Literacy Analysis: Am I Blue by Beth Henley

Am I Blue by Beth Henley

This article is intended to reveal my analysis on the play of Beth Henley, Am I Blue, produced in December 1981. The play itself introduces two major teenage characters which represent the difficulties of adjustment to adulthood, which becomes the main issue of this comic play. Therefore, the analysis of two main characters in the play will become the focus of this article.

Am I Blue is a play written by Beth Henley in 1973 which tells about the problems that two teenagers, John Polk and Ashbe Williams, have to encounter. Based on the general reading of the play, the pre-eminent theme of this play is the adjustments of teenagers to the adult world. There are typical moves of teenagers’ nature which will never change over the time, and those are accurately framed in the play. John Polk, seventeen years old, and Ashbe Williams, sixteen years old, are the stereotype of teenagers in which Beth tries to display. Here, in the play, Henley describes John Polk as a boy teenager who has a problem with society around him; he wants to fit in, but he does not actually want it. Meanwhile, Ashbe is a girl teenager who has a unique style and personality represent her hard and different personality; she does not want to fit in with other girls, but she actually desires it.

            Group fitness problem has been a very critical issue of social adjustments among teenagers for decade. When one cannot fit in a peer group, he will automatically be judged as unsociable, this leads him to a challenging life than those who can easily fit in. John’s decision of going to strip club in order to ‘prove’ himself is a major yet ironic reflection of how teenagers are willing to do something they actually did not want in order to get peers’ acceptance. If he refused the appointment given by his friends, he might not be allowed to join the group anymore. John’s confession about his true feeling about the appointment in line 288 and 290 become a very strong prove about this issue. It was his acceptance of the word ‘normal sheep’ given by Ashbe in line 260.

            In contrast with John, Ashbe seems to accept her uniqueness instead of following her peers’ styles in school. She seems to enjoy her loneliness, which leads John to mock her that she actually wants to be a part of the group. Here, Ashbe use the word ‘sheep’ to refer to the bunch of girls that she wants to avoid the most. The use of the word ‘sheep’ indicates how Ashbe sees people shepherd by society around her, and she does not want to admit John’s opinion that she wants to be like the other girls by the phrase “green of envy”. John’s words of the mocking is reasonable; Ashbe presents herself as someone who does not want to be the like of other girls, yet she is able to explain about the appearance of G. G in the beginning of the play. If she does not care and like being them, she would not give that much attention; she also would not have to be mad when John says that she is green.

            In this play, then, the problems that everybody might have experience in their life are neatly shown. It reveals different thoughts about the problems and world through the two major characters’ minds and behaviors which prop up the plot of the play. John and Ashbe can be represented as the color white and black. White is the representation of something/someone that need to attach to another color in order to ‘colored’. While black is the representation of something/someone that stuck in that position and cannot be changed by another color.