When her children are bothering her towards the end of the play, Hester warns “Don’t make me hurt you” (Parks 83) and threatens “Shut the fuck up or I’ll give you something to cry about!” (84). However, it is still clearly a mother’s love that Hester shows for her children at the play’s beginning, which Parks employs to juxtapose “the murderous rage and despair that causes loving mothers to kill their own children” (Foster) that is seen at the play’s conclusion.Īs the play progresses, the audience meets a Hester that is less able to handle the ceaseless demands of her offspring. The love that Parks’ protagonist shows for her children is multilayered and used symbolically by the playwright. The audience sees the children break Hester physically, while her lovers break her mentally and emotionally, and the world around her breaks her socially. The children cause Hester’s demise, even though they are mere representations of Hester’s abusers and the world’s social injustices - a point which is highlighted by the double casting in the production. She deprives herself of food and sleep in order to protect her “treasures.” Hester sees this as unwavering care for her children, yet the audience may interpret this sacrifice differently.Īlthough Hester’s children are not intentionally harmful, their existence causes their mother to be exiled, homeless, and hungry. This is a trait she even excels at, in both her great fertility and her protection of her children. The only part of Hester’s identity that she, her children, and society agree on is motherhood. Like Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne and Euripides’ Medea, Hester is a model for motherhood. Even the structure of Parks’ play evokes Greek tragedy. Furthermore, In the Blood’s “thematic questioning of free will in opposition to fate” likens to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Schafer 188). While it is clear that Hester, La Negrita, is an allusion to Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, Parks’ protagonist is also reminiscent of Euripides’ Medea. In the Blood finds inspiration in classical Greek tragedy. Casting the same actors for all of the characters in the play personifies Hester’s pitfalls, providing a visual representation of the causes for the character’s demise, which leads to eventual filicide, but also to a small sense of liberation. Society ostracizes Hester, her lovers abuse her, and her children break her.
Actors play Hester’s children and past lovers, as well as unnamed Others of society, representing the endless cycle of society’s scorn and injustice inflicted on the play’s protagonist. Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks employs double casting to create a more complex story in her play In the Blood.
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