the good fight (original)
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston 1
ENG 5733HF
Professor Redekop
21 August 2006
The Good Fight, in George WalkersLove and Anger
George WalkersLove and Angeris 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 loversthey 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 plays 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 isand it is tempting
(but not accurate) to say that it is the satiric voice itself which is under satiric attack, for it is
Eleanorthe voice of (humourless) judgmentwho is the foremost subject of criticism in the
play.
I understand that many will read or see the play and judge it one which makes a satiric
attack on vices such as power lust and greed. They will see it one which clearly establishes two
charactersSean Harris and John Connoras those most attracted to these particular vices. Yet
much would have to be ignored in order to construe the play in this way. One would have to
ignore much of how the play begins, for instance, for the play begins with both of these vices
being indulged in by the plays ostensible foremost good and enlightened characterPeter
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been like for him by showing us how Harriss new clientConnorreacts when he believes
Harris is not adequately serving him. When confused and confounded by Sarahs behavior
towards him, Connor reacts by turning to Harris and exclaiming: Look, youre my lawyer and I
want some answers from you right now! (51).
Gail, Maxwells new client, shows some dismay with her lawyerMaxwelltoo, but is
much more readily made quiescent, for she is vastly more dependent on her lawyer than Connor
is on his. Connor can always hire a different lawyer, an option not available to the relatively
impoverished Sarah. Nor is there any chance that even if she could find some other help that this
help could count him/herself as one the countrys best lawyerly mindssomething, we are told,
Maxwell once was and may yet still be. Her dependency upon Maxwell, we note, is made clear
both to her and to us at the beginning of the plays first scene. Maxwell seems to have taken
advantage of the fact that he knows Gail really has no one else to turn to, by speaking in ways to
her he likely wouldnt dare with a less pliant and vulnerable clientwith someone who really
could afford to turn down his services. He has talked to her, or, more accurately, ather for a half
an hour, concerning things which clearly interest him but are of little interest to Gail. When Gail
complains about his apparent lack of interest in her concerns, Maxwell responds by first
reminding her that she is marginal (Maxwell tells her, Youre marginal. Your cause is
marginal. Outside the corridor, so to speak [13]), then of how lucky she is to have found him
(Maxwell tells her, I believe you when obviously no one else does [14]), and moves her to
understand that her desire to see her husband and herself at some point enjoying a shiny new
future (15) will depend on her allowing him to behave exactly as he wishes to behave
(Maxwell tells her, youll have to allow me to proceed in my own way [14]). That is, in
response to her assertiveness, Maxwell masterfully manages her into a more complaint pose.
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Gail will not being paying Maxwell in cashthere is something else he wants from her.
This something isnt sex, but the play guides us to appreciate that if he had been a slightly
different man, this is what he might have expected from her as a form of payment. For with Gail
the play presents us with a childishwith her ball cap and jeansyoung woman whose
readiness to be servile is suggested in that she is there in his office in response to the middle aged
Maxwells beckoning (i.e., his call [14]). She has a husband; but his return to her seems to rest
entirely with her managing to get this middle aged man to agree to take on her cause. This he
agrees to, but only if she agrees to trust (15) him, and submit to his unusual behavior and
requests. He hints that the thing she most has to offer is love, a willingness and an ability to
service the needs of all those in need [of] love (15). She shows this willingness, but also some
fear: she suspects he might be crooked. In sum, though I thinkespecially with his move to
assuage her fears, to get her to trust him, and his assurance that if she does so her reward will be
a shiny new futurethere is more than a hint in the nature of their relationship, especially as it
is introduced to us at the beginning of the play, of the stereotypical pedophilic relationship
between the candy laden pedophile and his child prey, very likely, we more strongly sense in his
interaction with her, the middle aged man who seeks revitalization through associating with
young women: that is, someone who is undergoing a midlife crisis.
