I do not see many examples of communal discourse. Communal discourse is also evident throughout the beginning of this conversation before it turns into competitive. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. I think that it could be argued that Roma is playing by the office rules by playing dirty. As Levene gets arrested, Roma doesn’t do anything to try to help him. At least, I assume he is arrested in the end. How are they defined? Performance & security by Cloudflare, Please complete the security check to access. He moved on to the New York theatre scene, began writing screenplays in the ‘80s, and moved to New England in 1991.His screenplays include Glengarry Glen Ross (which won the Pulitzer Prize as a play), House of Games, and Oleanna. He has to break in and steal the Glengarry leads for Moss even if he does not want to do it. Most of our class selected the restaurant scene at the beginning of the story. I don’t think Levene, for example, does any good job at hiding what kind of a scumbag he is. Thursday. If at all possible, try to watch the film this week, as well as reading the play. Roma is constantly yelling because he wanted to know who were the ones who stole the contracts. He does this in order to keep the sales deal he has with Lingk. If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. ( Log Out /  Our last postmodern reading is Glengarry Glen Ross, a play by one of the most talented American playwrights of the postwar era. 1. Even as his coworkers is being questioned by the police, nothing confirmed yet, Roma is trying his best to give himself more of a chance to succeed at his job, though that means someone else going down. 2. I love that you said that real estate companies are usually all this way. ( Log Out /  In the film this is expanded on quite a bit, as we actually get to witness them attempting to make more sales; Levene takes on a “kindly old man” sort of role, luring his marks into what he frames as an important opportunity he is offering them, almost as a favor rather than a sale. I like your example of competitive discourse of “always be closing” because he is constantly drilling that into his workers in a conversational manner yet he is also being direct and demanding. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. In this play, Mamet has … Lingk: But I’m not counting it. Edit them in the Widget section of the. What are the rules, anyway, for success in the real estate office? © 2020 Shmoop University Inc | All Rights Reserved | Privacy | Legal. I agree with your use of Aaronow as a character that is acting. This may not be much of an argument, but I believe they are always themselves. And even until the end when the robbery occurred he still abides by them. This is especially true when they reenact their sales together. He slyly convinces Jim Lingk that he is someone named Ray Morton, the director of European sales with American Express. In the film, there is a part where Levene is holed in a telephone booth during a thunderstorm as he conveys to his client over the phone that he is on vacation with his travelling secretary somewhere tropical. When are the characters acting? Moss thinks someone should break into the office, steal the leads, and sell them to a guy who is willing to pay good money for them. The men seem to only be honest with each other, but we see that even this has it’s limits (especially in Moss and Levene’s cases). Roma tries to psychologically investigate who was the thief and suspects on Aaronow and he asks him, but Aaronow becomes nervous. In the end the only character who is playing by the office rules is Williamson. This occurs when Roma and Levene talk, and essentially puff each other up, in reflection of the success of their past sales. 2. In Ginsberg, Morrison, and Mamet, we encounter critiques of racist and sexist social structures and profound questions about the health and viability of the traditional nuclear family, democracy and the capitalist system. 1. There was Galaga, The Cosby Show, New Order, bizarre fashion choices, and a little film known called The Empire Strikes Back.. When our characters are trying to make a sale, they do not let the people they are interacting with respond very much. The men are in constant competition with each other. There is definitely no one playing by the rules in the book. I also agree that Roma is a good character for the person who is always making the sale no matter what. Obviously Roma is the most effective user of competitive discourse, but he doesn’t use it all the time, and it’s interesting to think about why. John, John, ten percent. Here, masculinity is linked to their job performance, and once they stop performing as well, they lose some part of their masculinity. Once he realizes Levene might be getting fired at the very least, Roma makes it a point to say “my stuff is mine, his stuff is ours.