“I don't believe in a message. I think it would be disastrous if you could say what the message of Hamlet was. Even with a minor play, everyone is going to come away with something different depending on if they've just left their lovers or if they've just had a child or if they've just been fired.”

Beth Henley

I saw this quote and had to include it in my paper. It sums up my major arguments, also reveals a dilemma I’m struggling with. This is because I because agree with the quote and I don’t agree with it. The part I agree with is that everyone can come away with something different from a play, and yes, this will largely depend on what your state of mind was when you saw it. Just like Beth Henley is alluding to, if you’ve got something stealing your brain’s attention, your mind is going form associations relative to its current state, and keep closely to the same path you started down before ever stepping foot in the theatre. The mind is awesome at making connections, and sometimes it’s a little too good. This can make you sound like an idiot if you occasionally go so far as to over-think an issue. Not me, just someone I know.

The part I don’t agree with in Henley’s quote is where she says there is no main message in a play. Although you can have multiple interpretations of them, I believe there is one main, overruling theme to each, and if not, well then that would tell me the author has failed miserably. Richard Levin, in the JSTOR article, My Theme Can Lick Your Theme, said, “A few years ago in an article on the thematic interpretation of English Renaissance drama, I pointed out that while the critics…all agree that the play must be “about” some general idea, usually called the central theme, they very rarely agree on what that idea is in any case.” Oh, this says it perfectly. He concedes the point: there is a theme, a main one, no doubt; just good luck in getting everyone, let alone anyone, to agree on it. And this goes back to what Henley is saying: that the message is ultimately subject to personal interpretation. For my paper, I’m going to use both elements in my discussion of Wilson’s Two Trains Running; that there is one main, principal theme, and then there’s a second theme that you’ve got to go off the beaten path a bit for. I think an element that Wilson uses to his greatest advantage is his ability to construct a theme for his plays, and then dilute it through the entirety of the run. He does it in a subtle, yet effecting way, and one that grows gradually and stronger over time. This idea came to mind after seeing the in-class video where August Wilson, during a personal interview, stated the underlying theme of Two Trains Running. He said his theme for the play centers on the changing course of the black man; that in Two Trains Running he was no longer going to wait for his ham to come to him. This time, when Sterling breaks into the store and comes back with Hambone’s ham, it illustrates how no one’s sitting around anymore, waiting for something to slap them across the face and tell them there’s a magical truck outside: no one knows how it got there, and it’s full of watermelons. Now they’re going out and getting their ham - err, “ham”.

So we have the stated theme coming directly from Wilson’s mouth, which is rare to get something this concrete from the creator himself. But this disclosure, along with a certain line that comes up again and again throughout the play, made me think Wilson has intentionally fused the two together, to make his theme more solid. That line is: “Hey Risa, give me some sugar.” Or it could be, “Give me a cup of coffee.” They’re all the same and achieve the same result. That result is, to keep the theme in the forefront of the action and alive through the run of the play: to not have it disappear among everything else that’s going on and all the people that walk through the door of Memphis Lee’s restaurant. Wilson has employed this device to keep his theme resonating. It’s on page 4, 17, 21, and on and on, and it comes in sentences that could be easily understood to be passing phrases of conversation, but if you pause to look at them, are something else entirely. This sentence is spoken to Risa, distinctly so. The saying of the line in her presence is not just repetitive rhetoric. Wilson is using Risa’s shoulders to rest his theme on.

