Blog #1-One Act Summary and Photo: A Memory of Two Mondays

A Memory of Two Mondays by Arthur Miller

11 M, 2 F, 1 (could be played either M/F)

Bert-18; outsider to the group; young with aspirations to go to college
Raymond "Ray" Ryan-40; the manager who is overworked but genuinely cares about his employees
Gus-68; bald, flirty, with a large and loud personality. He has been with the company the longest and speaks with a Slavic accent.
Jim -mid-70s; best friends with Gus, quiet and unassuming
Kenneth "Kenny"-26; recent Irish immigrant who is attractive, modest, kind, and friendly except when you make him mad
Tom Kelly-late 40s; well-liked, respectable, amiable man with a tendency to be an alcoholic but with the capacity to change
Larry-39; good-looking, cool, and quietly burdened with the talents and skills that are not appreciated and an accumulating financial debt

Agnes (Female)-late 40s; spinster who has a big heart and a tendency to laugh and/or cry with little provocation

Patricia "Pat"-23; pretty but doesn't know who she is
Frank-30s; truckdriver delivery guy who is impassive, burly, and looking for tail of the female variety
Jerry Maxwell-early 20s; friends with Willy; 1930s equivalent to a bro
Willy Hogan-early 20s; friends with Jerry; 1930s equivalent to a bro
Mechanic (M or F)-speaks to Larry with snarky attitude (no given physical description)
Mr. Eagle-40s; the good-looking terse absentee boss


This play is set in the 1930s in a car parts store/warehouse in New York. It follows the days of the employees in two different seasons, Summer and Winter.  It features a colorful cast of characters that reminds me of the cast of Cheers transposed in the car part business during the Great Depression. They form a highly untraditional and slightly dysfunctional family that both captures the woes of the time period and the hope for a future to come. The only character that does not belong in the story is the youthful and naive Bert who longs for a better life and leaves the business to go to college.



This play is neither happy or sad; it has it's serious and fun moments. Miller balances the relationships of the characters with the backdrop of the Great Depression. However, the fact that it is set in the U.S. during the 1930s is never forgotten. These hard times really color and haunt the characters.

I think this photograph captures this relationship. First of all, the image is associated with vehicles which are representative of the objects that facilitate the contact between the characters of the play. However, Miller uses both the technology and mechanization associated with car parts to also represent many things such as the passage of time accelerating to a mechanical future, materialism, capitalism, and the impending war on the horizon. The tangled wires in the foreground symbolize the comforting yet convoluted relationships between the employees that is on the surface of the play. The junkyard and other vehicles out of focus in the background represent the time period that the show is set in, which is a prevalent although not dominant aspect of the play. These two element bidirectionally inform each other.