Gender and Sexuality in In the Heart of America - Essay Example

The action often takes place during a war of attrition, and moves back and forth in place and time, being set between two different eras: the Vietnam war in 1969, and the first Gulf War of 1990 and its immediate aftermath.

Wallace is interested in the way language can be used to inspire people, but also in how racist language and actions can serve to dehumanize those seen as enemies. She was interested in the 'American way of war’ and how language is used to inspire and underline aggression, and how the language of war becomes enticing and erotic (DeAltey). The American idea about the war was the destruction of the enemy, rather than arriving or even trying to arrive, at any other possible solution (Echevarria 1).

His idea is one that Wallace would agree with, as she is quoted by DeAtley as having said: “war is, on one level, a simple question of how to best tear as many bodies apart in as little time as possible, and necessarily not about freedom and liberation.” Wallace had become very angry about what had occurred in Iraq in the Gulf War of 1991. After two years of research, she published her play In the heart of America, a play which explores ideas about identity, and in which each character is trying to establish their identity, each one trying to make meaning of the world in which they find themselves and their place within it, self-actualization as Engler said (330).

The theme of the play is not about how horrific war can be or even what makes it an American, although these topics are covered. At the heart of this work is human’s struggle for identity, who are we really?’The play opens with a young Palestinian-American woman, Fairouz from Atlanta. She is questioning an American soldier about the whereabouts of her brother, Remzi. He seems unable to give her a proper answer. The war is over and perhaps he wants to make a fresh start, to forget the people involved once they were out of the war zone (84).

Remzi is doubtlessly dead, so his identity is no longer important to Craver at least, but the play then moves on to show how each of these five characters is searching for just that, who they are. It is at this point, early in the play, but chronologically the last part depicted, and once he knows how likely it is that Remzi is dead, that Craver is finally able to admit that he had fallen in love, yet seconds later Fairouz asks him: “Did you love my brother?” But he claims that he cannot remember (111).

When the dead Remzi appears to him he is scared: “We could go to jail. It’s illegal in the army” For the moment at least, that seems more important than their relationship, which after all had no future as Remzi is dead and gone, even if his ghost is standing there in front of him, talking to him, asking for a kiss.