Free Choices Toward Authentic Existence

Marsha Norman (1947--) is one of the most important playwrights in contemporaryAmerica. Most of her plays focus on marginalized people seeking for survival incontemporary living predicament. This thesis undertakes to study her most representativeworks Getting Out and’night, Mother in order to analyze their common theme. It argues bothplays dramatize an existentialist theme of free choices defining authentic existence.In Getting Out and’night Mother, Marsha Norman depicts two women’s living plight setin contemporary America. The existential predicament of Arlie in Getting Out displays theabsurdity of society. However, the existential dilemma of Jessie in’night, Motherdemonstrates the alienation between Jessie and the people around her. Trapped into an absurd,estranged and lonely living condition, the heroines in the two plays feel anguished, anxiousand desperate. They gradually realize that only by taking actions and making decisions canthey get rid of their living plight and find the meaning of existence. After a series of blindstruggles, Arlie finally chooses to integrate the split self and embraces a new life that issymbolized by her new name as Arlene. Her choice of transforming Arlie into Arlene leads tothe realization of autonomy. However, Jessie, as a victim of epilepsy that has temporarycontrol of herself lately, resolutely resorts to suicide with a declaration of “self protection”.Arguably, Arlie’s choice of “to be” and Jessie’s choice of “not to be” both demonstratetheir existential quest for authentic existence. In choosing to live or die, the protagonistsmanage to exercise free will in their lives and in so doing they not only realize the value oftheir existence and define their authentic existence ultimately. In dramatizing Arlie’s choice of“to be” and Jessie’s choice of “not to be”, Norman does not mean to judge which one is better.What she emphasizes is free choice based on the sober awareness of reality and the will oftaking fully responsibility. As such Norman not only expresses her concern for theprotagonists in the two plays, but also reveals her deep concern for the contemporaryexistential dilemma and the integrity of authentic existence...