BA#3 Harrower Blackbird

When you first start reading the play, the reader is being kept from a major secret between the two characters. The reader doesn't find out who these people are, how they know each other, and why they are meeting. The reader even finds out that Ray isn't the name this man goes by now. Instead he goes by the name of Peter to hide his identity. The reader is thrown into this story and as the play progresses you find out the secrets of these two characters. The reader finds out on page 18 how these two characters are connected. "How many other twelve-year-old girls have you had sex with?" From that line on, the reader is informed of the other situation that happened years ago. The reader isn't the only one that is kept from this secret. Ray has kept the secret of his past from this co-workers. "You don't have the right to my my my humiliation. Where I work. Where people are. My colleagues. Work colleagues." (page 14). He doesn't want them to know about his past. Ray admits that he has told his wife about his past and is honest to her about it.
I think that this secret that is kept from the reader is related to "The Road". The author keeps the catastrophe that occured in "The Road" a secret from the reader. I do think that McCarthy and Harrower had different reasons to keep a secret from the reader. I think that McCarthy kept what actually happened in "The Road" a secret so that the reader wouldn't dwell on what actually happened but on how the father and son survived and lived after it. I think that Harrower kept a secret from the reader in the beginning of the play so that there would be a suspenseful effect when the reader found out who these people were and how they knew each other.
I think that keeping who these characters are at the beginning of the play, makes for a suspenseful story line and gets the reader intrigued. Not knowing right away makes the reader want to know and continue to read to find out the secret. I know when I started reading it I couldn't stop because I wanted to know why these people were meeting and how they knew each other. I would imagine that seeing this play live for the first time without knowing anything would keep the audience's attention and would have them wanting to know more.