Dear Friends,
In the play “Six Degrees of Separation“by John Guare there is the theme of duality of man. To make his point, Guare paints not only characters, but also society in contrasting lights – two sides to every story, and two sides to every person. To add literal representation to the figurative comparisons, Guare poses dialogue within the drama that calls for a set design to include a two-sided painting that casts a daunting shadow on the stage itself and the lives of the characters that inhabit that stage. One side of the painting embodies logic and form in hard lines and sharp corners copied from the cubist school of art. The opposing side of the towering canvas is the antithesis of logic; a mirage of curves and twisting themes, colors blurring without clear beginning, end, or form. The painting is an obsession of the central characters, and as the emotional ebbs and tides of their moods swing from one extreme to the other, so the painting switches sides to reflect the mood of the scene. This idea of duality can be easily applied to the principle of sociological imagination.
The textbook definition of sociological imagination is: “an awareness of the relationship between an individual and the wider society (Schaefer 479).” In Six Degrees of Separation, the focal character of Paul is a master of the sociological imagination. Paul is a street hustler lacking even a basic high school education. However, through the help of Trent, an upper crust lover, Paul learns how he as an individual can transcend his urban background to impact levels of society common convention would classify as out of reach.
Through informal tutoring in areas of diction and conversational topics, in a matter of months the former uneducated, homeless prostitute gains the knowledge needed in order to infiltrate three households of New York’s upper class society. He is not only able to gain entrance into each house, his mask of faux culture grants him acceptance into the inner trust of the families he meets there. This is most prominently exemplified in the case of Flan and Ouisa Kittredge, not so coincidentally the proud yet symbolically blind owners of the afore mentioned painting. It was not until Paul has come and gone that the Kittredge family discover or even suspect that anything is amiss. In casual conversation with their close friends the Larkins, Flan and Ouisa discover their experience with Paul – who they had believed to be a college friend of their own children, as well as the son of celebrity Sidney Poitier – was the result of smoke and mirrors. Paul had found his way into the lives of the Larkins in a virtually verbatim set of fabricated events to the ones that brought him into the Kittredge household. The beacon of enlightenment burns bright letting them know that something was wrong.
In another branch of society, far from the upper crust of the Kittredges, but equally far from his disadvantaged roots, Paul also affects the society around him in the cases of Elizabeth and Rick – young lovers from Utah, fresh to New York and sparkling with naïve innocence. Paul is able to win them over by telling them that he is the illegitimate son of Flan Kittredge, and that his father wants to support him but that his wife would not accept his tainted lineage to tarnish her family. Elizabeth and Rick buy the story easily. Paul is even able to convince Rick to give him money – their entire savings – against the wishes of Elizabeth. That night in contrast to his heterosexual upbringing, Rick gives in to Paul’s seduction. The conflict between his actions and his moral beliefs is too severely different and deviant consequently driving Rick to suicide.
However, as artful as Paul is at being the individual capable of directly influencing society, his own concept of how society affects him is faulty and skewed. By the end of the play, Paul doesn’t even know who he is. His name has changed to Paul Poitier Kittredge – a blurred montage of his different fabrications condensed into one nonsensical characterization. He thinks that he can move in with Ouisa and Flan and truly be their son and heir to their empire as if his fictions had not been exposed as fraud. He doesn’t understand the consequences for his actions or that his fate is going to jail, not realization of a fantasy world. His duality exposes the duality of society, but in a circle of fate the duality of society exposes Paul’s divided self. He is, as is the entire world painted in Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, the epitome of the concept of sociological imagination.
Peace Love Trust
rikki lee travolta
Review other RLT commentary
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Stand Against Racism
Writing About Life
Crazy Pants Travolta
Gregory Hines
Everwood
Book Excerpt: Bus Fare
Learning to Stand
A Time of War
Country Charm
Talking Frankly About Family (& Christmas)
My Fractured Life
Forever Love
Good and Evil
Man Behind the Wheel
The Little Engine that Could: A Memorial
Perceptions of Perfection
Personal Decisions
Responsibility in Communication
You Done Good
Duality of Man
Evolution of a Hero
Reason to Quit - Stop Smoking
Beware of Stalkers
Dare to Dream
Do The Right Thing
Dealing with Abuse
Mother's Day
Right to Choose
Support the Cause
Just Try
Virtue of One
Martin Luther King Jr
Free Form Jazz
Creating the News
Great Expectations
Story of a Life
Acting 101
Why I Cried
Personal Values vs. Monetary Value
Broken Hearts
Dignity over Jealousy
Community Responsibility
Life, Honesty, and Integrity
Drug Withdrawal
Christmas Spirit
Rikki Lee Travolta's debut album!
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