Summary
Grandma suspects that the doorbell marks the arrival of the "van people." She asks Mommy and Daddy, "Have you called the van people to come and take me away?" The doorbell rings again, but Daddy hesitates to go answer it. Mommy urges him to do so, but Daddy wants to "talk about it some more." Mommy tells him that they've already made up their minds about opening the door and Daddy was firm and decisive about it. The doorbell rings again. When Daddy still can't open the door, Mommy calls him a woman and he finally goes to answer the door.
Mrs. Barker enters. Daddy and Mommy speak to her as though they are expecting her. When Mrs. Barker greets Grandma, she doesn't respond, insisting, "I don't see them." Mrs. Barker tells Grandma she remembers her, but Grandma doesn't remember Mrs. Barker. Mrs. Barker reveals that she was listening to their conversation outside the door, and says that she has to be very efficient in her work. When Mommy and Daddy ask Mrs. Barker what she does for work, Mrs. Barker tells them that she's the chair of the woman's club. Mommy protests at first, before agreeing that she is, indeed, the chair of the woman's club. Mommy notices that Mrs. Barker is wearing a hat very similar to the one she bought yesterday, but Mrs. Barker laughs and tells her that her hat is cream colored, unlike Mommy's.
Mommy invites Mrs. Barker to take off her dress, which she does. At the sight of it, Daddy says, "I just blushed and giggled and went sticky wet." Mrs. Barker wants to smoke, but Mommy forbids it. When Grandma mentions the well-wrapped boxes that she brought over, Mommy and Daddy ask Mrs. Barker if she's there to pick up the boxes. "Can we assume that the boxes are for us? I mean, can we assume that you had us come here for the boxes?" says Mrs. Barker. When Mommy and Daddy question her, Mrs. Barker remains very vague about her reasons for being there. Daddy mentions that he recently had an operation, Grandma talks about her aging body, how "old people are gnarled and sagged and twisted into the shape of a complaint."
When it comes out that Daddy wants to run for governor, Mrs. Barker begins gushing about her brother, who runs a publication called The Village Idiot, because that's what he is. She mentions that her brother adores his wife and is "the chief exponent of Woman Love in this whole country; he's even been written up in psychiatric journals because of it."
Analysis
The play's structure is built around unexpected arrivals. While it starts with Mommy and Daddy alone at home talking, they are interrupted by the arrival of Grandma, carrying a number of mysterious and well-wrapped boxes. While Mommy is familiar with what a good wrapper her mother is, she has no idea what's in the boxes, and it remains a mystery. The second unexpected arrival occurs when the doorbell rings. Mommy and Daddy have been anticipating a guest (though it's unclear who), so when the bell rings, it comes as something of a relief. However, Mommy and Daddy are slow to go to the door, struggling to find justification for going to answer it, as though they worry what might lie outside the apartment.
The imbalanced relationship between Mommy and Daddy comes to a head in their interactions around whether or not to open the door. Daddy wants to "talk about it some more," but Mommy maintains that they've already decided and that when they decided, Daddy was "masculine and decisive." Daddy is seemingly surprised and delighted to hear that he acted masculine, but the encouragement is not enough to get him to open the door. When he again falters, Mommy calls him names, saying, "You're indecisive; you're a woman." This emasculating and sexist chiding is ultimately what leads him to open the door, to open the apartment up to whatever mysterious visitor might await outside.
Hardly anything is cleared up when they open the door, as the play continues to follow its own strange logic. The arrival of Mrs. Barker only confuses matters further. No one seems to know who she is or why she's there—not even her. While Mommy and Daddy don't seem surprised to see her, they give no indication that they know who she is. Indeed, she is anyone they want her to be: she is the van people come to take Grandma away, she is the landlord come to fix the "johnny." She is even, curiously enough, the chair of Mommy's woman's club, that same woman who so insultingly corrected Mommy about what color her hat was.
Vagueness permeates and insinuates itself into nearly every moment of The American Dream. It is almost like vagueness and confusion are contagious in the world of the play; when one character seems to doubt reality or not know something, then another feels the same way. In this way, the play seeks to show that reality is something that is collectively constructed, shared, and upheld. The notion of the "American Dream," the eponymous central idea at stake in the play, is itself constructed by society and the people in it. Whether it is illogical or not, whether it drives someone to exchange a hat that they like for the exact same hat just to save face, is beside the point. It is the vagueness of meaning and fact that binds people in this play together.
In this section of the play, gender as well as women's and men's attitudes towards one another, remain thematically relevant. In a rather unusual monologue, Mrs. Barker talks about her brother, a man who is very lovable and ambitious, and who runs a publication called The Village Idiot, a designation which she seems to use flatteringly. She goes on to describe him as "the chief exponent of Woman Love in this whole country; he's even been written up in psychiatric journals because of it" (is that an honor?). Mrs. Barker goes on to suggest that woman hatred is too prevalent in the United States, and that there isn't enough "Woman Love." Mommy heartily agrees, but neither of the women quite explain what they mean by these terms. Clearly, gender and the dynamic between genders are important, but no one in the play can quite say what they mean.