It should be difficult to notstrongly consider understanding Maxwell as someone who is
undergoing a midlife crisis. He is in his early fifties, and has been reminded of his mortality by
just having suffered a stroke. His mind is clearly on death: when he surveys his life, he
imagines it one where Death was surrounding [him] [. . .] like a demon inevitability (17). He
suddenly understands the way he had been living as unfulfillingthe standard assessment
someone who is undergoing a midlife crisis makes of his/her life. We should note that his
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complaint about life no longer being fulfilling is also aired by his former partner, Harris. And
when Harris visits them, we are offered numerous cues to imagine them both as still being in
some way conjoined, as still, in their new directions, pursuing essentially the same goal.
With Harris and Maxwell we have two men of about the same age (specifically, Maxwell
is 50 and Harris is in his early 50s [12]), who pursued the same career pathlaw, and who
both seek rejuvenation: Maxwell seeks rebirth (31); Harris seeks new challenges (27).
Maxwell prefers to understand himself as someone who has taken a fundamentally different turn
than the one Harris has taken. And they might indeed seem far more opposite than they do
similar to one another. Maxwell has stripped himself of his earthly goods; Harris new pursuit is
built on all that he had accumulated: he will use the friends and reputation he garnered from
being an established lawyer to launch a career as a politician. Maxwell locates himself in the
gutters and associates with the destitute; Harris seeks new mountain (tops) and takes on
increasingly affluent and powerful clients (i.e., Connor). But unless we are determined to see
them as opposites, they could very easily be understood as two who have chosen paths which
both work equally well to help satisfy the very same needs and assuage the exact same fears.
The (stereo)typical midlife fear is fear of death. Both paths Maxwell and Harris are on would
help alleviate these fears. Obviously Maxwell believes that in with his new life he has in some
sense become a child again. He prefers now to be called Petie because it better suits who he
has become: namely, [y]ounger, more unfinished (30). He believes he has become the
person he once was before law school corrupted himthe young Maxwell who once had
principles, who followed his parents code of honor. Rather than someone who will soon face
death, he believes his miraculous re-invention of himself amounts to a re-birth, to starting again,
once more from the beginning. He will help create a new era, one he imagines he will help
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shepherd along: Phase two will amount to [t]he amazing rebirth of Petie Maxwell and the new
era to which he is dedicated (31). But though Maxwell will be reborn, Harriss new path will in
a sense mean he will never die: for though no matter how successful a lawyer becomes, it is only
the lawyer who moves on to becoming a politician who has any chance of becoming a
historically relevant figure, i.e., of becoming immortalized. The politician can become an epic
figure, someone who might potentially be seen as superhumanbeyond the merely mortal, who
is looked to satisfy needs no one person could possibly satisfy.
In short, the play offers us very good reasons for believing that Maxwell and Harris are
not as different as they would prefer to imagine themselves to be. Maxwell evidently believes
that Harris used him. He wants Harris to believe Harris theft of his wife and kids made him feel
like one of Gods lowest creatures (32). But we should not be so quick to believe him in this,
for the play hints that Harris theft may well have been an especially fortuitous development for
Maxwell. In pursuit of a new life path, Maxwell seeks to shorn himself of all that ties him to a
former one he associates with death. He gleefully gives away all that he had acquired during his
twenty years as a lawyer; but had he had to distance himself from his wife and kids as well, he
might not have been able to do so without feeling guilty for having done so. Middle aged men
who in their mid-life crisis act childishly and hang out with young women, often experience a
crippling hangover: they must deal with the anger and disappointment they inevitably receive
from wives and children theyve abandoned and humiliated. Thanks to Harris theft (for
though Maxwell chides Harris for thinking of his wife as a possession, it seems clear that
Maxwell thinks of her as one as well: He exclaims, Youd been screwing my wife [32;
emphasis added]), Maxwell can more easily imagine his rebirth as righteous.
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having spread outrageous, bullheaded, unsupportable, inflaming crap about Connor, and given
what we see of Maxwell, we do not doubt that Harriss characterization of Maxwells efforts are
on the nose.)
