The Power In Silence
The playwright, Terrence McNally, wrote the play in 1990. The play was adapted for a film in the same year. This short play is set in Manhattan, where there is a service for the deceased Andre Gerald. Andre is not a straight man. He dies of AIDS and is buried in Dallas with his Close family members attending the funeral. Among those who attend the funeral are Cal, his boyfriend, Andre’s Mother, and Penny, Andre’s sister. Andre’s Mother cannot come to terms that her son was gay. She assumes the role of a silent character through play and never utters a single word. Most probably because of the grief for her son’s death, frustrations for realizing that her son was gay and the disillusionment for never giving her son the life he ever wanted. This paper will analyze the effectiveness of having a silent character in the play and the importance of such stage directions in the play While providing explanations for reasons provided.
The stage direction of having Andre’s Mother as a silent character is crucial to the play because it is through this silence that the character traits of this woman come out. She is stoic, vulnerable, and loving simultaneously, as described in the subsequent paragraphs.
Andre’s Mother comes out as a stoic character that conceals her grief and never lets anyone know how she feels. She has lost a son through a deadly disease, HIV-AIDS. She is yet to come into terms with what has just happened, and she decides to grieve silently. Everybody at the memorial is busy talking about how they loved Andre, and now that he has gone, they would miss him. Cal is frustrated that Andre’s Mother can’t speak to him. You cannot fathom what Andre’s Mother is thinking and finds it hard to read her mind. Cal says, “I wish I knew what you were thinking. I think it would help me.” In this particular point, Andre’s Mother chooses to keep quiet, maybe to avoid hurting the family more by disclosing how a bad mother she had been to Andre.
Andre’s Mother is broken and defeated. She lacks the vocabulary to use to communicate her agonies. Penny, Cal’s sister, admits in the presence of Andre’s Mother that Andre always loved Penny’s sense of humor. Penny makes this utterance in the presence of Andre’s Mother, who has not yet uttered a word. From this, we can infer that Andre’s Mother is filled with guilt because she knew that other people were present for Andre when she wasn’t. Also, she becomes aware that her son had a family in Penny, Arthur, and Cal when the mother could not give him a family.
Andre’s Mother is filled with guilt that she was never there for her son, no wonder she keeps quiet for lack of words to express her remorse. Cal discloses Andre’s talent for performing plays. In Andre’s Mother’s presence, he talks about Andre’s dream of playing Shakespeare’s Hamlet role. When Andre finally gets the chance to play the role he wishes vehemently that his mother was there to watch him perform. From this point, Andre’s Mother gets to realize that her son loved her, and as a mother, she had failed him.
Cal discloses that Andre always missed home when they were living together. He says that sometimes Andrea could be so homesick that he could still be sad for missing his mother. This indicates that Andre loved her mother; it is except that he feared rejection because his mother always frightened him. The guilt cannot let her talk, for fear of betraying her son even in death because everyone knows that she was never close to her son, and therefore she may be tempted to lie.
Andrea’s Mother is vulnerable. She is so much affected by her son’s death and the circumstances surrounding his death, to the point that she cannot express herself verbally. Having a son die is one thing, but having a gay son die of HIV- AIDS is a hell of trauma. Andrea, a gay man, dies of HIV-AIDS at a time when there was stigmatization against gays. HIV-AIDS was believed to be a disease for the accursed lot, that is, the gays. No wonder Andre’s Mother cannot speak, for she doesn’t know what to say about her death’s son. Cal tells Andre’s Mother that they loved each other to the moon and back, and their dream was always to be together. Cal tells Andre’s Mother that her silence is the same as the rejection that they gave to have the face from society. He also discloses that, when Andrea was sick, Cal would always ask him if he should tell Andre’s Mother of the sickness. However, Andre never wanted his mother to know of his sickness because he was afraid of hurting her. What we infer from this statement is that it is indeed true that Andrew’s Mother dreaded gays and HIV-AIDS, the reason she lacked words to communicate her pains, disappointments, and frustrations for having realized that her son was gay. Maybe she wondered what the society would think of her for having not raised her son the right way.
Andre’s Mother is loving except that she finds it hard to come to terms that she has lost her son. Everyone has a balloon; they have to let the balloons go up to represent that they have let go of the soul of Andre. All of them want Andre’s soul to rest in peace, and therefore letting the balloons go up into the air will be releasing Andre from the Earth to the heavens. Cal apologizes to Andrea for letting the truth out to his mother that he was gay, and then let’s go of the balloon. As the balloon ascends into the skies, he tells the deceased goodbye and his mother too and then leaves. It is at this moment that Andre’s Mother let her feelings go. Her lips tremble as if she wants to say something but could not then hesitate before letting go of the balloon into the air. On the verge of breaking down, she brings the balloon closer, kisses it, and lets it go.
The emotional moment at the end of the play allows the audience to know that she has so much that she needs to cough off her chest, only that she lacks the way to do so. She cannot believe she has lost a son forever. She watches the balloon even long after it has launched up the sky, a symbol that she longed for her son. Maybe, she wanted to apologize for all the wrongs she had done and for being the worst mother to him.
The mother’s silence is important in making the reader understand the gravity of the consequences of being gay and dying from a disease like HIV-AIDS. Andre’s Mother cannot speak because she is shocked that her son of all the sons has died of HIV AIDS and to add on that he was gay.
In a nutshell, the Silent character that the playwright explores makes message delivery more effective to the audience. Through silence, pertinent issues are articulated in a very subtle manner, which leaves the reader more informed and entertained. The character of Andre’s Mother could not have been this perfect in passing the message were it not for the power of silence that the writer bestows upon this bereaved mother. Indeed, silence can be too loud, to echo what is in the depths of a person’s heart.