Criticism of The Glory of Living Play by Rebecca Gilman - Essay Example

The child that is seen listening to her mother entertaining clients at the beginning of the play later grows into an adult who lures young girls so that her husband may rape them. The abuse that is suffered by the girls whom she lures is disturbing.

However, more disturbing is the fact that the protagonist of the play later murders them and throws away their bodies unceremoniously.  The play questions the models of a family that is held up as the standard in society. Despite having a mother, Lisa is unable to have a normal childhood. The disintegration of the family is complete in the family of Lisa and Clint as the couple seeks to seduce young girls into a lurid kind of death. The sterility of this kind of existence is repeatedly held up by the author as symbolic of the fact that such forms of life are unsustainable.

The playwright, Rebecca Gilman, makes it clear that such instances of sterility do not represent the modes of sterility that were characteristic of ancient civilizations where it was a phase that would be followed by regeneration. The two children that Clint and Lisa have only served to heighten the disturbing mood of the play as the presence of a pedophile in the family makes the situation of the children complicated. They are moreover, placed not in the care The play’s pessimism regarding the state of affairs that modern life presents is a very postmodernist one, where it has become impossible for human beings to peel away the layers of life to reveal its true essence.

Here, people wander through life; performing functions that they are aware of do not possess any meaning. In this sense, the play also addresses existential issues that the modern man faces and has to deal with. The importance of the existential problems that the play poses is demonstrated by the absolute lack of meaning that Lisa, the anti-heroine of the play, puts into her actions. The main aspect of the play, however, remains the fact of the development of children. The life of children whereby they are at the complete mercy of their parent’s actions is demonstrated skillfully by Gilman’s play.