Political Correctness
Mamet's play highlights an ongoing debate over "political correctness"— that is, certain norms surrounding hot-button political topics. This debate began in the early 1990s, when Mamet's play was written, but has continued into the 21st century. Opponents of political correctness see these norms as punitive and arbitrary, while proponents of political correctness see them as useful guidelines to avoid making any group of people feel unwelcome or uncomfortable. Carol's version of political correctness has to do with the equality of women and economically disempowered people in the context of the university. She fully believes that John's treatment of her constitutes harassment, and that it has made her even more unwelcome in the already forbidding environment of the university. John, unable to see how his words and actions could have been threatening to Carol, feels completely sure that her accusations are baseless and meant only to punish him. In Oleanna, though John accuses Carol of being obsessed with political correctness, John is just as concerned with upholding conversational norms. His version of political correctness has to do with a certain upholding of the status quo. As John sees it, he has worked hard to reach his current position, and it is nearly blasphemous for a student like Carol to undermine him in a moment of triumph. Carol, meanwhile, sees John's desire for obedience as further evidence that he is entitled, privileged, and undeserving of sympathy.
Power
The minimalism of Oleanna makes the ever-shifting power dynamics between the two main characters stand out sharply. In many senses, John holds power over Carol. He is older, male, relatively wealthy, and successful. John is confident and comfortable in the context of the university. Carol, meanwhile, is powerless. Young and new to the university, she relies completely on John's approval in order to not fail his class. As she points out to him, his evaluation of her could make or break her future. Since she does not come from a privileged background, Carol cannot afford to make mistakes. At the beginning of the play especially, all of the power rests in John's hands. Over the course of the play, though, Carol gains and deploys power. She becomes more confident in her own judgment, wholeheartedly condemning John's values and actions. She gains social power, allying herself with people who she refers to as her "group." In a complex way, Carol's powerlessness actually gives her a certain degree of power. Because John sees her as unthreatening, for instance, he cannot help baring his secrets to her. Because she is a sympathetic underdog, she finds allyship and friendship with her "group," while John, isolated by his own success, is without support by the end of the play. By the play's end, the tables seem to have turned, with power resting entirely in Carol's hands. Still, John's final act is to beat Carol viciously, and his eventual decision to stop beating her only sheds light on the depth of the power that he has managed to retain. Carol can gain the trust of activists and the tenure committee to get power over John. But as long as the two remain confined in John's office, John seems to hold power in the most stark, physical, and literal sense.
Language
In Mamet's play, a character's language is a symbol of and an index of the power they hold. When Oleanna begins, Carol speaks in short, simple, repetitive sentences. John's language is that of a man in power. He moves easily from one subject to the next, telling stories and weaving in metaphors. Some of his language is complex and elegant, but some of it is simply confusing. Just as John's academic career is built off of a mixture of sincere devotion to ideas and in-group social manipulation, John's academic language is partly sincere and meaningful, and partly jargony and exclusionary. In any case, Carol feels all the more powerless in the face of John's language. She does not understand the implicit codes surrounding professorial language—that is, the code dictating that John will use unnecessary complex phrasing and that she will pretend to understand his meaning, even mimicking his language at times. Therefore, she reveals her own powerlessness by asking John what words like "paradigm" mean. As Carol gains power throughout the play and John loses it, her language becomes more complicated and varied, with a far richer vocabulary and longer sentences. While John cloaks his meanings in complex language, Carol highlights hers with clear and sharp language. John, meanwhile, losing power to Carol, loses his control over language. His vocabulary becomes simpler and more repetitive. In a sense, this less-eloquent language is more truthful: as he loses access to academic language, John is forced to reveal his actual feelings and thoughts.
Gender
The power difference between Carol and John, primarily based on their positions as student and teacher, is exacerbated by their different genders. Carol feels that John has taken advantage of her by using the social privilege he enjoys as a man. While John does not intend to treat her in a sexual or sexist manner, Carol feels that his words and his physical touch reinforce a preexisting existing power imbalance by playing into misogynistic tropes. Interestingly, Carol is not the only character who feels burdened by her gender, though as a woman she is the more traditionally persecuted party. John, at one point, references the "white man's burden." Insensitive though his remark is, it reveals a certain sensitivity to the structures of racial and gender inequality. As a man, John feels the burden of protecting and providing for his family. When Carol prevents him from doing so by lodging a complaint against him, John feels attacked and punished. He is further confused because he views his actions towards Carol—for instance, putting an arm around her—as actions required of a man in his privileged position. Ultimately, both characters suffer because of gendered expectations. Carol is unhappy because of the social expectation that women are unintelligent and oversensitive, while John is unhappy because of the social expectation that men will be self-sufficient and be breadwinners for their families.
Class
While certain power imbalances between John and Carol, such as gender, are evident from the start, class is a subtler and more mysterious force in this play. John, as a professor, is making his way into the upper-middle class. He has a job that commands respect and his on the verge of gaining tenure and buying a house. Carol, meanwhile, feels out of place in the university. She never reveals details of her background, but she does explain that she has sacrificed a good deal to be a student, indicating that her own economic background is significantly less privileged than that of most of her peers. In this sense, John has a significantly more privileged position than Carol. In another sense, though, the two are in deeply similar positions, since both are currently making their way through an uncomfortable turning point. John needs only to finish buying his house and to become a tenured professor, after which he will join a new, more privileged socioeconomic class. Carol needs only to graduate from college, at which point she, too, will join the ranks of a previously inaccessible class. Each character, at various times, views the other as the main obstacle to his or her class aspirations. Carol believes that failing John's class will ruin her plans to graduate from college, and John believes that Carol's accusation will prevent him from receiving tenure. Thus, while the two are not of the same class background, they are in equally precarious positions along the class ladder.
Academia
The world of higher education in Oleanna is a vicious and uninviting place, in which power struggles mark even the most mundane interactions. John uses language that makes little sense to Carol, and Carol senses, reasonably, that his academic jargon is intended—consciously or not—to alienate and exclude outsiders like herself. John, meanwhile, is self-aware enough to understand that his power as a professor causes pain and confusion to his students, but he seeks to alleviate this problem through academia itself. As a result, he writes books and gives lectures about the ethical issues within higher education, all the while reinforcing these problems through the inaccessible nature of those arguments. Mamet suggests that what academia needs is a serious conversation between opposed parties: students like Carol, and academics like John or the tenure committee members. Instead, throughout the play, the structure of the university and the kinds of language that it encourages allow characters to talk past one another and ignore each others' humanity.
Forgiveness
Both John and Carol try, in various ways, to give each other second chances and to forgive one another for various transgressions. John offers to let Carol start his class over, freeing her from the bad grades that have followed her so far. Carol offers to retract her complaint against John and continues to visit him at his request. Both have an instinctive desire to understand one another. However, forgiveness tends to be thwarted by the looming presence of black-and-white, unforgiving evaluations and rankings. The presence of such evaluations, such as the decision of the Tenure Committee or the final grade on Carol's transcript, make it impossible for characters to live with ambiguous and complex feelings towards one another. Carol, for example, cannot simply feel anger towards John, since the decision of the tenure committee will either propel him to an even more privileged position within the university or will bar him from access to the most coveted positions in academia. Therefore, Carol is forced to decide whether to report John to the committee, and therefore to decide whether she will wholeheartedly condemn or wholeheartedly forgive John. With their world governed by structures that leave no room for ambiguity, Carol and John cannot see one another in an ambiguous and nuanced light.
