Sweet Bird of Youth



Sweet Bird of Youth

Act 2 Scene 2

1a) What impression does Williams convey of Miss Lucy’s appearance?

“dressed in a ballgown elaborately ruffled and very bouffant like an antebellum Southern belle’s.” 58 (antebellum – pre-civil war)

“Is that Miss Lucy or is that Scarlett O’Hara?” Chance 68

She holds on to her dignity even under attack. She is a survivor and her girlish demeanor is a mere façade as she quickly retaliates, like the terrier she is compared to. She attempts to help Chance and Del Lago, showing compassion and selflessness – even though she has just been financially cut off from her former benefactor.

b) How and why does Miss Lucy help the heckler?

When the heckler arrives at the bar, Miss Lucy is seething at Boss. Apparently he purposely shut her finger in the jewellery box (inside a candy Easter egg) because of what she wrote about him on the mirror. In his mind, she, like Tom Junior, has ‘crucified’ him. Disguising his “weapon” in the egg , he masks his violent nature. She then suffered the indignity of eating her dinner on a side table while Boss sat at the main table. With revenge in mind she tells the heckler to give Boss hell, handing him a jacket and tie so he can get past security.

“I just got my fingers on it and the old son of a bitch slams the lid of the box on my fingers.” 59

2. How is the play’s political climate revealed in the story of the black man’s castration?

Fear of miscegenation: along with legal segregation it was not uncommon btw 1882 and 1968 for black men to be lynched by white mobs – usually as an act of retribution. Jim Crow laws (1887 – 1967) made it illegal for black men to have any sexual relations with white women.

Chance’s fate is paralleled with this man’s.

“Well they just picked out a nigger at random and castrated the bastard to show they mean business about white women’s protection in this state.” 70

Williams was keenly aware of the intolerance for those who challenged white America by being left–wing, non-heterosexual or non-white: “I think hate is a thing, a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.” BF and TJ are good examples of this.

Also Republican Senator, Joe McCarthy,stirred up hate and fear in his attempt to rid the US of political dissidents. The House on Un-American Activities (HUAC) was formed in 1938 but anti-Red campaign hearings took place (and were televised) in the 1950s.

3a) Describe Del Lago’s epiphany?

“… I felt something in my heart for you. That’s a miracle, Chance. That’s the wonderful thing that happened to me, I felt something for someone besides myself.” 76

“ I’ll never degrade myself, you and me, again by – I wasn’t always this monster. … And what I felt in my heart when I saw you returning, defeated, to this palm garden, Chance, gave me a hope that I could stop being a monster.” 77

“ Lost in the beanstalk country, the ogre’s country at the top of the beanstalk.” 77

Chance cruelly rejects her sympathy and offer of support. His dream consumes him, destroying his morality and turning him into a monster.

b) Comment on Del Lago’s description of the Lament here. 82

“The ‘Lament’ is in the air. It blends with the wind-blown sound of the palms.”

“All day I’ve kept hearing a sort of lament that drifts through the air of this place. It says, ‘Lost, lost, never to be found again.’…. They’re all places of exile from whatever we loved…. Oh Chance, believe me after failure comes flight. Nothing ever comes after failure but flight. Face it.” 82

St Cloud is initially a place of exile for the Princess but the whispers begin to haunt her and she feels the need to flee again. More importantly though she recognizes, before Chance does that this comeback has been a failure. His only chance is flight.

4a) What do we learn about Chance’s earlier aspirations and drug and alcohol dependence in this scene?

Aspirations even as bar man: “ I created that uniform you’ve got on… I copied it from an outfit Vic Mature wore in a foreign Legion picture.” 61

Dependence on drugs and alcohol for escape: “Yes I took a wild dream and – washed it down with another wild dream.” 62

“He has removed a pink capsule from his pocket, quickly and furtively, and drunk it down with his vodka.” 72

b) How does Chance define the difference between himself and Boss Finley?

“He was just called down from the hills to preach hate. I was born here to make love.” 79-80 Chance’s failure to become a heroic soldier actually reflects his more endearing qualities: he does not have the closed-mindedness of the other residents of St Cloud. Two years before Korean War, the armed forces implemented a desegregation policy.

“What I meant that I doubt is that Heavenly Finley, that only I know in St Cloud, would stoop to stand on a platform next to her father while he explains and excuses on TV this random emasculation of a young Nigra caught on a street after midnight.” 71

c) How does the bar react when Chance asks them to sing along to his song?

Chance asks the piano player to play his favourite song and soon is singing along to it. In his youth he used to encourage people to join in and would eventually gets the whole bar singing. This time when he tries, his enthusiasm falls on deaf ears. Stuff states,“You been away too long, Chance.” 67

5a) What is revealed about Chance’s character through his reminiscing with Aunt Nonnie?

He finally lets his guard down after trying to convince himself that he and Heavenly won a prize in a national drama contest:

“We would have won it, but I blew my lines. Yes, I that put on and produced the damn thing, couldn’t even hear the damn lines being hissed at me by that fat girl with the book in the wings.” 63

This moment of weakness, honesty and vulnerability encourages empathy from the audience. Aunt Nonnie espresses this stating,

“I loved you for that, son, and so did Heavenly, too.” 63

b) Describe Aunt Nonnie’s attitude towards Chance.

“Why do you live on nothing but wild dreams now?” 62

She feels a residual fondness but is frustrated by his refusal to be honest about his situation and desire for Heavenly.

“I cried in her arms that night, and didn’t know that what I was crying for was – youth, that would go.” 64

“What you want to go back to is your clean, unashamed youth. And you can’t.”65

6a) Describe the technique used by Williams to represent the television screen on stage.

Stuff, Miss Lucy and Chance initially look out towards the fourth wall, where a beam of light flickers indicating the screen, then a sudden shift takes place. When Chance walks downstage, “the whole back wall of the stage“ becomes a giant TV screen. Boss Finley is seen, larger than life, with his ‘arm around Heavenly’. (84)

b) How does Williams expose the television industry in this scene?

The camera threatens Del Lago but also allows politicians such as Boss Finley (and Joe McCarthy) to perform and manipulate their way to the top. BF attempts to use national TV coverage to boost his popularity by creating a family picture of the pure Heavenly and her proud father and brother. Ultimately, after the interruption of the Heckler, the screen actually reveals his family tragedy, his failing political pull and his potential for violence as seen in the brutal removal of the Heckler(foreshadowing Chance’s final castration).

c) Examine how Boss Finley draws a parallel between himself and Christ during his television rally.

“Last Friday, Good Friday, I seen a horrible thing on the campus of our great state University, which I built for the state. A hideous straw-stuffed effigy of myself, Tom Finley, was hung and set fire to in the main quadrangle of the college. … However, that was Good Friday. Today is Easter Sunday and I am in St Cloud.” 86

Here he attempts to position himself as a saviour whom the youth of the state (influenced by the negative Northern press) do not yet appreciate. He evokes a resurrection but for the audience he is aligned more with the thieves crucified alongside Christ than with Christ himself.

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