39 pages • 1 hour read
James IjamesFat Ham
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
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Important Quotes
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BetaThemes
Familial Bonds and Loyalty
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to assault, murder, racism, and anti-gay bias.
The play poses a central question of what, if anything, family members owe one another. In particular, it asks what parents and children owe each other. Pap’s orders for Juicy to avenge his death appeal to loyalty. Pap insists that Juicy, as his son, is obligated to defend his honor and carry out his wishes. For Pap, the mere act of physically fathering a child means that the child must display allegiance.
The play suggests that one does not owe anything to a cruel parent. One does not even owe love. Juicy experiences little real connection to Pap. He feels as though he should love him and mourn his loss, but the malice Pap metes out during his life makes this difficult. However, Juicy agrees that Rev is in the wrong for orchestrating Pap’s death.
Though Rev is Pap’s brother, Juicy also feels no obligation to show any love or loyalty to him. His debate over whether to carry out Pap’s wishes has more to do with whether Pap is deserving of Juicy’s loyalty than whether Rev is deserving of punishment and justice.
Tedra differs in her view of loyalty, and this creates tension between her and Juicy. She feels that Juicy should feel love and show goodwill toward Rev for the sole reason that he is now her husband. She has no love lost for Pap, who abused her, and feels Juicy should willingly accept Rev as his new father. In this way, she emulates Shakespeare’s Gertrude. Tedra and Juicy’s bond and love for one another is a meaningful one, but, in Juicy eyes, Tedra has chosen Rev over Juicy by failing to defend Juicy against him. Like Pap, Rev berates Juicy for being sensitive and for failing to adhere to traditional masculinity. Juicy is hurt when Tedra fails to step in and override Rev. He believes that her loyalty should be to him.
The play explores the obligation to fulfill parental wishes. For example, Pap demands that Juicy kill Rev, and Tedra wants Juicy to accept Rev. This theme extends to Opal and Larry. Opal struggles against Rabby, wanting to be her own person. She begrudgingly complies with Rabby’s demands, performing femininity by wearing a dress and assisting with domestic tasks. Larry, too, is rewarded with praise from Rabby for entering the military and displaying a traditional masculine demeanor. He seeks her approval and is willing to forsake his own identity, wanting to show his love for her. Rabby seems to want her children to be happy and successful, but her visions of what success looks like have more to do with her own pride. In the end, characters find themselves torn between their aspirations and personal interests and the obligations or expectations of their parents.
Generational Cycles and Their Traumatic Impact
The play asserts that history has a strong and potentially abrasive impact. This includes both generational and racial history. Tio addresses this early in the play when he speaks of his therapy sessions. As Tio says, Juicy has been trapped in a harmful generational cycle: His father, Pap, has been imprisoned for murder while Pap’s father, too, was incarcerated. Tio notes that this cycle undoubtedly stretches back further, culminating with the enslavement of Black people throughout the American South. Through Tio, the play conveys that Juicy himself, though not literally imprisoned, is infected by the experiences of previous generations. Juicy bears the scars of decades of abuse and disparity. Racial inequality, established centuries ago, laid the foundation for the difficulties that Juicy and Tio currently have.
For Juicy, escaping the generational cycle is essential, though he may not be aware of this or make a conscious decision to escape. He recognizes the ways in which he is unlike his father; in contrast to Pap, he is not violent. Juicy has been negatively impacted by Pap and Rev, who expect Juicy to emulate them in their masculinity and demand he change when he does not. Juicy must resist the pressure to conform if he is to break the harmful generational cycle.
Generational history influences other characters as well. The notion of higher education is foreign and comical to many of them, suggesting that education was discouraged or unavailable to their families. In obtaining a degree as a first-generation college student, Juicy demonstrates another way that he defies the confines of generational expectations. Indeed, other characters find themselves hindered by their own personal cycles. Tedra admits that she cannot be alone, that the notion is terrifying to her, and that even being allowed to consider her own thoughts and desires is a foreign notion. Juicy tries to nudge her to be more introspective and identify the kind of life she desires for herself, absent of a male partner’s expectations. Her swift marriage to Rev demonstrates that she has become accustomed to abusive marriages and can’t imagine a future for herself outside of this cycle of violence. It is only after Rev dies that Tedra can begin to see freedom as desirable. Breaking the cycle of toxic marriages is the first step that Tedra takes in asserting her own personhood.
Establishing a Queer Identity
Juicy struggles to assert his identity as a queer man. He is introspective and emotional, traits that are highly criticized by both Pap and Rev. Indeed, Pap’s order that Juicy avenge his murder is fraught with desire for Juicy to prove his masculinity and toughness. Rev, though Pap’s enemy, is like Pap in this way. He constantly pressures Juicy to behave in a more masculine way, and to engage in the slaughtering of pigs for the family business rather than attend college. Juicy is resigned to knowing that both Pap and Rev will never approve of him because of his sexuality. Accepting that his gayness is a part of his identity is at the center of his struggle.
Opal experiences a parallel struggle due to her queerness. She too has a disapproving parent, though Rabby is quite naïve about Opal’s true sexual identity. Opal is comfortable sharing with others that she is a lesbian, but cannot vocalize this to Rabby. Though she despises the pressure Rabby puts on her to perform traditional femininity, Opal still yearns for her mother’s approval. When she finally reveals to Rabby that she is gay, Opal takes an important step toward fully accepting herself.
Larry makes the most dramatic about-face of the three characters. When the play opens, he is rigid and uncomfortable in his Marine uniform. This symbolizes how uncomfortable he is with performing masculinity and pretending to be heterosexual to adhere to social norms. He longs to be “soft” like Juicy, suggesting that he regards Juicy as confident and unashamed of his sexuality. Juicy’s embarrassment after Larry’s comment suggests that Juicy struggles in ways that Larry does not detect.
Juicy’s outing of Larry proves to be the push that Larry needs to embrace his true identity. In the end, Larry’s shirking of his military uniform displays his desire to no longer comply with his mother’s expectations. It also illustrates his desire to explore his gender identity, determining the person he wants to become moving forward. Through Larry, the play reveals the difficulty of the path toward self-acceptance, along with the triumphs of establishing one’s unique identity. The play ends with Larry in drag singing a love song, representing the family’s step forward in accepting its gay family members and allowing them to carve out their own paths and identities.