Maxwell and Connor also seem similar in that both are making claim to the very same
territoryboth are ostensibly about serving the needs of the lower classes: Maxwell would be
their legal and moral crusader; Connor would be their guide to all they need know of the world
they live in. In fact, at the beginning of scene three, when Sarah is telling her story of an
invasion to Eleanor and Gail, given all we had by then heard of Connor and Maxwell, as we hear
her story and think of its protagonists we might be thinking as much of Maxwell as we are
Connor. Her story is about invasive men who are looking for a place to take over, that are
[l]ooking for adventure (33). These men have sold (33) all their goods, have prostitute[d]
their wives, and have set up for themselves a headquarters in this alien territory (33-4).
They believe themselves indestructible, are intent on being free to be themselves, have
voices inside them talking to them, and have a proprietary, expansive desire to get their word
[. . .] out (34). Maxwell is looking for adventure (he will identify his activities as an
adventure [42]), has given away all his goods, has a wife who is now sleeping with another
man, believes he is immune (32) to persecution, has entered an unfamiliar part of town and set
up headquarters there, has argued that his turn to the dark side in law school resulted from a
force taking him over, believes himself finally back (26) to being the man he once was, and
has made the whole city aware of his opinion of Connor and has his mind on the reorganization
of an entire culture (29). So even though Sarahs story is about white crusaders who hate those
who arent white, and even though Maxwell and others repeatedly call Connor a Nazi, it is a
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story which hints that its main protagonists are more readily comparable to Maxwell than they
are to Connor.
So given that the play would have us question just how different villains actually are
from heroes, it might seem this play is a satire on the supposed virtues of would-be progressive
crusaders. Though I have focused on the plays first act, the plays ending could even more
readily be looked to for evidence to buttress such a thesis. Most particularly, the trial which
terminates the play evidences an outrageously greedy and unfair Maxwell. Though he
acknowledges that you can repent just by say[ing] to yourself I repent (70), he wont allow
that Harris can do the same to exonerate himself from damnation. Me!Me! [, Maxwell
exclaims]. The demigod. The former greedy prick. The man with a hole in his brain. The
angry man. The reborn man. The avenger! (71), is the only one who gets to repent. One
cannot but sense here that to Maxwell, Harris amounts to means by which to satisfy his own
enormous need to feel purposeful and grandiose. The trial also evidences a greedy and unfair
Sarah as the presiding judge. Sarah believes she is a fair not a prejudicial judge (79), but she too
is shown to be interested in using the trial to satisfy her need to humiliate Connor and Harris
the same need she satisfied earlier in the play when she pretended to be Maxwells lawyer (Well
that just shows how stupid you are. Im a mental patient. Youve been tricked by a person with
a shattered mind [51]). Her verdict that Harris and Connor are to be brutally humiliated and
killed (drowned in washroom toilets) is a verdict evidently influenced by whim, not evidence.
And since this verdict follows a long series of humiliations (which include brutal physical assault
and extensive name calling) inflicted upon the two (on Connor, especially), it is no surprise that
many reviewers of the play assess it indulgent, ineffective.
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Mel Gussow, in a review for theNew York Times, argues that the play is self-
defeating[,] for [a]s the lawyer [Maxwell] [. . .] sinks deeper into misanthropy and into
sermonizing, he becomes increasingly tiresome (New York Times, 9 December 1990). Of
course, if the play was construed a satire on the vices of progressive reformers rather than those
of the rich and powerful, the particular nature of Gussows reaction to Maxwell should
encourage us to see it as a rather effective satire. Indeed, those who react to the play as Gussow
did and who are familiar with the history of satire, might see the play as akin to Apuleius
Metamorphoses; for according to Ronald Paulson, just asLove and Angermakes the rich and
poor seem similar to one another, just as it repeatedly emphasizes their intrinsic similarity and
mutual culpability by having them frequently fuse into one another into a mass of punching,
kicking, groaning bodies (52), and just as it seems to use cheese as a metaphor for making some
sort of critique against interchangeability/interrelatedness:
The Metamorphoses shows that in a narrative satire fictions operate through the
interrelatedness of characters: not only the relationship between two people, a fool and a
knave, but between rich and poor fools, [. . .] and so on. They are held close to a theme
or a vice, but they also project a visualizable world of total interrelatedness, like a cheese
completely infiltrated by maggots [. . .] [.] As it is unrolled, this world is monotonously
similar in all its details, and finally static; but a world nevertheless in which Lucius
[principle character of the Metamorphoses] is himself deeply implicated. 57
Or perhaps they would see the play as akin to picaresque satires, to those satires Paulson believes
feature Quixote (heroic) figures akin to Maxwell in that though they aim to be honourable they
easily become [. . .] selfish egoist[s] who tr[y] to make over the world in [their] [. . .] own
image (101). But though in so many waysLove and Angermight seem a play which observes
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and critiques would-be heroes, its intention is ultimately not to show their foolishness. Nor is it a
play whose primary intent is to critiques their counterparts, i.e., the bad guys. For the play is
actually one which would have us attend to the real wisdom not the folly of those who would
enthusiastically involve themselves in brutal, dangerous behavior.
The plays makes this point primarily through what happens to Sarah as she engages with
those she deems evil and beyond redemption. Like Maxwell, the play draws us to understand
Sarah as akin to several other characters frequently found in the masses which inevitably
develops in the plays various melees. She believes that both she and Connor have mean spirited
voices in their heads which speak to them and control them, and she serves as Maxwells new
partnerand thereby draws us to compare her to his former partner, Harris. And she, too, is
someone who seeks revitalization and freedom. And though, while pretending to be his new law
partner, she is the one who voices a loud critique of simple and brutal solutionsshe gets
Connor to admit that killing the poor might be a solution to downtown problems, she actually
demonstrates why brutality may indeed serve to provide solutions to long troubling problems.
After Sarah does the admirable and amazing in persuading a veteran lawyer and a canny
businessman that she is in fact a competent lawyer and holds means by which Maxwell might be
managed, she, Gail, Harris, and Connor enter into a wild melee. Stage instructions tell us that
this melee is followed by a blackout and an intermission: the audience is encouraged to wonder
what might have happened to those involvedto wonder what might have happened to the two
women who took on at least one opponent who wanted to kill (53) them. When the play
resumes, the audience is seemingly offered very good reasons for suspecting things turned out
poorly, for [t]he office is a mess, Gail is sitting on the floor against the desk [,] [. . .] and
Sarah is lying face down near the door (53). But though Sarah says she likely has a broken
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bone, she (and Gail) is doing very well indeed. Sarah found delivering blows very
satisfyingshe thoroughly enjoyed getting in a few really good whacks (53). She guesses
that shed have been better off if shed started hitting earlier in [. . .] life (53)and she may
well be right; for hitting has lead not just to elation but to an ability to make sense (54), to
sanity, and to a willingness to admit she does not in fact believe herself blacka step, perhaps,
to not needing to lie to herself in order to better cope with life.
At the very least, the battle proved therapeuticand in the loving and supportive
sisterhood it helped engender between Gail and Sarah, it seems to promise even more. And we
note that after the fight, neither of them seem to hate those they fought with. There is indeed
little hate in evidence. Instead, there is only love and reflection. Gail explores why her
perception of how the rich ostensibly operate could drive her to hate them, and admits that the
rich might not be the villains she sometimes feels they are. Sarah admits that she imagines
herself black because it helps her feel brave (54)an admission which might soon lead her to
understand that she preferred to conceive of her foes as Nazis (or vampires) because it gave her
reason to feel brave, to act heroically. There is real reason for believing so, for previously Sarah
admitted that though she doesnt take messages from ordinary people, she would rise to action
if such calls came from [p]eople threatening Petie (35).
