IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96-106 International Journal of Humanity Studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/IJHS Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia 96 AMERICAN DREAM AS REFLECTED IN DAVID MAMET’S GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS Sindhy Sintya Mianani Airlangga University sindhysintya@gmail.com DOI: 10.24071/ijhs.2019.030109 received 29 June 2019; revised 16 August 2019; accepted 26 August 2019 Abstract David Mamet is one of the greatest modern American playwrights whose works have dominated the stages during the twentieth century. His work entitled Glengarry Glen Ross is a great echo of the world about the businessmen in the United States. This study is devoted to the analysis of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross based on Marxism point of view, in which it focuses on the power praxis portrayed within its story. By so, this study scrutinizes how American Dream creates unethical and immoral American corrupted society in Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross and how the notion of American Dream is being challenged. The findings of this study show that the salesmen’s choices, preferences, wants and desires are affected by ideological practices. These ideological practices represent the production of corrupted ideology for the notion of American Dream is being reduced and merely a utopian notion. Thus, eventually, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross displays a deeper conception that the salesmen or working class people in general, are the subjects of the capitalism. Keywords: Marxism, American Dream, Capitalism Introduction The notion of American Dream is as old as the very foundation of America itself. It also becomes the belief that leads the innumerable immigrants to America who expected a better life as American Dream itself claims “that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson, 1776, p. 1)”. As they feel exhausted from the tyrannies and muffling limitations of the old world, thought of the new continent offers a land of opportunities and redemption for their dreams. But from the very beginning, the ignorance, prejudice and greed inherited in human nature starting to deter the true meaning of the dream, thus turning it into a nightmare. Thus, one might claim that American Dream has been reduced for it is corrupted since the outset, despite the fact that there has always been a controversy over whether it was corrupted originally or diverged and reduced from its true essence and eventually become corrupted. mailto:sindhysintya@gmail.com IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 97 Realizing this phenomenon, some authors express their criticism and cynicism toward American Dream. Such criticism and cynicism can be seen from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1962), and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (1984). All of these literary works revolve around the reduced and corrupted notion of the American Dream during the period of The Great Depression in 1920s till 1930s. This period witnesses the decline of America‘s great power leading to the state where America deals with a wave of suspicious and corruption emerged among its people. Being affected by this condition, everyone simply only cares about his/her own interest, regardless of all normal communal issues. Each individual looks for the fulfillment of his/her aspirations and hopes regardless to their values, ethics, and other people’s desires. It is said that the source of the corruption of the notion of American Dream is none than the ideology of American system itself. Given such issues, David Mamet as one of the important playwright who experienced these social problems, wrote his work entitled Glengarry Glen Ross. Mamet's play reflects his extreme engagement with some of the American unresolved concerns. Mamet shows his views to be as anti-capitalist playwright. Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross is deemed as the awareness of the ideology of the dominant class in which the issue of struggle for life in the bossiness is evident. It is a portrait of a battle for survival as well as struggle in which the salesmen long for a dream of being free. In addition to that, Glengarry Glen Ross are also full of businessmen deprived of any human warmth and compassion and are constantly steeped in an atmosphere of fear, greed, and ruthlessness. In other words, the higher the pressure, the lower the ethics are. His play, then, is said to able to express his concerns regarding this matter by giving such valuable criticism of materialism and greed that echo in American society. David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross is a play telling the story of real estate salesmen in America. The play is considered as Mamet’s most noticeable work for it has win three Obies, a New York Drama Critics Award, the Outer Critics Award for Distinguished Playwrighting, a Joseph Jefferson Award, the Society of West End Theatres Award, the Pulitzer Prize, also some numerous nominations for Academy Awards for screenwriting. Thus, David Mamet is also deemed as a “seminal figure in contemporary American drama whose gift for acute social observation, depth of moral vision, and continuing productivity account for his broad critical respect” (Begley, 2004, p. 4). Moreover, as Bigsby (2004) suggests, that in a utopian society such as America, only the past and the future offer a true form. In between, is a provisional world in decline, reaching for a perfection beyond immediate reach, existing between impure nostalgia and importunate hope. Therefore, Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross can be said as the embodiment of a preoccupation with rootlessness which feels both as discontinuity with the