drawing by marguerita
An aging salesman who has just returned from a road trip. Mitty is having difficulty remembering events, as well as distinguishing the present from his memories of the past. His wife, , suggests that he request a job in Washington rather than travel each week.At this point, Mitty relives several scenes from his past, including the time when, during high school, admits to stealing a football and promises to throw a pass for Mitty during the game. Mitty also remembers his old dream of the boys visiting him in Boston during a road trip. Finally in his reverie, he relives the time that Bernard, son of the next-door neighbor Charley, informs Mitty that Miff is failing math and will not graduate unless his scores improve. In this last scene, Mitty listens but dismisses the important news because Biff is "well-liked," and Bernard is not.
Mitty remembers a conversation with his wife in which he inflates his earnings but is then forced to admit he exaggerated when Linda calculates his commission. Mity recalls complaining about his appearance and remembers his wife assuring him that he is attractive. At this point, Mitty's memories begin to blend together. While he is reliving his conversation with , he begins to remember his conversation with the Woman (a woman with whom he had an affair). He is unable to separate memories of his wife from the Woman.
The play continues in the present as A mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake (made of coarse-ground Southern corn), bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricasseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he had acquired a taste during his residence among the French.The moral character — and intimate entanglements — of the candidates has been a common front in the battle of for the presidency.
Is it possible that anything good could come of this? Negative campaign tactics — even the meanest and nastiest — have their place in the theater of American politics, but they do not always have their desired effect.If there is to be no end to the negativity, perhaps the question we should be asking is not “Is this campaign the dirtiest ever?” but rather
“Why have our elections been so negative in the same ways for so long?”
The enduring themes of the supposedly worst campaigns –
race, religion, sex and death –
remind us of their centrality not just to politics, but to every aspect of American life.
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