting in 1997, at New York’s Town Hall with Anna Deveare Smith moderating, Robert Brustein and August Wilson debate the pros and cons of black theater versus white theater. In 1998, the first meeting of the African Grove Institute, a gathering of black theater professionals is held on the campus of Dartmouth University. It is headed by August Wilson, Victor Walker II, and 43 other professional theater practitioners. In 1999, August Wilson’s King Hedley premieres at the Pittsburgh Public. In 2002, The Classical Theater of Harlem produces a revival of The Blacks. Jitney by August Wilson wins the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award. August Wilson receives the New Dramatists Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, for his outstanding artistic contribution to American theater. Whoopi Goldberg coproduces a revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson at the Royale Theater on Broadway. In 2004, the revival of the black Broadway classic A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansherry returns to Broadway 45 years later with a cast of television and movie stars and a rock mogul. In 2005, 2 October, August Wilson dies. Two months later, the Virginia Theater is renamed the August Wilson Theater. (For more information, see (Hill, Barnett, 2009: xix-xxxi)).

Section Two

2.1 Reasons behind Selecting these Three Plays in this Thesis

First of all August Wilson’s plays have been selected for this study on the basis of the strength of their influence socially and culturally as well as dramatically [ . . . ] by [one of] America’s best-known playwrights (Abbotson, 2005: 17). Anthony Chisholm, a Hollywood actor who has performed in six of Wilson’s plays, says:

I urge everyone to read [Wilson’s] works, white, black, Asian, Indian, whatever. Read this man’s work. And as you read through the pages and through the stories, there are so many speeches and passages that carry depth, such depth and wisdom just on life and our existence as