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American Madness in Mamet's Play

The purpose of this essay is to trace the modern madness lying behind David Mamet's plays, especially behind Glengarry Glen Ross(l983) Of Marnet's dozens of plays and screenplays, Glengarry Glen Ross is probably his most enduring and certainly his most celebrated play. It won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize in the category of drama. It may be a play from the "greed is good" era of the '80s, but it tells some timeless truths Failure almost always looks pathetic; in business, success matters only if it's recent. It's almost impossible to look convincingly innocent when falsely accused of a crime, and those who make a living selling junk often have to lie in order to sell it. It's real estate desperadoes can trace their literary lineage to guys like Willy Loman in Arthur Millier's classic Death at a Salesman(1949). Whereas Miller's play used the thankless drudgery of the sales profession as fodder for tragedy, however, Mamet's take on the subject thirty -five years later is far more savage Death at a Salesman eulogizes the death of the American Dream; Glengarry Glen Ross takes this death as a given and uses it as a starting point for deeper social criticism. Glengarry Glen Ross is the story of four Chicago salesmen-Levene, Roma, Moss, and Aaronow, and their supervisor, Williamson, who work together selling undesirable real estate at inflated prices. The play takes place at the end of a month in which the hosses of the company, Mitch and Murray, have declared a "sales contest" The salesman who clears a certain high dollar amount will Win a Cardillac, and the two salesmen who perform worst will be fired. A chalkboard is used to keep track of each man's sales Roma, who makes good sales, is the top man on the board, but the other three are all having trouble and getting increasingly worried. Mamet creates a new theatrical language in his plays. He is able to capture the way we speak. It is a vernacular. It is a proletariat speech. It is not theater in terms of a colorful distant place that is very genteel. It is very male, very American. It iS poetry. Its American poetry. This is great language Actors kill for this kind of language. Through this language, Mamet shows that the conducts and life style of the salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross border upon madness. It has a pronounced existential feel. As Mamet said, it is about the individual's inner spirit and madness of modern American culture.