Glengarry Glen Ross

Glengarry Glen Ross. Winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Price from Drama. Possibly one of the world’s greatest plays. It has a great story with great characters that people love to watch. That’s what makes a great play. I think that another very important factor is the conflict in the story. It is not your everyday conflict of a play. It has pizzazz. According to the Introductory to Play Analysis book, chapter five, there are six important questions to ask yourself when analyzing a story’s conflict. Who is the protagonist? In Glengarry Glen Ross, the protagonist could be a multitude of people. In my opinion, a protagonist is the character who has to fight the antagonist, whatever or whoever that might be. He/she also is the character that you are rooting for. I feel that this story could have many protagonists, but in my opinion, I feel that the protagonist is Levene; Shelly Levene. He is that character who starts off the show in turmoil. He feels that he is going to be fired because the bossman, Williamson is not giving him any of the leads that Levene needs to make sales. He says that he has a family to support and that he is one of the best people that the firm has, but he is not being used to his full potential. Williamson, who is working for Murray and Mitch, is not giving Levene leads because he did not successfully close his last two. The company is afraid Levene is going to lose money for them. Therefore, Levene and Williamson are in a Chinese restaurant and Levene is pleading with him to give him at least one lead from the B-list. Later on in the show, we learn that Levene sells eight of the properties on the B-list and makes $82,000. The only problem is that when Levene comes in with his good news, he “doesn’t know” that the office has been robbed therefore making his sale useless. As a reader, I felt awful for Levene. An audience member I think would have no choice but to root for Levene. Of course, it later comes out that Levene is actually the one who robbed the office, but you fight for him all the way to the end. Levene’s opposing forces, I think are Williamson, Murray, and Mitch. They are the upper members of the company and they are the ones who are keeping Levene down. I also think that Levene’s job is also one of his opposing forces. The pressures of his career are really causing him a lot of stress in his life, and in my opinion, it is what causes him to rob the office in the first place. He needed money and he wasn’t getting any further in life with where he was, so he sold his leads to an opposing office and made $2500. He did what he had to do in his time of crisis. In my opinion, the climax of the story is when Williamson finds out that Levene is the one who robbed the office. It is the part of the story where the audience has an “Oh shit” moment. They realize that Levene, the character that they have been rooting for, the one who had robbed the office. I know that when I was reading it, I was very upset that my favorite character was the one who had robbed the office. It made me like the character a lot more, but I was disappointed. The major dramatic question in the plot is who robbed the office. We are given hints throughout the first act, mostly in scene two when Moss is talking to Aaronow about robbing the office and how he doesn’t have a choice. That is why the moment when the audience finds out that Levene is the one who committed the crime is such a shock. I think that the major conflict is introduced in the first scene. In my opinion, the true conflict of Glengarry Glen Ross, is the complications of their career lives. This is shown in the first scene with Levene and Williamson. Levene is freaking out and is begging Williamson to give him leads so that he can go out and try and close more deals. He uses his family as a defense and says that he needs to support his daughter. I think that this is also foreshadowing to what is going to happen later on in the show. The moment of engagement is when Levene gets Williamson to give him leads off of the B-list. This is the point where Levene’s character has achieved part of his goal as a character, but ultimately leads to the beginning of his conflict. In my opinion, I think that for the most part, the proposed introductory incident, moment of engagement, and the climax all support the major dramatic question. The only one that I thought could have been stronger was the introductory incident. I don’t feel like the audience has enough in the beginning to understand why what happens, happens. It seems like Levene trying to get leads doesn’t give him enough of a motive to rob the office. With a show like Glengarry Glen Ross, discovering the overall conflict is very difficult. Each character almost seems to have their own conflicts. Because of the way the scenes are set up, it is very complicated to pick out a sort of overall conflict that each character shares. That is why I think that the overall conflict, is the robbery of the office. It is almost a sort of whodunit. Each character has a different reason to rob the office, but you as an audience member are waiting in anticipation to see who the culprit is. Also, Act One Scene Two throws the audience off because you expect it to be either Moss or Aaronow. It is one of the red herrings in the show. All in all, I think that the conflict in Glengarry Glen Ross very much groups all of the characters together and gives them all motivation to rob the office.