「글렌게리 글렌 로스」 : 극적 행위로써의 언어 = The Language as Dramatic Action Glengarry Glen Ross

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This essay aims to find out the relations between the subjects in dramas and language, to investigate the roles of language as dramatic action in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Generally speaking, all of Mamet's works reveal his facility for urban speech, his satiric view of media-oriented, commercialized life, and belief that "under all this very cynical vision is a crying need for human contact in a bad bad world."
Mamet's first play illustrates his tendency to block action into short scenes rather than fully developed acts, and to strip the stage of props and setting in order to throw dramatic emphasis on the language itself. American Buffalo is also about language, loneliness, and friendship, but it is more explicit in its antibusiness bias.
Glengarry Glen Ross continues Mamet's themes and techniques. Business comes even more directly under fire, though, because his characters are small-time real-estate salesmen, trying to sell lots in distant Folrida developments. The salesmen are essentially grist for the corporate mill; if their sales fall below a certain percentage, their leads god "cold", which force lower sales - a treadmill existence that Mamet would see as disguised slave labor. Meanwhile, the salesmen parcel out the American Dream in plots of ground, to be sold by any means possible to anyone who cannot resist their sales line. Richard Roma, the number-one salesman of the year, sells a perverted version of the early exploration and settlement of America: land as opportunity for success and status. The consequences of this blighted vision are petty competition and isolation of all the characters from one another. Attempts at companionship or friendship are tainted by coercion, backbiting, outright stealing, and self-deception. Dave Moss, the number-two salesman, tries to force hapless Georfe Aronow into joining him in a robbery of their own real-estate office, with an eyes to selling the leads they steal to a competitor. Eventually, he is able to "sell" Levene on the idea, largely because they deceive themselves that they will not be caught and that the money will be enough to stake them somewhere else. At the end of the play, they have lost both dreams. The most revealing character, however, is Roma. He chides Ross for slighting levene, fusses with Williamson about trying to get the older man fired, and claims that he admires Levene's salesmanship. Yet, in fact, he is poised to take a fifty-percent cut of Levene's sales through a special deal with Williamson.