BooksBarbecue
Back The Darker Face of the Earth Save as PDF
Chapters (27)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Half-Title Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Dedication
  7. Cast
  8. Prologue
  9. Act One
  10. Scene 2
  11. Scene 3
  12. Scene 4
  13. Scene 5
  14. Scene 6
  15. Scene 7
  16. Scene 8
  17. Act Two
  18. Scene 2
  19. Scene 3
  20. Scene 4
  21. Scene 5
  22. Scene 6
  23. Scene 7
  24. Scene 8
  25. An Interview with Rita Dove
  26. Biographical Note
  27. Back Cover
  • Why does Dove choose this form (The Oedipal myth/Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex) to tell this story?
  • What U.S. (racial, national, familial) mythologies does she draw from/invoke?
  • How does her play and her strategy for telling her story resonate with other tragic plays, both classical and modern? (alienation of audience, ends with rebellion, fall to tragic hero, etc.)
  • What does Dove transform/change in her play?
  • What category would you put this play in? (tragedy? melodrama?) Why?
  • How does she both incorporate and transform/revise the “tragic mulatto” convention from 19th and early 20th century narratives?
  • What is the importance of repetition in the play?
  • How is fate tied in with the inevitability of the violent ending? In terms of rebellion? Suicide? Impending Civil War?
  • What African retentions does she insert into the play?
  • How does her play challenge more conventional formulations of race and gender?

POSSIBLE PAPER TOPICS

  • Compare the different versions (1st and 2nd editions) of the play. What changes were made and how does this shape the story and the way in which it emphasizes certain aspects of the tragedy over others?
  • How does Dove transform classical formulations of gender in her modern articulation of the Oedipus tragedy?
  • How does race and the history of race relations in the U.S. inform Dove’s retelling of this classic or “universal” tale?
  • Talk about the redemptive possibilities of Rita Dove’s play. How does her conclusion invite multiple interpretations of the racial drama represented in Darker Face?

SUPPLEMENTAL TEXTS/PLAYS

  • Berzon, Judith R. Neither White Nor Black: The Mulatto Character in American Fiction. New York: NYU Press, 1978.
  • Boucicault, Dion. The Octoroon. 1859. Best Plays of the Early American Theatre: From the Beginning to 1916. Ed. John Gassner. New York: Crown Publishing, 1967. 185–215.
  • Fabre, Genevieve. Drumbeats, Masks and Metaphor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.
  • Hughes, Langston. Mulatto. 1935. Black Theatre U.S.A: Plays by African Americans, The Recent Period: 1935–Today. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Ed. James V. Hatch and Ted Shine. New York: The Free Press, 1996. 4–23.
  • Johnson, Georgia Douglas. Blue Blood. 1926. Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950. Ed. Kathy A. Perkins. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. 38–46.
  • Johnson, Georgia Douglas. Blue-Eyed Black Boy. 1935–1939. Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950. Ed. Kathy A. Perkins. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. 47–51.

Biographical Note

Biographical Note