Oleanna prologues

The passages in the prologue connect to some of the ideas in the play Oleanna, yet I only somewhat understood them after I read the play and thought about it quite a bit.

From Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh

"The want of fresh air does not seem much to affect the happiness of children in a London alley: The greater part of them sing and play as though they were on a moor in Scotland. So the absence of a genial mental atmosphere is not commonly recognized by children who have never known it. Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy - very unhappy - it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness." (Mamet 4).

This passage has a direct relationship with the play Oleanna. I'm just going to take some excerpts from the passage and then point out where I see the connections.

• "The want of fresh air does not seem much to affect the happiness of children in a London alley: The greater part of them sing and play as though they were on a moor in Scotland
• The children, who are happy despite the harsh setting (without fresh air) is much how the students at college believe that they are there for a good reason.
• "There are people out there. People who came here. To know something they didn't know. Who came here. To be helped" (Mamet 12) 
•  So the absence of a genial mental atmosphere is not commonly recognized by children who have never known it.
• The college students are, as John mentions, nonsense. The "tests, you see, which you encounter, in school, in college, in life, were designed, in the most part, for idiots. By idiots. [...] They are a test of your ability to retain and spout back misinformation. Of course you fail them. They're nonsense" (18).
• Yet this hypocrisy is not realized by the students themselves- they do not recognize "the absence of a genial mental atmosphere": Carol tries to follow the rules, and cannot understand (as she repeats several times) John.
•  Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
• I think this perhaps is telling of how Carol uses the system that the rest of society relies on to get what she wants- she adapts. At first she was dying- failing her classes, something that she can't let happen, and when John tries and tells her not to follow the system, she instead uses it to get her grades. She fully accepts her role as not an individual, but part of society"
• "Because I speak, yes, not for myself. But for the group; for those who suffer what I suffer. On behalf of whom, even if I, were, inclined, to what, forgive?" (40)
• Even if they are unhappy - very unhappy- it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness.
• Of course, this connects to Oleanna's belief that she has failed- that she is a failure.
• "From morning 'til night: with this one thought in my head. I'm stupid." (12)
• Yet John connects to this too:
• "I was brought up, and my earliest, and most persistent memories are of being told that I was stupid." (14)
• So "they", who are unhappy, is everyone- not just in school, but throughout life in general. In reference to an above quote (18), John says that the tests are not just in school but in life.

 
Folk song

"Oh, to be in Oleanna,
That's where I would rather be.
Than be bound in Norway
And drag the chains of slavery."  (Mamet 4).

"Little roasted piggies
Rush around the city streets
Inquiring so politely
If a slice of ham you'd like to eat.

Beer as sweet as Muncheners
Springs from the ground and flows away
The cows all like to milk themselves
And the hens lay eggs ten times a day."

"Oleanna by David Mamet." How Books Got Their Titles. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. <http://garydexter.blogspot.in/2009/04/62-oleanna-by-david-mamet.html>.

Only the first stanza is included in the book, the second two stanzas I found on the above website. Dexter also gives some background information about the folk song.

• Background of folksong.
• A satirical folksong, the mention of Oleanna is about a community set up by a Norwegian farmer (from whence the name comes from). He set up land to try and create a utopia where Norwegian immigrants could come and start up a life in the U.S. The free land was a symbol of hope and success for many pioneers, but as it turned out the land could not be farmed and the whole community failed.
• This could be a parallel to school, where everyone goes there to learn, as Carol says in the beginning. Yet as John says, it is a failure as a school because it's made for idiots by idiots.
• Folk song
•  "Oh, to be in Oleanna,That's where I would rather be.
  Than be bound in Norway
  And drag the chains of slavery."
• A reference to Oleanna being a place for success, better than where they are now.

• "Little roasted piggies

• Rush around the city streets
• Inquiring so politely
• If a slice of ham you'd like to eat.
• The pigs seem happy to give their own meat for others to eat- it speaks about how the college students give everything and pretty much killing themselves for not that big of a deal.

• Beer as sweet as Muncheners
• Springs from the ground and flows away
• The cows all like to milk themselves
• And the hens lay eggs ten times a day."
• So again this is like how not just college students, but everyone in society are in a false happiness, as the first passage of Samuel Butler's stated, and that they all think they are doing so well yet are in reality giving themselves away.