past and the failure of connection with the present. Glengarry Glen Ross depicts the essential role of the business ethic in shaping American values. Thus, as a result, moral dilemma becomes the main issue in this play, for people are trapped between their desire to possess the land or gain from its sale and their longing for old value systems. This condition give the illusion of the glorious past and a utopian future, compared to the devastating IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 98 conditions of the present time, functions as a defense mechanism, employed to avoid the confrontation of the horrifying reality of their existence. Given this premise, this study attempts to analyze David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross in the light of power praxis and its relation to the American Dream using Marxism theory. By doing so, the corrupted and reduced notion of the American Dream and its principles express a contradiction between reality and what befalls. The enchantment of the American Dream, then, comes to the extent that they the splendid dreams of the past are juxtaposed with the utopian future promised by the American Dream. Literature Review Marxism theory was founded by Karl Marx, a German Philosopher and Friedrich Engels, a German sociologist. In the beginning, this economic theory is called as ‘Communism’ rather than ‘Marxism.’ This theory was first introduced in Communist Manifesto on 1848. Its aim is to bring about a classless society based on the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. While other philosophies seek to understand the world, Marxism seeks to change it. Marxism sees progress as coming about through the struggle for power between different social classes. It views history as something ‘motored’ by the competition for economics, social, and political advantage rather than succession of power or gradual process. It is also believed that . . . society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of monetary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of destruction has cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of Bourgeois property; on the contrary they have become too powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered, and so as soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of Bourgeois society, endanger the existence of Bourgeois property (Marx & Engels, 1985, p. 86). Marxist theory also argues that the way ones think and experience the world around is either wholly or largely conditioned by the way the economy is organized. Under a medieval, feudal regime people will have thought and felt differently from the way that we think and feel now, in a capitalist economy that is, an economy in which goods are produced, the ‘mode of production’, by large concentrations of capital and then sold in a free, competitive, market. What Marx believes, then, is developed into the Marxist model of society which sees society constituted by a base or material means of production, distribution, and exchange and a superstructure consisting ‘cultural’ world of ideas, art, religion, law, etc. By such notion, Marxism also pays attention to the exploitation of one social class by another, seen especially in modern industrial capitalism. The result of this exploitation is alienation which is the state which comes about when the worker is ‘de-skilled’ and made to perform fragmented, repetitive tasks. Along with this fact, Marx adds that “for exploitation, veiled by IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 99 religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” His statement, then, can be said to justify that the capitalist goals and questions of profit and loss are paramount. Workers are also beret of their full humanity and in other words, become things. Method In order to obtain a comprehensive overview of the research problem, this study utilizes Marxism approach. This approach embodies the notion that a society consists of two classes namely base and superstructure. Thus, to examine the two mentioned society classes, the main method of data analysis called the method of thick description was employed. The thick description method was originally presented by Geertz (1998, pp. 1253-1278) to examine the cultural ideas behind a cultural phenomenon. This method is used to compensate for the close reading method developed by New Criticism by linking the cultural codes in the text analyzed by reconstructing the various practical and socio-cultural structures surrounding the text, which is not explicitly referred to by the text (Budianta, 2006, pp. 10-11). Analysis of research data is also reinforced by the Hermeneutic method developed by Paul Ricoeur (Klemm, 1983, pp. 74-108). Ricoeur’s notion on Hermeneutic theory, suggests that the ultimate goal of an interpretation is to understand the nature of the discourse, the aspects relating to the text, the process of textual understanding, and the subjective conditions in the understanding of the text. With regard to these points, interpretation is said to achieve adequate results. Findings and Discussion A Brief Review on Marxism Marxism theory was founded by Karl Marx, a German Philosopher and Friedrich Engels, a German sociologist. In the beginning, this economic theory is called as ‘Communism’ rather than ‘Marxism.’ This theory was first introduced in Communist Manifesto on 1848. Its aim is to bring about a classless society based on the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. While other philosophies seek to understand the world, Marxism seeks to change it. Marxism sees progress as coming about through the struggle for power between different social classes. It views history as something ‘motored’ by the competition for economics, social, and political advantage rather than succession of power or gradual process. It is also believed that . . . society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of monetary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of destruction has cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of Bourgeois property; on the contrary they have become too powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered, and so as soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of Bourgeois society, endanger the existence of Bourgeois property (Marx & Engels, 1985, p. 86). IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 100 Marxist theory also argues that the way ones think and experience the world around is either wholly or largely conditioned by the way the economy is organized. Under a medieval, feudal regime people will have thought and felt differently from the way that we think and feel now, in a capitalist economy that is, an economy in which goods are produced, the ‘mode of production’, by large concentrations of capital and then sold in a free, competitive, market. What Marx believes, then, is developed into the Marxist model of society which sees society constituted by a base or material means of production, distribution, and exchange and a superstructure consisting ‘cultural’ world of ideas, art, religion, law, etc. By such notion, Marxism also pays attention to the exploitation of one social class by another, seen especially in modern industrial capitalism. The result of this exploitation is alienation which is the state which comes about when the worker is ‘de-skilled’ and made to perform fragmented, repetitive tasks. Along with this fact, Marx adds that “for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” His statement, then, can be said to justify that the capitalist goals and questions of profit and loss are paramount. Workers are also beret of their full humanity and in other words, become things. Summary of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross The first act of the play consists of three scenes all taking the place setting at a Chinese restaurant. The flamboyant atmosphere of the Chinese restaurant is significant since it ironically represents that the corrupt base of business hides under its delicate surface. Glengarry Glen Ross begins with Shelly Levene, the oldest of the salesmen, trying to convince Williamson to give him premium leads. In fact, it might be odd for the readers, at their first confrontation with the words like lead and sit, to determine what these words actually refer to. Yet, Mamet gradually reveals in the course of the play that a lead is an appointment with a prospective client, that a sit is the actual confrontation and that the board is the office salesmen’s graph charting the four salesmen’s relative success. Moreover, it becomes clear that there are two sets of leads which include premium leads that are more likely to win and non-premium or ordinary leads that are almost worthless and most probably fail. As Levene’s flattering and then threatening of Williamson come to no conclusion, he grabs at bribing him as a last resort which of course fails since he cannot afford it. Following the first scene, the second scene represents Moss and Aaronow discussing the unfairness of Mitch and Murray towards them after all their honest services for the company. In the following Moss suggests that they should break into the office, steal the leads and sell them to Jerry Graff who directs a rival company. Jon Tuttle explains coveting the power and income of Mitch and Murray, who reap the profits of others’ labor and admiring the savvy of Jerry Graff, who went into business for himself. Thus, it is safe to say that on this scene Moss actually casts himself in the role of executive and doles out the dirty work of breaking into the office to whoever is desperate enough to be his minion. Moss’ act is said to prove that the salesmen not only swindle the gullible clients, but also they cheat on each other whenever they get a chance. Moss cunningly tries to persuade Aaronow to commit the break-in and when he does not give up to his temptation, Moss threatens that Aaronow would be an accomplice, willy-nilly, since he listened to the plot. IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 101 In the third scene, Roma delivers a confusing monolog to a total stranger, named Lingk, sitting in the next booth, in order to inveigle him into buying worthless land. Roma philosophizes about the freedom of the individual and creates the illusion that the individual must be a risk-taker. Then, he subtly connects the freedom of the individual, the capability of taking risks and security to buying land. It clearly anticipates that Lingk will be duped into buying a little worth property. It is quite evident from the way he builds on conviction in the power of the individual to achieve his goal which is selling worthless land. This act is simply intended to coax and disorient Lingk, or in short, to trap him. By subtly distorts the meaning of the individual that Lingkt has in mind and equates taking risks with being independent, Roma pretends that he is totally indifferent to selling land. Yet, he implicitly points out that buying the land he offers is the first step to be independent. His statement, however, is inherently paradoxical since whereas he asks Lingk to believe in himself, Roma urges him to put his trust in him and let Roma decide for him. The second act of the play shows the ransacked office the morning after the break-in. Baylen, a police detective, is present in the office to interrogate the staff. As Roma anxiously enters the office and asks about the stolen contracts, it becomes clear that he has closed the sale to Lingk in the previous act and is now worried about his documents. However, Williamson assures him that his contract has been filed and sent to downtown. Meanwhile, Levene