Blog Post #5

In the story, "Oleanna" by David Mamet, Carol, a college student, asks her professor, John, for help understanding the course that John teaches. She is struggling in his class and is desperate to understand everything in his course. She even "read [his] book, you told me to buy your book and read it" (Act 1) which she did to help understand the logic behind his class. Thinking through a Marxist Critic, it is obvious that John represents the bourgeoisie, upper class who runs the class and controls the curriculum that the students, including Carol, must learn and abide by. Carol represents the larger social group, the proletariat, working class who must work for the smaller bourgeoisie. She ends up ruining John's life when she exclaims, "You tried to rape me" (Act 3). This makes a hegemony which switches the power of the upper class, John, to the working class, Carol. In the scholarly article, "P.C. Power Play: Language and Representation in David Mamet's Oleanna" by Roger Bechtel, Bechtel supports my theory on upper class versus working class when he states that John's "identity is that of the academy. When he is engaged in professorial discourse...his language becomes complete: sentences end, rules of grammar and syntax are adhered to."Heisprofessional when talking to Carol and uses large, sophisticated words to show how intelligent and comfortable he is in being an accomplished professor. Carol is a very strange girl who seems to have absolutely no social skills which is seen when John tells her, "I'm not your father" and she replies with, "Did I say you're my father? Why did you say that?" (Act 1). In the beginning of the story, Carol is asking for help individually, however, later on she pronounces herself as "we" because her "group" is trying to take the power away from John. "What if it were possible that my Group withdraws its complaint (Act 3). In the end, the collective wins out against the individual because Carol's group has been trying to get rid of John for a while and they succeeded.