On David Mamets Jewish Identity And His Drama Creation

David Mamet is a famous American Jewish playwright of the contemporary era. So far, he has already won a number of important awards, such as the Pulitzer Award, Obie Award, Best Drama Award of New York Drama Critics. As to the theme in Mamet’s plays, he inherited the tradition of American drama, and considered from the "other" identity of the Jewish race. He is still focusing on problems in American society and concerning about modern people’s spiritual puzzlement and existential crisis. At the same time, Mamet revealed his own idea of the social problems by the unique language and the perspective of low-class characters. This paper analyzed the relationship between Mamet’s American Jewish identity and his theatrical creation of the three dramas, which were generally considered as reflecting themes of business or education. Then explores the process of Mamet’s creation that from the hidden of Jewish ethnic identity to gradually change and takes the time as the clue. Besides, the historical background and family experience as a starting point of this paper.The prolegomenon part of this paper mainly discusses the definition of Jews and Jewishness, and simply reviews the Jewish history and Mamet’s family history, then to provide the background and starting point for the analysis of the three plays. The first part analyzes the image of American Buffalo in the perspective of Jewish time concept, and investigates the modernity reflection under the Jewish consciousness in this play by the time concept of Walter Benjamin. The second part analyzes the conflict and confrontation between Jewish tradition concept and American existing concept in Glengarry Glen Ross, considering the business norms in Talmudic, the Jewish scriptures. In the meantime, this part also explores how Mamet shows the disillusionment of the Jewish American dream and investigates their cultural identity as an American Jewish playwright by the matter of language in this play. The third part explores the Jewishness elements in Oleanna and tries to investigate the creation way of merging Jewish elements and American social situation by considering the theme of "homeless" and the pursuit of "Utopia" in Jewish traditional culture and the combination of David Mamet’s image elements in the play and Jewish history. At last, the conclusion part summarizes Mamet’s writing style and his Jewish experience which from dormant to wake up to manifest in the 1970s,1980s and 1990s. This paper tries to explore how the Jewish people who are the third-generation immigrant of the United States is achieve their social thinking and cultural exploration in literature, and demonstrate its unique in American Jewish Literature.