Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West Literary Elements

Performance-sensitive play

English

The action takes place in various museums in the various major cities of America in which a couple is put on display in a cage.

The narrator of the play can be considered as being the woman who presents the couple and who tries to profit from them. She can be considered as being a narrator because she is the one who presents the event what are happening on stage.

The mood in the performance is tense, the mood created by the portrayal of the couple in the cage.

The protagonists are the two people in the cage and the antagonist is the woman presenting the couple in the cage.

The major conflict in the play appears to be an internal one experienced by the onlookers, who, while being interested in the couple in the cage and want to ask questions, chose not to do it, fearing they will be judged because of their interest.

The climax of the performance play is the moment when the people interviewed realizes just how the modern world is still racist and biased.

The way the audience will react upon seeing the couple in the cage and their opinions are foreshadowed in the beginning of the play when the couple is taken to the cage and the onlookers watched the procession.

When the presenter claims that the couple went there on their own accord is an understatement because it is later revealed that the couple was actually taken by force.

One of the major things alluded in the play is how things did not got better in the present but rather things remained the same.

While in D.C., the couple is shown being feed a banana by the presenter, through the bars of their cage. The woman is careful not to touch them and while the couple eats the banana, a video of "savage’’ people eating raw meat with their hands while seated on the floor is shown in the background. The image of the "savage’’ eating is representative for the way the western world perceived these ‘’uneducated’’ people and nations. Thus, this image portrays the way in which those nations were perceived by the outside world.

A paradoxical idea is how many of those who went to see the caged couple felt uncomfortable doing so, feeling as if they were doing something wrong, and how, despite these feelings, they still went to see them and manifested an interest in them.

Parallels are drawn time and time again between the 1500s and the present time. The reason why these parallels are drawn is to show that the present time is not much better than the way things were in the past. This thus shows that the present times are not at advanced as many would like to believe.

We find a personification in the line "The run-down TV set appeared depressed.’’

Because this is a performance play, there are no dramatic devices used in a highly traditional manner.