Blackbird is a short play about a man named Ray and a woman named Una meeting for the first time in many, many years. Their illegal relationship from the past was revealed throughout the whole play, leaving out mysterious bits and pieces for the audience to wonder about. The author holds the secret of what happened 8 years earlier, and the secret is slowly being let lose through the two character’s dialogue. After the secret is let out, the tension between the two tightens until one of them breaks loose from it and escapes the tragedy.
"The
who
afterwards
to write you a letter
letters
telling you what I thought of you.
What i felt.
Wanted to say to you.
To not let it
let you have
win.
Authority.
And it was." (Page 11)
This quotation reveals that theres a secret because what happened in the past, and that it had an affect on Una.
This secret is similar to a secret from McCarthy's The Road because in The Road, the secret was also kept to the author from the audience because at the beginning, it wasn’t clear what happened to America. This is similar because the audience wasn’t told what had happened to Una and Ray. The two authors kept the secrets for similar reasons. The secret the author kept from the audience of The Road was in a similar way to how the author of Blackbird kept a secret from his audience. The authors wouldn’t give away what happened in the story to their audience, so they left a trail of clues and hints so that the audience could illustrate his or her own picture of what happened.
"Dark and black and trackless where it crossed the open country. The winds has swept the ash and dust from the surface. Rich lands at one time. No sign of life anywhere. It was no country that he knew." (Page 202)
The author illustrates a picture for the audience so they can assume that since theres ashes and it's a cold black world, the environment the boy and the man were in was burned and that there was no life left around them.
"Ray:I didn't want us to get caught.
I've never
loved Never desired anyone that age again.
Ever.
Una: Just me.
Ray: Yes" (page49)
This small segment of dialogue reveals that something happened between these two. Something happened that they didnt want to get caught for, and the author leaves different pieces of the puzzle so that the audience can figure out the event that happened.
Understanding the chosen secret is significant to the understanding the narrative because it's the narrator that's keeping the secret from us. In order to solve the secret, we must understand the narrative to understand the secret.
2 comments:
I completely agree with the fact that the author kept the biggest secret, and that was keeping the reader questioning what happened between the two.
Una: I wrote
hundreds
Pull out your eyes.
I wrote that I wanted to pull out your eyes, wrote
poke them out, stamp on them.
The eyes that'd looked at me.
The hands.
To
All kinds of things.
I've still got them.
Ray: You kept them?
Even in this short passage you, as the reader, get a sense that something intense had to have happened for her to feel that way. The feeling then becomes calmed by the question Ray asks her. The reader is kept in suspense the whole story. Even at the end i was a little confused about the actual relationship between the two. Whether she had feelings for him or whether he had feelings for her, it was a question I kept throughout the entire play.
BA#4
I agree with what both Annie and Mike have to say about the secrets within the play Blackbird. I never really looked at in the way that Annie did before, in that it is similiar to McCarthy's The Road. It is very evident that the reader is kept from knowing certain things about the characters and their situations and in both cases it works to make the story more interesting. It allows the reader to create their own image of what is happening weither it be to the place one once lived as in The Road or to the secret relationship once had by Ray and Una in Blackbird. Little by little more is uncovered in both stories but certain details are left out, and as to what happens after the story ends is never told. We never know weither or not the little boy makes it to his destination or weither Una and Ray ever speak again in the end of Blackbird. I feel that in both situations not knowing, while can be frustrating, makes the reader think more and offers the reader the oppertunity to create their own ending.
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