Though her therapist likely wouldnt let Sarah punch him up in order to help her feel
sane, her doctorsthough they seem to do little more than drug her upmight well appreciate
that what Sarah really needs is to be around those who inspire fear and hatred. For we are told
that they believe Sarah has to have a way, even in her state, to manifest her courage [. . .] [--]
[t]hat her courage is still the most important thing to her (35). It is Eleanor who relates this
information, and it is Eleanor who clearly does not believe it to be true: for her response to
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Sarahs manifestation of tremendous courage is to berate her for it. She sees the results of the
melee and gauges it the result of Sarahs impulsive decision to attack Gail. She goes irate, and
tells her sister to stop scaring [her] [. . .] to death (56). Eleanor would have Sarah remain
pacified, sedated through drugs, because an active and alert Sarah is someone who might do
things which would cause Eleanor considerable distress. We note that Eleanor would have
wished Maxwell had been inhibited from moving to the slums for the same selfish reason. For
even with Maxwell suffering from another stroke, she cant help but berate him (something the
now sane Sarah notices and comments on) about how the move has ended up making her very
uneasy and unable to function (56). Maxwell, however, wants Eleanor to join in with his
group, to join in with his movement. It is a request he makes several times, and we note her
typical response to it is the one she offers to his initial request: Dont involve me in whatever it
is youre up to these days. I have problems of my own (16). Near the plays close, however,
she says she would be grateful (61) to be includedbut this may actually be cause for
Maxwell to curse rather than celebrate, for, arguably, nowhere in the text is there evidence that
her involvement would be anything but a bad thing for Maxwell and his gang.
Eleanor, from the plays beginning to its end, is portrayed as someone who does or very
easily could spoil all the fun others are up to. She is a bummer. Even after she has said she
would honestly be very grateful to be included in Maxwells plans, just her presence causes
Sarah to lose confidence in her performance as the trials judge (we notice her ascent from
cowering patient to competent lawyer to compelling judge), and prompts her to start to cry.
Her active part in the trial proves to be her slapping of Connors face for his blasphemous prayer,
an action which serves to make her seem every bit the same person she was at the beginning of
the play, when she responded defensively to Maxwells lambasting of religion. (A battle follows
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her slapping Connor, but we note that somehow everyone butEleanor ends up form[ing] [the] [.
. .] mass of [tangled] bodies that end up on the coucha development which may in part make
it seem as this melee is a combined effort by everyone involved to exclude Eleanor.) She is the
one who would call in either the police or the hospital in response to any dangerous
development. And we note that if she had called an ambulance after Maxwell suffered his
stroke, he would have been denied the opportunity to die honorably and redemptively in battle.
(Harris and other characters also at times threaten to call the police, but they always pull back,
find reasons for not doing soindeed, their threats to call the police seem akin to those made by
kids who make the threat with no real intention of following through.)
We also note that in scene one, Maxwells sudden need to berate people on the street, to
insist that they [h]ave a little self-respect (19), follows his being schooled by Eleanor on the
proper way to treat people. That is, Eleanor seems to make Maxwell, the would-be crusader of
the downtrodden, to sound, in his demand that the street people [g]et out of the garbage (19),
like herwho is first shown [c]arrying a bag of cleaning supplies (16), and who is identified
by her sister as being brilliant at tidy[ing] up (61). The real threat to Maxwell and Sarahs
rejuvenation, we are told, is clearly not Harris and Connorwho, though they begin by mocking
the trial, not only actively participate in it, but end up showing admirable enthusiasm, emotion,
and belief in its legitimacy (they dance and cheer when they believe the trial has proved their
innocence and virtue)but rather, Eleanor. And we note that after she shows some capacity to
unsettle Maxwell and Sarah, to make them seem less assured, that Eleanor becomes the victim of
some sort of violence.
