Detriot

Why Detroit? I think it's because of the crime and drug history that the city has. When you think of Detroit what do you see? What I see is suburbs with doors locked, windows closed, and the residents inside. Now, i may be wrong, but i don't think i am. I also think of neighbors that don't socialize, or know one another like many country towns in the south i've lived in. I feel like people up north have a habit of being consumed with their own lives, and not really worried about meeting new people, or interacting - nicely - with the residents within their community. In short, i believe it's called Detroit because that's a setting that could work within the script. Not only is it a city, but it's a well known city. For instance, if they play would have been called Walker, it probably wouldn't have worked for many reasons. One, not many people know about Walker. Another reason being that if you live in Walker, everyone knows who you are, and there's no chance in hell that you can lie about your name with your uncle living right down the road. Also, if try to break into the neighbors' house, there's a good chance that you'll end up with a limb blown off from a shot gun.

Water by the Spoonful

The scene i chose to write about is Scene 10. In the beginning the scene overlaps with three different people/locations: Odesaa, Eliot and Yaz, and Orangutan. Eliot and Yaz are delivering a eulogy at a funeral, Orangutan is at the bus station deabating on leaving, and Odessa is spilling water onto the floor by the spoonful. I believe the reason why all these scenes are combined is because all of the main characters of these scenes are accepting that they've lost something that they can neve get back. For elliot it is his mother figure, odessa it's her daughter, and Orangutan it's her birth parents. At this moment in the script, they are all thinking back to when they had, needed, or wanted the person they've lost or never had. It's causing them to need a realse from the pain it causes them. As you read on in the story, you find out who made the right decision towards what theu used/did to find that relase. However, in this moment it set up the script for the ultimate climax in this peice. By combing all three of the realities together, the writer was able to show that all three of these characters were going through something traumatic all at the same time. It also allowed for the writer to have one ultimate script in the climax instead of several all over the place.

Buried Child

If the reader isn't familiar with the actions of a dysfunctional family, they may be confused as to what, and/or why, the characters are behaving in such ways. If you look at dysfunctionality (I’m not sure if that's a word) from a medical stance, it's caused by a chemical imbalance within the human brain, resulting in an abnormal sense of the way of life. To make that more simple, they live by different rules; sometimes, no rules at all. Take the relationship between Tilden and his mom for example. They broke quite a few moral codes "sane" or "normal" families and people live by. If you look at it from a human sociology outlook, dysfunction within a family as a unit can be caused by one "unusual" incident between family members as a means of coping with the action(s), or the therein result of the action(s). I believe as a result of the relation between Tilden and Hailey, everyone – meaning Tilden, Dodge, Bradley, and Hailey – formed their own world within the physical play as a way to handle the offset of norm within their lives, and the secret they plan to take to the grave. Think about it.

When the play first starts off, you have Dodge ignoring most of what Hailey is saying, and Tilden who is in his own little world. When Vince and Hailey come into the picture, they too are ignored and shunned by Dodge and Tilden. It isn’t until Vince and Hailey embraces the psychotic ways of the other two men that they are allowed into Dodge and Tilden’s world. They first have to accept that off ways about them before they can interact with them. This allows for control in Dodge and Vincent’s worlds. They may not be able to control the actions of the people, but they can control the conversation, and whether or not to acknowledge the people around them.

They refuse to acknowledge any change in the world around them until they share their secret with all the people intruding on their territory. For example, at the begging of the play, Hailey said that there was nothing outside, just rain. However, Tilden was coming in with armfuls of corn and carrots. It isn’t until the end of the script after the cat’s been let out the bag, and the child has been dug out of the ground, that Hailey actually acknowledges the bountiful fields outside the window. Whether or not they are actually there, I’m unsure. However, she did come out of her own little world after she let her secret be known to the guest of the house.

In conclusion, I would say that this play is a mixture of truth & deception and realism. If there’s a word for that then it’s unknown to me. Truceptism. That’s what I would call it if it needed a name.