“Give me”; the words echo throughout. This is the idea Wilson is playing off of, that the theme is changing from one where the characters are waiting for something to come to them, into something they must decide to go out and get. What’s brilliant about it all is it allows Wilson to employ it on every main character that walks through the door of Memphis Lee’s Restaurant because of his use of Risa. This isn’t an oversight. If he had only one or two characters use the line it would lessen its impact and weaken Wilson’s critical objective. That not just a few people have been waiting on their ham, so to speak, but everyone. A few, during the action of the play, are changing right before our eyes. Wilson has extended it to all, as every man represents the varied entity that man is in a society. They’re not all the same, they want different things, have different things, come from different places, and Wilson knows and represents it here. On page 4: WOLF: “Hey, Risa, give me some sugar”; page 17 & 44: STERLING: “Say, baby, give me a cup of coffee”, and, “Give me another bowl. Give me a couple of them muffins too” (and Sterling’s “give me’s” outnumber everyone else’s, in case anyone’s keeping count, as I assure you Wilson was); and page 106: WEST: “Hey, Risa, give me a cup of coffee…” and “Let me get some sugar, Risa”, etc. This allows his audience to never lose the theme, no matter how deep we get into the subject matter or how our attention has been diverted by what’s going on onstage or thoughts on something else in our minds– Wilson keeps jerking our heads back to what he needs us to keep in the forefront of our mind, even if we haven’t yet grasped the big picture of his prevailing theme. I like Risa, I think she’s a key character and is used in a special way in Two Trains Running. I think she’s so special, in fact, that I’ll go so far to say that she’s used as a touchstone for the play: a touchstone for the theme to wrap around her shoulders and be carried predominantly on them through its entirety. I will spend my time justifying these ideas. Making conjectures like this is always tough. How much can you really know about what the author intended? How much did Wilson really set everything up? If I lay out evidence piece by piece by piece, and in the most obscenely brilliant way ever, can I get any validation that it was ever anything Wilson truly intended? No. Oh well, that’s the fun of it, I guess – how close can we come. There are two main reasons why I believe Wilson is using Risa to emulate his theme as he does. One: Repetitiveness. It just happens too many times, these instances of lines starting with “Give me…” along with the fact they’re directed at Risa. And more elemental in this: they have each been tailored to the person. The respective “Give me’s”, depending on whom is saying them, are all distinct to that character and I think it has been intended by Wilson and furthermore I think it is brilliant because you can’t lose the theme and flop around on your own: Wilson’s got a leash on you and you’re his herky-jerky kid. For example, West’s “Give me’s” do not sound like Sterling’s. West’s are very clear-cut and decisive and he states them and moves on with his business, just like how he goes about everything else in his world: “I’ve just said this and now I’m focusing back on the things that are really of most importance. I may have asked for sugar but obviously it was of little use to me and what is of use is this thing over here which I’m going to go towards now, goodbye…” Wolf asks for something, barely touches it, ignores it, and is off again and out the door. It can’t be just chance, for how come West hasn’t been attributed lines like Sterling has who asks for everything? The answer is because Wolf doesn’t need to ask for anything because he’s too busy walking out the door to get it. That’s how Wilson writes him, putting the answer right in front of the reader and illustrating how distinct the two men are. I think who Sterling is can be seen clear in the lines attributed to him: “Give me a muffin (I want a ranch); Give me some beans (I want a job); Give me some sugar (I want you, Risa).” Wolf doesn’t sound like Sterling because he’s not Sterling. This is where my second point comes in: Wilson has used this to keep the black man together yet distinct at the same time with its use: that man has their own properties and ideas and goals, all men, black or white, which make them unique but at the same time groups them under the general umbrella of the wants and desires that they all possess and these in turn guide each man on their path through life and you can see it in the words that come out of their mouth. Yes, I know they’re asking for beans, but how often do you think you say something that’s really a manifestation of a deeper thing going on inside that’s roaring its head up to the surface, trying to find an outlet before it really starts to pound on the cage. Think about it. Sub-consciousness is a bitch. My second point, of whether Wilson had intended all this use of Risa or not, is illustrated in the question: could he have used another character in Risa’s place? Could he have reserved her for some other important meaning he was also trying to illustrate, like a commentary on women and sexuality and cultural views, etc? No, I don’t believe so. Yes, she still does that, but I believe they’re just another facet or Risa and not a main purpose.
Also: She’s a woman! The only woman we see! This should already draw you in like a tractor beam of the alien ship. Look at me! Look at me! I can see Wilson waving his hands. Another great move of Wilson’s is how he uses the exaggerated thoughts and words of his characters to serve as a sounding board, or “foil”, for the voice of reason. This also accentuates the theme as well in allowing Wilson to show how ludicrous Sterling’s “ideas” are and what he should really be thinking about is the thing farthest from his mind. On page 94, West has just finished giving this long speech, lecture almost, to Sterling about how he’s carrying around this “ten gallon bucket” when what he really needs is a “little cup” because his ten gallon bucket is never going to be full. And so he’s saying all this, it takes up about three-fourths of the page, and he finishes with one little sentence illustrating a metaphorical idea his daddy had told him about “finding his ranch and the woman would come.” But all Sterling hears is “ranch”, and completely desecrates all the good things West just told him by going on a torrent about wanting a ranch: “That’s what I’m gonna do, Mr. West. You hear that Risa?” “We going to Vegas and I’m gonna get me enough money to buy us a ranch. You like horses? I ain’t never seen a real horse…”, and it’s maddening and funny all at the same time, but more maddening than anything; but effectively maddening, and this is where Wilson’s vast ability shows through. He has the skill to get a reaction from his audience with workings like this, feeling themselves become exasperated at Sterling and realize how backwards he has it and further, know that he should turn his energy towards going out and getting these dreams, instead of going on and on about them as they get more outlandish and unattainable. You want to scream at him. That’s an effective writer. Furthermore, this illustrates Risa’s elemental presence again in the play. The pendulum swings and its fulcrum always lands back in her general area – would this conversation even be possible to the extent it goes without the presence of Risa? Well let’s look at it; without her there, the conversation would have stopped with just talk of ambitions and proper procedure about going through life, and would have missed the “person” element, the thing that makes something human to us, that personal success is meaningless if you don’t have something to share it with and that there’s an importance of having a good woman or man beside you. Back to the other ways the line “give me” is used. I mentioned before that the distinctive way they’re heard, “Give me…” are bounced off Risa. But they’re also coming out in another way: the “give me’s” that are directed at the white man, and these are much more subversive. They don’t use the clear definitive words of “give me”. They have been glazed over and sunk in with other lines of reasoning and scheming and thinking so they’re almost unintelligible except for a little peep of a “Give me” that manages to squeak out in the midst of all the loud and booming and sure-footed words the present speaker boosts them up with. For example, Memphis wants his land back. But this time he’s doesn’t have a person like Risa to say “Give me” to. He can’t just come out and say it, and Wilson knows this. By employing all Memphis’s lines of “Give me” with Risa, he’s shown how the “Give me’s” drastically differ when asked in conjunction to the white man. He’s not telling Risa to cook up the chicken anymore. Now, when facing the white man, it’s not like it is back in the kitchen.

Wilson revised many many times.