Glengarry, Glen Ross, by David Mamet is a very short play that is hard to follow all the way through. The characters are salesmen of real-estate, who’s lives seemingly revolve solely around “leads” that provide information to make sales. As the reader finds out in the first act of this play, the leads are in two main categories, good leads and bad leads. The good leads go to the more successful salesmen, while the other leads witch are described as useless are given to the less successful salesmen. The plot follows the plan and execution of a robbery in which the leads are stolen from the business and sold to a rival business. In the final act of the play, the office is broken into and the leads are stolen. There is a detective in the office, questioning the employees. Shelly Levene ends up getting caught by John Williamson (a fellow salesman) who notices something Shelly says, that gives him away. As Shelly try’s to defend himself, he says: “(pause) But it [stealing] taught me something. What it taught me, that you've got to get out there. Big deal. So I wasn't cut out to be a thief. I was cut out to be a salesman. And now I'm back, and I got my balls back...and, you know, John, you have the advantage on me now. Whatever it takes to make it right, we'll make it right. We're going to make it right.”
The characters all seem the same, all salesmen whose lives revolve solely around their work. The lines of the play are often hard to read because they are written as to be spoken by different people, and at times the lines overlap one another like so often conversations (mainly arguments, as it is in the play) do. The language was very fowl making the reading undesirable to a reader who doesn’t approve of such language being used so heavily. I was not a big fan of this play.
Vocabulary
Meshugaas – mad or idiotic ideas or behavior
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