enters the office jubilantly announcing that he has just closed a deal with the Nyborgs. Having been interrogated by the detective, Moss furiously humiliates Levene while Roma applauds his recent success. Then, Roma all of a sudden sees Lingk outside the office and immediately enlists Levene to improvise a show to distract Lingk from cancelling the contract. However, the improvisation fails because Williamson intervenes and assures Lingk that his check has been cashed. Thus in the end, Lingk escapes the trap and Roma furiously turns at Williamson and warns him that he owes him a Cadillac. Levene inadvertently, through a lapse of tongue, reveals to Williamson that he is the one who ransacked the office. Moreover, the worse comes to the worst when Williamson viciously tells Levene that the deal with the Nyborgs is dead since they are “nuts”. As Levene leaves to be interrogated by the detective, Roma tells Williamson that he and Levene work together as a team and from that time on he keeps his commissions plus fifty percent of Levene’s commissions. The play ends as Roma heads out to the restaurant to hook another gullible customer. American Dream as Reflected in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross At the beginning, the play dramatizes four desperate salesmen who work with a real estate office in Chicago which is supervised by a cold manager, Williamson, who hands them out leads and sends them out to persuade gullible customers to buy worthless land in Florida. As the story progress, the play also demonstrates how for these men all human relationships are narrowed down to business transactions and how their lack of morality drives them to commit robbery under the guise of free enterprise. With the idea that the difference between robbery and Chicago salesmanship is only a difference of degree, these hardboiled real-estate salesmen have no moral consciences. What they are selling has no value tracts of undeveloped land which cannot be developed. The only commodity that has value for them is the “lead,” the contact with the potential IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 102 buyer. Some leads are valueless, the value of the lead depending on the wealth and gullibility of the client. LEVENE: I'll tell you why I'm out. I'm out, you're giving me toilet paper. John. I've seen those leads. I saw them when I was at Homestead, we pitched those cocksuckers Rio Rancho nineteen sixty-nine they wouldn't buy. They couldn't buy a fucking toaster. They're broke, John. They're cold. They're deadbeats, you can't judge on that. Even so. Even so. Alright. Fine. Fine. Even so. I go in, FOUR FUCKING LEADS they got their money in a sock. They're fucking Polacks, John. Four leads. I close two. Two. Fifty per… . . . LEVENE: Moss, Jerry Graff, Mitch himself...Those guys lived on the business I brought in. They lived on it...and so did Murray, John. You were here you'd of benefited from it too. And now I'm saying this. Do I want charity? Do I want pity? I want sits. I want leads that don't come right out of a phone book. Give me a lead hotter than that, I'll go in and close it. Give me a chance. That's all I want. I'm going to get up on that fucking board and all I want is a chance. It's a streak and I'm going to turn it around. (Pause) I need your help. (Pause). WILLIAMSON: I can't do it, Shelly. (Pause). LEVENE: Why? WILLIAMSON: The leads are assigned randomly... LEVENE: Bullshit, bullshit, you assign them... What are you telling me? WILLIAMSON: Apart from the top men on the contest board (Mamet, 1984, 1.1.84-103). However, despite their impoverished morality, from the beginning of the play, it is clearly perceived that the salesmen are under severe pressure more than any other time since half of them are on the verge of failing the selling target. In order to encourage the salesmen to work harder, Mitch and Murray, as the heads of the company, have declared a sales contest according to which the top seller wins a Cadillac, the runner-up wins a set of steak knives, while the other two will get fired. Little did these salesmen know, the competition is just a disguise to gain profit as much as they can, thus, driving these salesmen crazy. MOSS: To say “I'm going on my own.” ‘Cause what you do, George, let me tell you what you do: you find yourself in thrall to someone else. And we enslave ourselves. To please. To win some fucking toaster...to...to... and the guy who got there first made up those [rules]. IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 103 . . . MOSS: Something. To pay them back. (Pause). Someone, someone should hurt them. Murray and Mitch . . . Someone should rob the office. AARONOW: Huh. MOSS: That's what I'm saying. We were, if we were that kind of guys, to knock it off, and trash the joint, it looks like robbery, and take the fuckin' leads out of the files...go to Jerry Graff (Long pause). AARONOW: What could somebody get for them? MOSS: What could we get for them? I don't know. Buck a throw...buck- a-half a throw...I don't know...Hey, who knows what they're worth, what do they pay for them? All told...must be, I'd... three bucks a throw...I don't know. AARONOW: How many leads have we got? MOSS: The Glengarry...the premium leads...? I'd say we got five thousand. Five. Five thousand leads. AARONOW: And you're saying a fella could take and sell these leads to Jerry Graff. MOSS: Yes (Mamet, 1984, 1.2.114; 147-162). The way these salesmen behave under the so called “lead” illustrates that capitalism is indeed entangled in the highly competitive atmosphere which revolves around ones’ survival. These salesmen are left with no other choice except to privilege their own self-interest over the failure of others. Furthermore, it is mandatory to pay attention even though the system encourages these salesmen to act independently, not all