David Rabe's Sticks and Bones - Essay Example

David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones Sticks and Bones is a play by David Rabe that captures the names of characters from the television and radio situation comedy “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”. The characters were depicting the real family with names David, Ozzie, Ricky, Harriet that was a perfect nuclear family and portrayed an ideal American family one that each American would have wished to be, a clan one would have been proud to emulate and know. The play by David Rabe, however, portrayed the same characters in a dark comedy, and has placed the depiction of an idealistic family during 1950s as a sitcom while America was attacking Vietnam as a mark of question.

For certain, this juxtaposition of secure television humor of 1950s and the atrocious reality of 1970’s Vietnam War to make some apprehensions about television, war, the suburbs and the family. Among all the four the two chosen here for explanation are the war and family. The context of the play depicts the reality Rabe faced as being part of the Vietnam War. He has produced a linkage between materialism and self-worth. The play initiates with the returning of David from the Vietnam War as a wounded individual.

He is not only physically damaged but also suffered emotionally during the period. Moreover, the writer has also portrayed through the mental state of David that he acknowledges that the fake reality of consumer culture of America portrayed by “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” during the post war era. The war had been signified by the writer as something that really impacts the life of citizens on both sides. Setting aside the physical sufferings of individuals, the emotional and psychological sufferings make it very difficult for a person who had returned from war difficult to alienate him/ her into the same family setting that he/ she used to be a part of.

It can be said that the post war prosperity as shown in the television sitcoms during 1950s was fake and depicted only the amenities of consumer culture. The bitter part of the war had been thus totally disregarded while showing the idealistic nuclear family in “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”. The war always brings destruction on both sides. The other critically analyzed role is the family played in the play. As opposed to what had been shown in the post World War II’s sitcom, the family here is depicted to be not something that makes the life easier but instead something that adverse the situation of those who have suffered from outside world.

As shown in the play Ozzie, Ricky and Harriet are not able to understand the alteration of David and the matter he had with the Vietnamese girl and carry on their activities as they used to such as eating fudge, shopping for groceries and enjoying the status of Ricky as a teen idol. The writer has depicted through the roles of Ricky and Harriet that even if happiness could not be bought by money, still money can provide a person comfortable lifestyle. The stresses surrounding David expose troubles with each family member.

Rabe stresses the denial usual to numerous Americans who were towards the United States throughout the war by spoofing an archetypal American family. The playwright brought, for the first time, the Americans in such an acute and direct terrible struggle with its own self. In his deliberate move toward this painful instance of return, Rabe detects chance to wonder the impracticality of acquiring accession to a curing process within the limits of a home that establishes even more estranging than the battleground itself.

Thus Rabe, not only portrays the traumatic return of people from war but also portrays the lack of understanding and comfort provided within the familial terrain. In Sticks and Bones, the chief character’s immense difficulty in adapting his own presence inside the constraints of the familial setting is interrelated and matched to an evenly tormenting act of bracing his newly instituted vision. The ultimate solution that the other family member finds suitable for David’s terrible condition is to force him to suicide.

That depicts the lack of emotional attachment within the family members that motivates each of them to refrain themselves to their own pleasures and let David suffers his tragedies himself. The basic element of a comfort and belongingness that might have changed the terrible situation of the veteran to more satisfying despite his blindness makes it more adverse (Rabe, 1979) References Rabe, D. (1979). Sticks and Bones: A Play in Two Acts. S. French.