Sweaty blog

 Sweat’s strengths lie in its equal devotion to each character. I was taken aback when seeing the many different voices which came out from this book. It makes perfect sense why Lynn Nottage would choose to present this story as a play — the monologues, character foils, and clever back-and-forths paint the world and its conflicts realistically and with subtlety. Act II, Scene 5 shows the interaction between Oscar, as he prepares to find work at Olstead’s, and Stan, who’s trying to stop him. Stan tries to make Oscar feel as a part of the community, and warns him not to “make some real enemies”, however, Oscar turns down the idea since “they ain’t my friends”, showing the “Us vs. Them” mentality that Oscar holds. Despite being around the company of Olstead workers every day at the bar, Oscar still is treated like an outsider. As the Olstead workers blabber on and on every day at the bar, Oscar is “rarely acknowledged by anyone except Stan.” Tracy is causally racist to him. It makes sense that Stan can’t convince him to stand up for the people of Reading who never supported him. In Act II Scene 6, Chris tries to defend Oscar only for Jason to say “he ain’t with us otherwise he’d be walking the line.” In a self-fulfilling cycle, Oscar is treated as an outsider because he doesn’t support the factory workers, yet Oscar doesn’t support them because they treat him like an outsider. In the end, the fight that breaks out between Jason and Oscar ends up hurting Stan as well, a member of the community, or “us”. It goes to show how unity is crucial towards achieving your goals. If Oscar wasn’t an outsider, he might have joined the union and protested against Olstead with everyone. Without outsiders, there would be no one to replace the existing workers. Even people who are powerless can find power in numbers, so it might seem strange that “Us vs. Them” mentality prevails so much over our country. For example, in the 2016 election, Americans were very divided over hating or loving Trump. What did all that fighting serve besides feeding in to a selfish narrative that the whole world is against you and you’re the sole intelligent rational sane person left in a country of crazies? Americans have always been too individualistic for the good of the community, it’s not a surprise that our society appears to be regressing.