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Analysis Of The Shawl By David Mamet

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The Shawl, 1985, by David Mamet deals with issues of truth and money in the middle class. Mamet presents a case of a woman and two men who deceive her. Already in the first act, John, the initiator of the con act, articulates the conflict between belief and truth as he tells the woman she has a small scar on her left knee, which she must look at in order to realize it exists, since it is the first time she hears of it from a stranger and convinced she does not have it. John locates truth above belief, because truth clarifies all doubts and makes life coherent. After the first session John says to his skeptic partner Charles that she was won over, which rings a bell and enables the connection to another play by Mamet, House of Games, where a similar situation takes place at the end when Mike confesses Margaret that she ever played and conned. Both plays show a group of men scamming women. John summarizes the main principle of the scam by saying it is about giving the victim a mechanism that allows them to trust the scammer. These men logic and trail of thought is supported by what Bourdieu calls the Paradox of Doxa. The plays confront women and women , when the woman is in the weakest position which expresses the popular notion of a patriarchal society that a woman is more gullible than a man and can be easily manipulated. John emphasizes the gender prevalent doxa regarding women’s psychology by assuming that what bothers her is a trauma she underwent,

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