Reading Response 1, Week 5

The first description of what TRACY is doing alludes to the kind of character the audience will expect. In the dark and musty room, TRACY’s “Certainly Red” lipstick and “very pale foundation” presents the idea that this woman does not stand out besides the kind of makeup she might wear, and only if you got close enough to tell. The text defamiliarizes TRACY with lines like “I spent the morning normal. My daughter brought me breakfast.” The image of a widow mother, or a single can registers as the available image of the distraught woman who carries on her day by acting like nothing has happened in the pass. The thought of a mother getting breakfast ready for the children being one of those available images reverses here with the children taking care of the mother. TRACY becomes dependent on her children. This is another way of showing the grief she is going through because of her husbands’ death. Also we get to know a little bit about Henry but not so much that it introduces another character into the scene and makes the monologue more complex with layers, or has too much going on. The clothes that TRACY used to wear: bohemian threads, and Henry making her take off her white sweater on a warm day, are all actions the text uses to build Henry but at the same time build TRACY, the focus of this monologue. Another place that I saw some good showing was when TRACY’s father is telling her the story of the Wagon and how here father needed an audience so she would give lots of ooo’s and aahh’s. Even though the dad was not looking at her she knew that her father needed “an audience,” or that he just wanted someone to listen without his partner there.