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Articulating protest: The personal and political rhetorics of Clifford Odets and Mari Sandoz in the 1930s
Abstract
This study explores the impetuses behind the artistic practices of Clifford Odets and Mari Sandoz at specific points in the 1930s. It examines especially the tension between focuses on particulars and abstractions in their polemical imaginative literature. Chapter One examines Odets's development as a playwright. His strengths as an artist lay more in his material of the particulars of middle-class life rather than his political framework. Odets's Awake and Sing! was vitiated by his attempts at polemicizing but succeeds in its depiction of identifiable human struggles. His earthy vernacular is the strongest manifestation of his sympathies. Chapter Two examines Sandoz's artistic mission and her attempts to express her mission in Capital City. Sandoz decried the diminution of pioneer values and condemned injustices toward the common person. With Capital City she sought to arouse readers, but her reliance on static, allegorical characters undermines her vision. Chapter Three explores the writers's rhetorical practices, illustrations of Kenneth Burke's and Paulo Freire's theories, which stress the social aspects of language acts. Odets and Sandoz both based their work in engagement with their specific social scenes, expressed themselves in fresh styles, and forged unique artistic forms. Odets, in Awake and Sing!, is generally more successful because of his focus on character; Sandoz could create vivid characters, but in Capital City relies on allegorical types. Chapter Four extends the theoretical discussion by examining Odets's Waiting for Lefty, written in a political mold for a specific audience but enriched by his focus on human particulars. Sandoz's "The Girl in the Humbert," geared for a popular market, was a popular success, but was personally unfulfilling for Sandoz because she felt she sacrificed her political messages for commercial success. Odets and Sandoz were shaped by their social scenes as well as by their personal impulses. In their attempts to fuse political and artistic concerns, each was most successful when focusing on the particular rather than the abstract.
Subject Area
American literature|Theater
Recommended Citation
Nielsen, H. Richard, "Articulating protest: The personal and political rhetorics of Clifford Odets and Mari Sandoz in the 1930s" (1991). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9129566.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9129566