Further Studies in Drama

Rene Gallimard is the French diplomat that being humiliated and imprisoned because of his embarrassing international scandal. Throughout the plays he addresses the readers and refers to his past while in the prison cell in Paris. He describe his cell and his fame in the past after an apparent hallucination of song liling, a woman that duet dancing with Gallimard in the opera Madame Butterfly. Gallimard often referenced this opera throughout the rest of the play. He also thinks that whatever happened to him in his past was analogue to this opera. In the scene 5 and 6, he describes the plot of Madame Butterfly and knows that he seems to have insecurity to a woman.

                Gallimard who have been married with the girl named Helga clearly that he makes an affair with Song and growing affection toward her. Meanwhile, Gallimard want to make sure that Song is really feminine figure who is falling for him. He does it because he want to validate that he is really a man and tells his superior that he believe Orientals will always submit to greater western force, which matches with his currently believes vindicating his masculinity.

                In this plays, the falling action is Gallimard finally realizes that he is betrayed by his own fantasy of the perfect Oriental woman. Then he puts on make-up, a kimono, and plunges a knife into his body, committing suicide just like the Butterfly in Madame Butterfly.  

Respons 

Brenda Wong Aoki presenting a tragic love story about the girl named Brenda Jean, a mixed girl who fell in love with Kali. Kali lives in Westside with his mother, Aunti Mary. Begin with the narrator as a Brenda tells her story about the west side and her family. Aunti Mary always buys some medicine in her father pharmacy but she buys it with the rose from her garden.

Smoke is a friend of Kali who live in Westside too. He gets jealous because Kali always with Brenda and think that Kali prefer to Brenda than him.

Meanwhile, in a high school, Brenda didn’t love Kali anymore because he’s too lazy to study and fight with Steven. In other ways, Brenda thinks that she must continue her study in the university and forget Kali. The issue that I have found in this drama is about class social which is rich representing by Steven and poor representing by The Westside guys. Brenda requested to be a speaker in the seminar of social class and the student said that she can be a bridge or connection between the rich and the poor people because she can make a friend with both of them.

In the end, Smoke come to Kali’s house and intends to kill him. When Smoke comes, Kali tells the reason why he gets angry at him and he kills Kali but that’s not the climax of the story. Smoke son, dreamer come and kill Aunti Mary because he think that it will help his father to take revenge.