According to Dr. Professor Bolanski's post, Mamet said that "no matter whose side we're on, we're wrong." This makes it hard to tell who is the protagonist and antagonist in the story. But with that previous statement, I think what Mamet meant was that John and Carol are both protagonists and antagonists (which is like saying neither of them are). In John's perspective, he is the protagonist with Carol as the antagonist; while simultaneously, Carol is the protagonist in her own perspective with John as the antagonist. John is trying to gain tenure at his college, and secure his new house for him and his family. Then he tries to help troubled Carol with understanding his material. Later, she accuses him of different disorderly conducts, one of which is sexual harassment (John's antagonist).
Now from Carol's perspective: all we know is that she is a student who didn't understand any of the course material. She goes to the professor for help. For a student, not understanding material can be very frustrating. And when people (in general) don't understand something, their confusion makes them scared (like, being scared of not passing the class). And when people are confused and scared, they don't exactly think straight. So Carol goes to John for help. Her confusion and apparent lack of intellectual self-esteem cause her to become more confused. With this confusion, she misinterprets what appears to be John's attempts to help her and interprets it as John coming on to her (Carol's antagonist). These attempts are John putting his hands on her shoulders to calm her down, telling her to relax and sit, and making that deal with her where she asks "why" and he replies, "Because I like you" (which is just bad word choice on his part). It also doesn't help that she kept writing notes, using them later on completely out of context. After Carol reports this to the tenure board or whoever, she becomes slightly less confused, allowing her more confidence to dress nicer and use a better vocabulary towards the end. She thinks she is right for reporting John, but she is still confused, allowing the lawyers to tell her that she was in an attempted rape. The sexual harassment becomes rape. She even said, "they told me you tried to rape me." So her confusion allows her to believe this.
John thinks that he was just trying to help a student. Simultaneously, Carol thinks that her professor harassed her. So both characters are protagonists and each other's antagonists, but neither are the story's protagonist or antagonist. In this story, it is hard to decide who is the protagonist and antagonist, but that is because we are not supposed to. The story doesn't have one. I think that if anything (other than making money in the box-office), the play is supposed to focus on confusion and bad communication (both in teaching and in conversation), not on power, status, social class, or sexual harassment. Bad communication can have very bad consequences. Jeez, I wrote a lot...
No comments:
Post a Comment