Description

One of those papers I wrote for a prof. who made me uncomfortable, on an author I have little respect for. Wondering if all this shows in the work. In any case, a struggle to put together, but still pretty a(nd)cute.

First paragraph:

George Walker’s Love and Anger is a play which celebrates the virtues of a good fight, of a good war, and the rewards it offers its participants. Though fights are a kind of embrace, they cannot be engaged between true lovers—they require “good guys” and “bad guys,” who hate one another. Walker understands this, and communicates this understanding primarily by cuing us to appreciate that all the ostensibly good characters involved in the play’s cosmic battle between good and evil have similar seeming, ostensibly evil counterparts. That is, he cues us to see everyone involved in the fray as somewhat interchangeable, the same. So if war is being praised, if construing the world as vice filled and some of its denizens as evil, is made to seem a necessary “step” towards advancing one along own spiritual/emotional journey, is there anything or anyone in the play subjected to unmitigated critique? Yes, someone is—and it is tempting (but not accurate) to say that it is the satiric voice itself which is under satiric attack, for it is Eleanor—the voice of (humourless) judgment—who is the foremost subject of criticism in the play.