The Other Side of the Dark: Four Plays Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Pink Cake

Pink cake is the symbol of innocence from racism in the play Pink. The 10-year-old white girl speaking monologue bemoans that that her now-dead black nanny stopped making pink cakes for her at the girl’s request under the rationale “You’re not a child anymore, Lucy, you’re a white person now” because the little girl has begun manifesting conditioned racist behavior.

The Shared Dream

Three characters in I am Yours share the same dream of walking up to the door of their home and being obstructed from entry. The author is a self-described “Freudian” and this dream imagery is conventional symbolism indicating immature anxiety about adulthood responsibilities.

What’s Behind the Wall

The first words out of Dee’s mouth in I am Yours are “There is nothing behind the wall.” As the play progresses, the fear of what is behind wall is anthropomorphized into an animal or creature. Eventually, it will be made clear Dee’s anxiety about this entity is a symbolic manifestation of her fear of motherhood: the creature is a baby and the wall is her body.

Epileptic Seizure

Rose’s epileptic seizures are intense and dramatic. Her son Jake is show desperately attempting to help her through it in language infused with imagery that sounds very much like the natural effects of the Tornado of the play’s title. Eventually, he urges her to escape the clutches of the terrifying seizure by letting loose and simply screaming. The blood-curdling scream which follows is the mechanism for escape and the seizure becomes a symbol for the “the other side of the dark” which is the abyss of losing control of one’s very consciousness.

Alan’s Monologue

Alan’s long monologue which constitutes the opening scene of Act Two of The Crackwalker is laden with repulsive imagery representing examples of the scene’s controlling query asking the audience if they have ever begun thinking about some ugly and been unable to stop themselves from dwelling on it. The entire trek of the monologue in which Alan first presents the ugly things he can’t stop himself from thinking of and then the preferable imagery he uses to try to push the ugliness from his mind which only serves to produce an even more repulsive conglomeration of all the thoughts working in unison is a symbolic representation of the Freudian concept of repressed thoughts constantly trying to push their way back into the conscious mind.

Update this section!

You can help us out by revising, improving and updating this section.

Update this section

After you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. An editor will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback.