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Gokhan Guney 2017281028

Dr. Evrim Ersoz Koc

Major American Playwrights ll ACL 3030

03 July 2020

Human Mind As A Wasteland in: The Danube, We Keep Our Victims Ready and The America

Plays

In this paper, I will be examining “The Danube” by María Irene Fornés, “We Keep Our

Victims Ready” by Karen Finley and “The America” play by Suzan-Lori Parks. I will study the

wasteland term in all three plays. I will comment on how these playwrights and their works

depict landscapes, bodies, or cultures as a wasteland? I will also give examples of waste imagery

intertwined with social criticism. Also I will point some fingers and try to find who is to blame.

Starting with Fornes and her great work The Danube, we see an apocalyptic scenery. Play

actually starts with a beautiful nature and a beautiful world, it is Budapest after all. But then

people start to get sick and the world seems like changing. The play is not about a region, a

country, it is about the whole nature. In the play there is a line that characters repeat constantly,

“The weather has been bad”. Surprisingly, the weather keeps going bad. Play has a kind of an

uncanny vibe. We never had the chance to learn what is the problem of the world but I have my

theories.

One way or another, “something” is wrong and people are dying along with the world

itself. The problem here is, in the most basic sense, humans. Decaying, greedy mind of the
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human race poisoned the world with its actions, now the world is poisoning the human race. At

some point, Paul says:

“Paul: It must be true if machines say it. I am sorry, Eve. I Don’t know what made me say

that. I didn’t mean any of it. I don’t have a mind. I don’t have a soul.”

I think this line is very important. It shows how corrupted is the human mind and they

can not even trust their own sense. Humanity relies on machines and along with relying on them,

it also destroys the environment with them. The line of Paul here can be a good example of

social criticism. I think Fornes is criticizing the fact that humans have lost their minds and souls

with industrialism. Humanity, as a kind, has lost its rationality with every other industrial

development. Fornes also uses goggles in this play. I think she tries to blink at the problem about

nuclear. Later on the play, many people dies and Paul considers turning back to USA but there is

no escape from what's happening. I mean you destroyed it all the way from the bottom to the top

and now you want to leave? Anyway, by the end Eve says goodbye to the river. The river means

a lot to Eve and saying goodbye to it means two things. The first is saying goodbye to nature and

the other is saying goodbye to the world she knew as her home. As a whole, the play is

specifically portrays human nature with destructive and repulsive behaviours. Who to blame is

very obvious as it is “the human” and culture that humans made up.

Second, in “We Keep Our Victims Ready” we see a total criticism. Karen Finley is not

backward in coming forward. She uses a harsh and explicit language. In the play, to be specific,

she elaborate on independence, abuse, male centric world view and god. This play has a distinct

looking setting. It seems like a dystopian world but the thing is, it is not so different from the real

world. Finley, apparently, uses exaggerations, though she is just being honest.
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“WE are the oven.

Our homeless the victims

and our narrowed American minds

wish to exterminate the victims of AIDS

instead of exterminating the disease,

wish to exterminate the poor, the suffering, the dependent--

We’ll happily pay for their death and never their life.

No, we are not decadent

we are violent, cruel, and deliberately unjust.”

I think these lines are very significant. There is no chance for me to speak on behalf of

Finley as she, and her work, speaks for herself clear enough. In this play, Finley argues that the

human race and culture is rotting. She has a point! There is a chaotic and apocalyptic setting in

the play. Women are hated, killed and abused, the media gone mad, art died and even the

Nathan’s Hot Dogs of Coney Island become history because hot dogs was too phallic to

“handle”. In this play, society’s role is similar to that of Hitler’s ovens. It endeavours those can

not fit right away. Waste imagery is everywhere in this play, from woman abuses to gay issues.

Last, in The America play, the wasteland is again the human mind itself. In the play there

is our “foundling father”, a black guy who impersonates Abraham Lincoln. The play seems to

deal with race issues along with identity problems. The play can even be seen as a little

provocative. People pay our black guy to “kill” him. It represents the hate and anger that

American people have against themselves. Parks, in this play, is trying to reveal the true feelings

and thoughts that Americans have about the Civil War and all its consequences along with its
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reasons. By doing that, she highlights problems between South and North, along with the

problems of “culture” itself. People sometimes yell “South is avenged!” after killing our

foundling father. Waste here is the life of Americans and their could-be-peaceful history. In their

collective memory, they have many conflicts that can be about anything. So it is their minds that

is the source and result of all the waste.

All three plays deal with the same issue from different aspects. While one deals with

more psychological effects, the other deals with the real stuff and the last one brings a whole new

point of view to the conflict. I hope I could explained enough of my waste as a mind theory.

**Sorry for any kind of inconvenience. I know it looks long and it could be a little difficult to read that along with other like 436

papers. I am teething my wisdom teeth, all four at the same time and one of them is really giving me a hard time. It pulsates constantly and

reaches deep into my brain… Stay safe and be well.

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Works Cited

Finley, Karen. “We Keep Our Victims Ready.”

Fornes, Maria Irene. “The Danube.”

Parks, Suzan-Lori. “The America Play.”