Difference between revisions of "Aunt Dan and Lemon"
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The afterword goes on to examine whether a fully consistent moral sense is at all compatible with living in an unjust world. Shawn concludes that although he may not be able to make a purely rational case for his individual ethics and can't really live by them, they are still necessary on utilitarian grounds, in order to prevent a collective slide toward Nazi-style "disaster." But he has just shown us that someone like Aunt Dan is quite happy living in a world of war and murder, and Lemon doesn't consider the Holocaust a disaster; the utilitarian argument only works if you've already chosen to value human life (for an extended look at this dilemma, see C.S. Lewis's ''The Abolition of Man''). These dangling questions set the stage for ''[[The Fever]]''. | The afterword goes on to examine whether a fully consistent moral sense is at all compatible with living in an unjust world. Shawn concludes that although he may not be able to make a purely rational case for his individual ethics and can't really live by them, they are still necessary on utilitarian grounds, in order to prevent a collective slide toward Nazi-style "disaster." But he has just shown us that someone like Aunt Dan is quite happy living in a world of war and murder, and Lemon doesn't consider the Holocaust a disaster; the utilitarian argument only works if you've already chosen to value human life (for an extended look at this dilemma, see C.S. Lewis's ''The Abolition of Man''). These dangling questions set the stage for ''[[The Fever]]''. | ||
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Latest revision as of 15:26, 11 August 2016
It's as if you were saying that you and I are so nice every day and why can't our governments be just like us! But you know the whole thing, Susie—you and I are only able to be nice because our governments—our governments are not nice! You know that. I mean, the state?—policemen?—what's it all for? The only point of it all is to save you and me from spending our lives fighting each other with our bare hands in some pile of dirt by the side of the road—
Aunt Dan and Lemon (1985) by Wallace Shawn
Lemon, a reclusive woman who admires the Nazis, tells us about how she developed her point of view. Her childhood mentor, Aunt Danielle, was a passionate and intelligent defender of authority (specifically, of Henry Kissinger) in public; in private, the same ideals led her to a radically amoral individualism. In a series of recollected scenes, we see Aunt Dan as a charming, challenging friend to Lemon's parents; as a role model and love object to the child; and as the narrator of increasingly horrifying stories about her sociopathic pals.
Notes
This play marked a departure in both style and content. Shawn describes it as his first political work.
Dan's dark side comes across very differently from the self-centered characters of Shawn's earlier plays. Marie and Bruce and A Thought in Three Parts take place in an agonized flood of irresistible impulses, with characters who are so visibly unsatisfied by their cruelties that we may feel safely above their condition. The same demonic zoo is shown here in the cartoonish scenes of Dan's London friends, but Dan herself is a model of self-control who lives in a comfortably realistic world; she's an ambassador from the pit. This is Shawn's first, and most direct and extended, use of a technique which shows up later in The Fever and The Designated Mourner: a calm, friendly voice leads us through rational steps from undeniable truths to ghastly evil conclusions. Dan's rationalizations for atrocities in Vietnam are briefly challenged by Lemon's mother, but in terms of conviction and eloquence, it's no contest.
In his lengthy afterword, "A Note on the Context of the Play" (his first published non-fiction as far as I know, and unfortunately not reproduced in the Four Plays collection), Shawn describes how he saw many people in the 1980s deliberately casting off all notions of social responsibility, and becoming more confident, interesting, and attractive people by doing so—since confidence and liberation are more attractive than the tortured effort that moral thought often seems to require. Aunt Dan moves through life effortlessly and even joyfully. Lemon, however, grows up to be a bitter invalid, barely able to live at all. Did she learn the wrong lesson, or is the difference just that her desires were never gratified? Perpetually adolescent, Lemon has an child's need for purity in her heroes, and when Dan shows signs of a more humble, human side toward the end of her life, Lemon can't understand it and retreats fully into her cold philosophy. We may wonder if her story is to be trusted at all.
The afterword goes on to examine whether a fully consistent moral sense is at all compatible with living in an unjust world. Shawn concludes that although he may not be able to make a purely rational case for his individual ethics and can't really live by them, they are still necessary on utilitarian grounds, in order to prevent a collective slide toward Nazi-style "disaster." But he has just shown us that someone like Aunt Dan is quite happy living in a world of war and murder, and Lemon doesn't consider the Holocaust a disaster; the utilitarian argument only works if you've already chosen to value human life (for an extended look at this dilemma, see C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man). These dangling questions set the stage for The Fever.