His Name is George
George inhabits the mechanistic inhumanity more than any other character in the story. Almost every word out of his mouth sounds like the text on a motivation poster. He has embraced societal conventions and gender expectations fully and as a result is the most soulless character in the story. Despite this, he is ironically the only person identified by right from his introduction. By contrast, Helen—the play’s protagonist—is identified only as Young Woman until her name is revealed in Episode Five.
Communication Alienation
Several times throughout the early part of the play, Helen is shown trying to communicate her feelings and thoughts only to be stifled by the very act of trying to communicate. Other people are either distracted or dismissive toward. The only way she can get what’s going on inside her mind to come out is through interior monologues that only the audience hears and even understanding is like trying to put a puzzle together. The ironic message is clear: communication in society designed on the premise of inequity pushes people apart instead of bringing them closer together.
An Ordinary Young Woman
In the script, prior to the commencement of the action, the author offers a description of the plot of the story, the plan for how it would best be staged and the hope that each individual production will seek to create a “style.” The section describing the plot is simplicity itself, but the ironic element to it is deceptively complex:
“The Plot is the story of a woman who murders her husband – an ordinary young woman, any woman.”
Almost immediately—certainly by the end of the First Episode and definitely by the end of the Second Episode—it becomes clear that Helen does not exactly come across as “an ordinary young woman, any woman.” In this sense, the description is affirmatively ironic. By the conclusion, however, anyone paying close attention should have reached the point where Helen’s status as extraordinary might be in doubt. In this sense, the irony is that what seemed to be an unusual woman is probably not nearly as unusual as one first thought, especially if one is a man.
Helen’s Hands
The most viciously ironic element to the story begins to build in the First Episode when Helen first tells her mother than a man in the wants to marry her. She immediately follows up this rather startling announcement with the rather bizarre explanation for his affections: “He says he fell in love with my hands.” George will eventually—literally—come to his violent death by those very same hands.
Below the Rio Grande
The phrase “below the Rio Grande” refers specifically, of course, to Mexico, but as a metaphor in Helen’s mind, it represents a way to escape her imprisonment and claim her freedom. Not unlike how Mr. Roe claimed his freedom by killing two Mexican bandits in exactly the same way that George will later be murdered. Perhaps the cruelest irony of the story is that Helen’s hope for freedom is permanently taken away from her from below the Rio Grande when Mr. Roe—now a resident of the Republican of Mexico—seals her doom with his written deposition.
