Glengarry Glen Ross

In the first two scenes of Act I, the three salesmen are awash in Toxic Masculinity and the Competition for Dominance. Each of them feels cornered by this sales competition, afraid of losing his job. Even Moss, whom Williamson identifies as being in second place, feels threatened. The company’s exploitative management practices become apparent through the salesman’s conversations. The absentee owners, Mitch and Murray, are pitting the salesmen against each other and making them fight for their jobs, with no dispensations made for loyalty to employees to helped build the firm. As Levene points out, giving the best leads to the top salesmen makes it easier to stay on top and increasingly impossible to dig oneself out from the bottom. This model of giving advantages to those who are already successful is a key feature of capitalist economies. For the average American, a single instance of bad luck—a serious illness, a bad investment, or dismissal from a job—can lead to compounding losses that become almost impossible to recover from. Levene was once one of the best in the business, but his recent failures have left him broke. Not only is he unable to scrounge up a hundred dollars for a bribe, but he cannot even pay for his dinner. Levene’s tragic situation illustrates the play’s theme of Capitalism and the Corruption of the American Dream. The American dream promises that anyone can become wealthy with enough talent and hard work, but Levene’s plight shows the other side of that coin: With a little bad luck, even a successful person can become destitute. Conversely, Roma cavalierly describes common fears of misfortune and the need to plan one’s security as pointless and unnecessary—a bit of bluster intended to close a sale, but also an attitude he can only access from the position of privilege that comes with being, however briefly, a winner.

The simple setting—an unchanging set of booths in a Chinese restaurant—along with the lack of physical action from characters, who largely stay in their booths, emphasize the language of the play. The language is not only written in David Mamet’s signature rhythmic style but is primarily spoken by those who are trying to make a sale, beginning with the least effective salesman and ending with a demonstration of Roma’s talent as the top salesman. Both because the competition has made them desperate and because they have all staked their identity and self-worth on their success as salesmen, the central characters here are all engaged in The Constant Pursuit of Selling. They can never turn it off, even when they are away from the office. While only Roma makes an actual real estate transaction in the first act, both Levene and Moss engage in salesmanship to try to get what they want. 

Presuming that Levene isn’t exaggerating about his past successes, his clumsy attempt to sell Williamson on giving him leads is evidence either that he has lost his touch or that the cutthroat competition has unnerved him to the point that it is undermining his abilities and setting him up for failure. Regardless, when the stakes are his own livelihood, Levene can’t deliver an effective sales pitch. He stammers and begs, then he becomes hostile and insulting. As a last-ditch attempt to convince him, Levene offers Williamson money—a cheap ploy that likely isn’t in the salesman handbook, since the seller’s purpose is to make money, not give it away. But Williamson calls his bluff by demanding a hundred on the spot, forcing Levene to reveal that he is broke—tantamount, in his world, to an admission of weakness.

Moss is much more cognizant of his sales pitch, which makes sense for the second-place salesman in the firm. He chooses a moment when Aaronow has just lost a sale, making him vulnerable as he sinks in the office ranks. Moss creates a “them” out of the Polish customer who didn’t buy (and Indian people for good measure) to construct an “us” with Aaronow, making him feel that Moss is on his side. Moss presents the idea of robbing the office as a hypothetical, easing him into the idea by making the office the enemy and portraying the robbery as righteous and deserved. When he can’t close the deal on the strength of his words, Moss entraps Aaronow with dubious legal information, making him feel that he has no choice but to comply and take on the risk of the operation. Roma, however, has the coveted Glengarry lead, and although the act ends before his main sales pitch, he is able to rest on his laurels. Roma exudes masculine confidence and imperviousness—even if it is a sales trick—before even laying out what he is selling, inviting his target to follow him and try to be like him, without the reek of desperation that hangs over the other salesmen.