Connor disturbs Eleanor when he handles and moves her because [s]he was in [his] [. . .]
way (20); and in this particular instance violence is set up as praiseworthy, not because it can
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make people feel good, but can make them feel quite terrible. Maxwell gauges Connors
behavior odious: he essentializes Connor as a bully (20), as suggests that it suggests that he
might have beaten his own secretary so badly that she needed to be sent to the hospital (21). But
the play guides us to question just how offended Maxwell is by Connors violence towards
Eleanor, to wonder if at some level if Connorin attacking Eleanoressentially served as
Maxwells proxy. The principle way in which it does this is to suggest that Maxwell understands
Eleanor as his mother, and that henot Connoris actually the person with pressing Oedipal
(or, rather, inversed Oedipalas he is would welcome violence to his mother not his father)
issues. Connors assault on Eleanor follows a contest between Maxwell and Eleanor, which is
very much made to seem one between child and mother. While interacting with Gail, he takes
out and plays with a string of coloured paper clips. Eleanor, wishing him to behave less
childishly, takes them from himan action he follow up by rebelliously taking another paper
clip out from his pocket. But since the contest they have between one another concludes with
her successfully shaming Maxwell into temporarily terminating his unorthodox and childish
behavior and become an advocate of orthodox and adult virtues (cleanliness, self-respect), it is
a contest which is ultimately won by Eleanor. But then she is bullied by Connor, and we note
that Maxwell makes an effort to construe the assault one made by a child upon a mother. He
asks Connor, Whats wrong. Some trouble with mummy? (20). But the play ultimately makes
it very clear that it is Maxwell, not Connor, who is prone to think of Eleanor as his mother: for
his near last words are, Eleanor, you look like my mother (83).
Unlike Maxwell, Sarah wants Eleanor to understand that she (i.e., Eleanor) is not to liken
herself to a (specifically, her) mother. And we note that in the way Sarah characterizes mothers,
that she does not assess them in the standard Freudian way: that is, she understands mothers as
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Freud conceives fathersas formidable beings who would bully and dominate their children.
She portrays Sarah as responding to Eleanors mothering in the same Freud argues children were
want to react to their fathers, that is, by finding means by which to safely air their desire to
retaliate, for revenge, without arousing the attention of the censuring super-ego. She encourages
Eleanor to take pills she knows will leave her in a death-like comatose state. When Eleanor is
espied in this state, she jokes/hints that Eleanor might be dead: Besides, theres no waking her
anyway. She took a couple of my pills. These things are lethal (63). There are other hints in
the play that suggest that Maxwell implicitly wishes for Eleanor to incur harm. We note, for
instance, that despite Maxwells outrage at Connor for his having physically moved Eleanor, that
at one point Maxwell himself tries to do the same: We are told that He tries to push her out the
door (42). We also note that the play commences with his making clear he would war with
institutions such as religion, an institution Eleanor finds comforting (17); and that Maxwell
aims to include Eleanor, who is shown resisting him, in his project when it reaches the
dangerous part (42).
Eleanor is not hurt or slain by plays end, and if we construe the play as holding the same
conception of mothers as many of those living in the twentieth-centurys other extended period
of Darwinian capitalismthe 1920sdid, this development would in fact have been too much to
ask. At one point in the play, Maxwell calls God a she (42), suggesting that rather than a man
and a father, the most powerful entity anywhere is in fact a woman and a mother. Ann Douglas
writes that 1920s New Yorkers essentially believed the same thing: that the most powerful
negative influence over their lives was the lasting influence of the Victorian Titaness.
Specifically, she writes in Terrible Honesty that for its cultural emergence, modern New York
(believed that it) depended upon a collective and ruthless effort to distinguish itself from a
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foreseeable future. Since satires are normally construed as aiming to not just critique but help
bring to an end a vice ridden age, they might be fairly imagined as being glad that the play
which in various ways seems to be a satiremay actually more accurately be deemed, anti-
satiric.
.
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