Play “Awake and Sing!” by Clifford Odets: House and Homelessness

Abstract

This paper discusses a problem of house and homelessness in an oeuvre of one of the most significant American dramatists, Clifford Odets. This problem is considered in a broad aspect and also in narrow, specific circumstances, on the example of Odets’s first full-length play “Awake and Sing!” (1935). Its genre is defined as a family chronicle; the story is contained within the four walls of one flat in Bronx, where a Jewish family that bears the name Bergers is lodged. They are immigrants from the Eastern Europe desperately trying to find their second Motherland, the second home in the US. But having lost their roots and, as seems, having just made it to shore, they again — with all their might — flee from the newly found family. Such analysis shown in this paper is aimed at expanding the views on Odets’s dramatic works; its goal is also to consider his artistic method of creating an image of Jewish emigré from Eastern Europe in the USA. Refs 23. Figs 7.