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    A Study Guide for Carson McCullers's "The Square Root of Wonderful"
    A Study Guide for Carson McCullers's "The Square Root of Wonderful"
    A Study Guide for Carson McCullers's "The Square Root of Wonderful"
    Ebook39 pages29 minutes

    A Study Guide for Carson McCullers's "The Square Root of Wonderful"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Carson McCullers's "The Square Root of Wonderful," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 3, 2016
    ISBN9781535839754
    A Study Guide for Carson McCullers's "The Square Root of Wonderful"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Carson McCullers's "The Square Root of Wonderful" - Gale

      1

      The Square Root of Wonderful

      Carson McCullers

      1957

      Introduction

      Carson McCullers's The Square Root of Wonderful opened to very poor reviews on Broadway on October 30, 1957. It closed a little over a month later, after only forty-five performances. In 1958, an edition of the play was published in the United States and Britain. In this edition, McCullers notes in the Personal Preface that, of all the various versions of the play, the one which follows … is the most nearly the truth of what I want to say.

      Today, the play is valued primarily as a window offering a view into the author's unusual personal life. In the Personal Preface, McCullers writes that the play's origins can be found in the difficult relationship she had with her husband, Reeves McCullers, before he committed suicide in 1953. According to McCullers, the play also deals with her beloved mother, who died suddenly in 1955. "So, unconsciously, the life-death theme of The Square Root of Wonderful emerged," she writes.

      The story takes place in a small town outside New York City during the 1950s. Phillip Lovejoy is an alcoholic writer whose early successes and more recent failures weigh heavily on his mind. He leaves the sanatorium where he has been recuperating from an attempted suicide and arrives at the house of his ex-wife, Mollie Lovejoy. Phillip is needy and in emotional pain. He soon discovers that Mollie is falling in love with John Tucker, an architect she recently rescued from car trouble, who is now living at the house. Phillip's mother and sister are also visiting; their characters provide background information about Mollie and Phillip's two marriages to each other as well as information about Phillip as a child in Georgia. Phillip, overcome by the probability of a life without Mollie, commits suicide by driving his car into a nearby pond. Mollie is now free to love John.

      Author Biography

      Carson McCullers was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, on February 19, 1917. Like the adolescent girl Frankie in her novel, The Member of the Wedding, McCullers renamed herself at age thirteen, dropping her first name in favor of her middle name. Her parents, Lamar Smith, a jeweler, and Marguerite Waters Smith, provided their three children with a comfortable middle-class life. Carson was their first born child, and they considered her an artistic genius and encouraged her interests, especially music.

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