34 pages • 1 hour read
Clifford OdetsWaiting For Lefty
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1935A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Lefty
Lefty Costello is an absent character. He is the central symbol in the play both within the text and for the struggling workers. He is their chosen leader, their elected chairman. When the men first note Lefty’s absence, Fatt says smugly that perhaps Lefty ran out on them. But Joe insists that Lefty would never run, describing him as having “more guts than a slaughterhouse” (7). Until the last moments of the play, Lefty’s whereabouts are a mystery. Undoubtedly, the motivation behind Lefty’s execution was to cut the movement off at the head, leaving the potential strikers scrambling and leaderless. But as the union members wait for him, some of them are forced to take up leadership slack. Others show their own strength and character through flashbacks. Right before the crowd is informed that Lefty’s body has been found, Agate pushes them to stop waiting for Lefty. Any movement that relies on a central figure to survive is doomed to fall apart because even the most charismatic of leaders are only human. Therefore, Lefty becomes a martyr for their cause, galvanizing the men to call for a strike.
Lefty’s name, which is most commonly used as a nickname for a left-handed person, is in this case unsubtly allegorical. It refers to left-wing politics, which were very much tied to socialist and communist systems of thought in the 1930s. The hardships of the Great Depression made apparent the pitfalls of capitalism, as jobs became scarce, wages became lean, and the working class starved. Each of the vignettes shows individuals who are made powerless within capitalism. Joe can’t feed his family. Miller can only keep his job if he participates in atrocities. Sid can’t marry the woman he loves. Benjamin can’t practice medicine unless he leaves the United States. Despite their honesty, good character, and strong work ethic, they cannot work their way out of the capitalist sinkhole. Lefty is both the savior for the working man and the monster in the closet for the capitalists in power. As an agitprop play, Waiting for Lefty encourages the audience to get angry and take direct action. Odets urges the audience to stop waiting for some mythical leader to show up and tell them what to do, but instead to feel empowered to take action themselves
Fruit
The play takes place at the height of the Great Depression, and food is scarce. Joe scoffs at Fatt’s suggestion that they all have hot meals waiting for them at home. He shares a flashback of the interaction with his wife that spurred him to start fighting for a strike. Edna has put their children to bed early because she has nothing to feed them for dinner. She says that she has read that orange juice is good for their health, but can’t afford juice or any fruit, and therefore their children are sickly and constantly have colds. One of their children was even baffled at the sight of a grapefruit in the grocery store as she had never seen one before. Edna tells Joe that he shouldn’t trust the people in power who are giving his children rickets. Grapefruit itself is a symbol of the Great Depression, since it was a relatively unknown fruit until an agricultural surplus led to grapefruits becoming a staple in food relief programs as a source of vitamin C. Hungry Americans reluctantly accepted the bitter citrus into their diets, finding ways to improve the taste by boiling it or using it in recipes.
Clayton, aka Clancy, Fatt’s union spy, tries to convince the workers not to strike by using fruit as a metaphor. He tells them, “The time ain’t ripe. Like a fruit don’t fall off the tree until it’s ripe” (24). The voice in the audience—who turns out to be the spy’s brother—mocks him by calling him a fruit and making fun of the metaphor. The idea of unripe fruit that isn’t ready to fall from the tree on its own plays into the anxieties of the workers waiting for Lefty to show up and lead them. At the end of the play, Agate pushes the workers to stop waiting. After they learn that Lefty has been murdered, Agate exclaims, “We’ll die for what is right! Put fruit trees where our ashes are!” (31) This statement reframes their conceptualization of the strike, not simply as a cure for their immediate situation, but as world-changing work to benefit future generations. The strike is a genuinely dangerous proposition. They’ll stop earning wages, and Fatt has proven his willingness for violence. They might die, but they’ll leave fruit trees to grow for their children, so none of their children will ever see fruit as an unknown object again.
The Bodies of the Working Class
The play’s first description is of Harry Fatt. As his name suggests, he is round and overfed during a time of scarcity. Fatt imposes himself on the others, obnoxiously lighting a cigar and blowing smoke into the playing area throughout the scenes. One of the main tenets laid out in The Communist Manifesto is that the workers should take ownership of the means of production. Under capitalism, the bodies of laborers become commodified, as the wealthy owner class profits off of their blood and sweat while workers live shortened lives due to overwork, dangerous conditions, and poverty. The play draws a comparison with war. As Sid describes, one unlucky, underprivileged man must point a gun at a man who is just like him in another country. Joe describes his war injuries, bearing shrapnel as a mark of his patriotic duty. Despite Joe’s military service, he and his family are starving. His wife and children are in poor health because they can’t get enough food. They are pale and undernourished. No matter how much he works or how much money he earns for the owner of the company, Joe can’t make enough to feed his family. The bodies of the working class are treated as expendable, both as children and adults. Agate has been working his entire life. He lost an eye as a factory worker when he was only eleven years old.
Joe’s fear of taking action stems in part from knowing that Fatt will shoot him without reservation. Fayette tells Miller that sentimentality about human life gets in the way of business, dismissing Miller’s personal losses from the war as worthy sacrifices for a good cause. The idea of using poison gas to kill suggests that soldiers on the ground are dispensable, since gas would kill indiscriminately, possibly even taking civilians in its path. Fayette doesn’t see workers as human. He prefers his manual laborers to be drunk and pacified, even though drinking will mean more accidents and injuries or deaths. He sees ditch-digging, which is heavily physical, as work for a foreigner.
Similarly, Benjamin discovers that a capitalist-run hospital sees patients without money as less than human, worth sacrificing for the prestige of an unskilled but well-connected surgeon. Within capitalism, the oppressed workers are thrown away, replaced, and forgotten. When Lefty is murdered for the convenience of capitalist bosses who are afraid of losing profit, the workers make his death meaningful. They turn him into a martyr to inspire their action, and offer themselves up as potential martyrs so that future generations can have better lives.
