THE FOREIGNER by LARRY SHUE - Book Report/Review Example

BOOK REVIEW: "THE FOREIGNER" by LARRY SHUE The of “The Foreigner” seems to be more relevant nowadays than at the time when it was actually written due to the major theme of the play: the quest of the characters Charlie Baker, widow Betty Meeks and Ellard and Catherine Simms (and, ultimately, the quest of the modern man) for acquiring self-awareness regarding their own intelligence and courage in fighting against the bigot villain of the play, the reverend David Marshall Lee. The foreigner that gives the title of the play is Charlie Baker, a pathological shy Englishman with no interest in social interacting at the beginning of the play.

This raw vulnerability of Charlie’s character brings power to Larry Shue’s fiction. Charlie’s brought by “Froggy” LeSueur at Betty Meeks’ retreat in rural Georgia and introduced as a “foreigner” visitor in search for rest, away from his promiscuous wife. His apparently lack of understanding English turns him into a confidant for the residents of the lodge and this dramatic technique supplies the play with its humorous dimension. Based on this premise, Charlie Baker obtains the status of “human mirror” at Betty’s rural retreat in front of which are posted Froggy (with his cheerful attitude and loyal spirit), Betty (the widow with a nostalgia for exotic places), Catherine Simms (the restless heiress looking for romance, who finds in Charlie a silent confident) or David Marshall Lee (with the basic meaness of his interior structure unveiled by Charlie).

The author incorporates in this play numerous elements of culture in collision in the Deep South: sergeant Froggy LeSueur speaks with a Cockney dialect accent and seems to be the only character comfortable with his own sense of self, Charlie adopts the persona of a foreigner who doesn’t speak English (therefore, pretending to belong to a cultural dimension outside rural Georgia) and Betty Meeks is the widow with a passion for cultural and national diversity, who speaks with a strong Georgia accent.

Some of the characters are ridiculed by the author as caricature portraits of the rural Southern stereotypes: Owen Musser is a xenophobic redneck, the Southern village idiot (kind and, apparently, mentally defective) Ellard Simms and his thin pretty sister Catherine, the heiress unsatisfied with her actual life but unsure of her capacities to give another turn to her actual living. The theme of racism and social prejudice is represented in this dramatic play by the character of Owen Musser, a redneck associate of the main villain, the reverend David Marshall Lee.

The premise of Owen’s actions is his ideal of a “Christian, white America”. In the name of his distorted idea about the American society (a society purified of non-Christian heresies or inferior human races), he enables the reverend’s plan (condemning Betty Meek’s resort (in which the play takes place) as structurally unsafe – from his position as property inspector for Tilghman County) to get in control over Betty’s lodge and resort in order to transform it into a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan.

Through Owen Musser’s affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, Larry Shue lowers the white farmers from Southern U.S. to the level of racism and white trash. The white trash subculture exposed by the play reveals that the positive physical sharpness of Charlie Baker and Ellard Simms can overcome the intelligence pointing to subversion of the reverend and his pawn, Owen Musset. The play seems a little too trenchant and doesn’t leave any room for ambiguity regarding the attributes of personality of the characters: the good, sympathetic characters (Charlie, Ellas, Froggy, Beth and Catherine) that unveil the plot of the rednecks and the bigots.

Ultimately, the plot development (ending with the defeat of the evil, after the pattern of folktales) enables Charlie Baker’s metamorphoses: from manifesting antisocial tendencies in the beginning of the play, he turns into an adventurous extrovert, thwarting David’s plan to transform Betty’s lodge into a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan and becoming, ultimately, Catherine’s romantic match.