Customer Reviews

Aunt Dan and Lemon (Wallace Shawn)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I unwantingly began reading this play as a class assignment and by page 3 I was captivated. I couldn't put it down. It made me think about morality and question my own ethics. Aunt Dan helped me understand the concept of ideology, knowing my "role" in society and how morality and ethics shields each of us from seeing ourselves, really seeing who we are. I look forward to reading it again...

I have read and been blown away by Shawn's The Fever and The Designated Mourner, and now by Aunt Dan and Lemon. The moral ambiguity that is the conscience of educated, middle and upper class Westerners is the stuff of Shawn's aesthetic, conversational dilemmas. To have the time to consider murder and the threats to our little comforts must come out of the need to murder, a cushion of eras and generations. How else can a society of ideals be established? While the closing speech of Lemon's understanding of Aunt Dan's ideas can be seen as repugnant, it questions just what the value of having morality is, especially when you have an intellect rooted in civilization, existence, even hope and dreams.
But what stimulates the mind even more is the consideration that Aunt Dan is wrong, that compassion can be an involuntary response or spontaneous reaction to another. That people can actually enjoy one another, honestly. Without injecting too personal a view, I'd say that the quality of this work is the potential to see the other sides, that minds are flexibile, and the pursuit of ideas-thusly societies-against our animal essence can be the trial and not the verdict.
But Shawn asks what's so bad about not caring? You may say, what's so bad about promiscuity? Prostitution? Having the memories of a childhood to keep one company in old age?
I could go on, and still not know what I'm talking about. But it feels so important and interesting. I suggest you read this work yourself, or see it, I know I'd like to.

do you believe killing is wrong? have you ever killed a cockroach? even if you answer no, and say that killing anything under any circumstances is wrong, wouldn't you change your mind if your home were absolutely infestated with cockroaches? if the cockroaches were dropping from the ceiling and crawling en masse up your arms and legs? then you might do something, no?

aunt dan says the nazis were simply defending their homes and that killing for them was a moral and honorable action. outrageous? come see what else aunt dan has to teach.

"lemon" wastes away in her apartment with the vivid memories of her aunt while she weighs morals, politics and the value of life.

One of the most thoughtful and disturbing plays I've read, and so vivid in my mind that I'd swear I'd seen it myself -- or even lived it -- but no, I just read it. Last week I read it again, to confirm how good it is, and you know what? It's damn good. The afterword, "On the Context of the Play," is great too -- I'm going to give it to my ethics students a CUSTOMER-ID:909877 EMAIL:davidrolfe@earthlink.net DISPLAY-EMAIL:source USER-LOCATION:Pasadena, California NOTIFIED:NO TIME:949734716 RATING:4 PRIORITY:2500 SUMMARY:Time to reconsider "The Dice Man" REVIEW:I feel about "Dice Man" a bit like I feel about Ayn Rand's novels: Both begin in our real world and proceed to carry us towards an alternate (superior?) life structure envisioned by the author. I can't see either vision as a complete blueprint for re-forming my life, and yet the ideas are extremely thought-provoking and powerfully expressed. The original "Dice Man" is a great fantasy. This follow-on, set 20 years later, is a (somewhat) more realistic examination of the implications of dice living. True, it's a bit less fantastic than the original, but if you really found the dice notion interesting, you should read this as well. I enjoyed it, both for its ideas and as a novel.