“Do you what this is? It’s a curse. I can feel it. It’s invisible but it’s there. It’s always there. It comes onto us like nighttime. Every day I can feel it. Every I can see it coming. And it always comes. Repeats itself…It’s bigger than government even. It goes forward too. We spread it. We pass it on. We inherit and and pass it down, and then pass it down again. It goes on and like that without use.”
The actual curse of the title is real. At least, it is real to the extent that it is believed and discussed as though literally existing. The playwright does not make it so easy to understand what this curse refers to, however. One can glean from context and connotation some very concrete ideas of what the curse is really referring to on a simple literal level, but those hoping or expecting for a line of dialogue which flatly states or describes the curse will be disappointed.
“Marvelous house this is. The location I mean. The land is full of potential. Of course, it’s a shame to see agriculture being slowly pushed into the background in deference to low-cost housing, but that’s simply a product of the times we live. There’s simply more people on the these days. That’s all there is to it. Simple mathematics.”
Taylor is a figure representative of predatory land speculation and development and as a result he is part of the curse to which Ella just referred. Emma, Ella’s young daughter on the verge of pubescence for whom the word “curse” has an entirely different metaphorical connotation, tells Taylor right to his face that she considers him “creepy.” There is another term that is used to describe not just him but all his land-buying, predatory capitalist ilk engaged by Emma’s slightly older teenager brother Wesley and it is this term which is really at the heart of the conflict between the starving class and those who control the curse placed upon them.
“It’s a zombie invasion. Taylor is the head zombie. He’s the scout for the other zombies. He’s only a sign that more zombies are on their way. They’ll be filing through the door pretty soon.”
To fully appreciate the metaphor of the curse which nevertheless does exist on a literal sphere in one way, it is necessary to put together the clues which are offered right out. One of those clues is the distinctly visceral difference between the way Taylor and his two henchman, Emerson and Slater, are portrayed in juxtaposition with how the family acts. Although it would be misleading to attribute generalized zombie behavior to them, there is something a big more than metaphorical going on with the three men relative to how they interact with the family. The careful audience member should especially play close attention the differentiations between how the family members enter and exit scenes on the way the three “zombies” appear and exit. The term zombie connotes a particular unnatural hunger and there is an ambiguously played predatory appetite at work among these “zombies” which plays off thematically well against the titular concept of a “starving class.”
