Blog Post 5

While reading Oleanna I ran into many problems understanding the reasons for her being who Carol is, and how she is. She seems to be fixated in bettering herself but at the same time fixated in the notion that she is “bad”, “stupid”. While John puts his own future at steak attempting to help Carol with her questions.
I read the essay "Laying Blame: Gender and Subtext in David Mamet's Oleanna" in which the critic Thomas H. Goggans describes Carol’s language and behavior as that one of a person abused as a child. The play seems to be strongly aimed at what a tormented soul that is Carol can do to those around them. She had essentially asked for his helping hand and had instead taken him by the leg and pulled him down to his eventual undoing.
Carol stripped John of his Tenure and therefore his new house. Her actions not only destroyed John’s future career but also ended his future family, all for the insanity that was possibly caused by a moment in her life that derailed her mental health and trust for those around her.
In the critical essay Goggans mentions the trafficking of code words of incest and child sexual abuse. “She exhibits low self-esteem, depression, and guilt, remarking ‘Did… did I … did I say something wrong’”; “I’m stupid”; "I'll never learn”; "nobody wants me”; and "I know what I am. [ ... ] I know what I am". These key phrases help decipher her being. She seems to be strongly bound by her past, stuck thinking that she cannot understand and she is stupid, and the way that she speaks to the professor shows that it is very possible that she is a sociopath. She has obviously not thought of what her actions are doing to him.
Carol brings her unconscious thoughts to the surface in an early point of Act 1. She mentions her inability to satisfy a male authority figure: "I'm doing what I'm told. It's difficult for me."
This shows some evidence that could prove that she was molested as a child. Her insanity does not lead to the rape that she probably expected and quite possibly fantasized about. But instead eventually makes him snap and hit her. A point in the play that the audience was waiting for and is surprisingly well accepted despite the violent nature of it.