of them experience the similar degree of freedom. In fact, they are nothing but a machine. ROMA: I swear it's not a world of men it's not a world of men, Machine it's a world of clock watchers, bureaucrats, officeholders what it is, it's a fucked up world there's no adventure to it. (Pause.) Dying breed. Yes it is. (Pause.) We are the members of a dying breed (Mamet, 1984, 2.1.432). Such exploitation on Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, then, indicates how business is elevated to the level of a sacred ritual under capitalism. When business transactions are all that matter, greed and avarice permeating the life of these salesmen, hence force them to be always closing through fabricating false stories IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 104 and deceiving their clients in order to secure their top place on the board and more importantly, to win the Cadillac which is the prize to their so called ‘survival’. The four salesmen depicted in Glengarry Glen Ross put their faith in the American Dream and as they struggle to push each other away, through selling more pieces of worthless land, they unconsciously sell themselves to the dream. Thus, in selling not only land, but also their souls, they become self-interested individuals who discard all moral consciences. This dehumanized salesmen, as explained by Roma is called as a queer, a condition in which a justification of wrong acts are considered as something ordinary. ROMA: You think you're queer...? I'm going to tell you something: we're all queer. You think that you're a thief? So what? You get befuddled by a middle-class morality...? Get shut of it. Shut it out. You cheated on your wife...? You did it, live with it. (Pause). You fuck little girls, so be it. There's an absolute morality? May be. And then what? If you think there is, then be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don't think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won't live in it. That's me. You ever take a dump made you feel you'd just slept for twelve hours...? LINGK: Did I...? ROMA: Yes. LINGK: I don't know (Mamet, 1984, 1.3.1-12). What Mamet portrays in his play, then, indicates that there are privileged individuals. To put it another words, the capitalist system hypocritically announces that all individuals share the same degree of freedom and have the equal chance to get successful while in fact the holders of capital usually escape the law which is supposed to punish the law-breaker. Under such a system, in which there is not such a thing as fixed morality, each individual learns to adopt the kind of morality that is in accordance with his or her interests. As a result, it is not morality that checks the behavior of the individual, but greed and the dictates of business transactions that shape and define morality. While American Dream clearly states that it is . . . a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position (Adams, 1931, p. 216). Somehow, this notion is no longer reflected in Glengarry Glen Ross. This situation tragically reflecting the failures of American society which no longer encourages situation ethics and relativistic morality as stated in American Dream. It is inevitable that the myth of the American Dream clearly alters the salesmen’s ethic and morals, for they no longer hold the belief that playing fair will save them from getting the steak knives. It is precisely because of their conviction in the IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 1, September 2019, pp. 96–106 105 fairness of unrestricted competition that the salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross behave unscrupulously and justify it as a mean of marketing skill. Glengarry Glen Ross, eventually, is deemed as a criticism toward the reduced and corrupted American Dream for its cynicism is delivered passionately through its characters. The four salesmen, though, try hard to win by cheating, proved that what they have done are merely futile attempts to rebel against system, in this case capitalism, for they have no power against the superstructure elements manifested in the characters namely Mitch and Murray, the bosses of the real estate agency. Conclusion The American Dream is an ideology among the infinite ideologies dominating Americans’ ways of life. American Dream is also an example of a well-constructed notion for it exists from the very beginning of America and yet withered with the passage of time. Tough, it aims at the weak point of the human nature that is a dream of better life, the concept of the American Dream in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross exposes the ways American Dream as an ideology tie itself to Americans’ real existence and subvert reality in less suspected ways. In Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, American Dream tend to offer itself as the reality and despite the fact that one cannot escape the influence of it entirely, American Dream is nothing but an the hinders of logical thinking and thereby leads to scheming acts. By such findings, it is safe to say that American Dream, as reflected in Glengarry Glen Ross, is a reduced and corrupted ideology. References Adams, J. T. (1931). The Epic of America. Boston: Little Brown & Co. Begley, V. (2004). A Poetics for Thugs. In L. Kane (Ed.), The art of crime: The plays and films of Harold Pinter and David Mamet. New York: Routledge. Bigsby, C. (2004). David Mamet. In C. Bigsby (Ed), The Cambridge companion to David Mamet (pp. 1-41). New York: Cambridge University Press. Bigsby (2004). David Mamet: All True Stories. In H. Bloom (Ed), Modern Critical Views: David Mamet (pp 163-202). Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publisher. Billington, M. (1994). Mamet Turns to the World of Salesmen. In L. J. 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