Awake and Sing! (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Clifford Odets
- First Published: 1935
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Social criticism
- Time of Work: The early 1930’s
- Setting: The East Bronx, New York
- Genres: Social realism
- Subjects: Values
- Locales: Bronx, NY
Characters Discussed
Bessie Berger, a working-class Jewish American housewife struggling to hold her family together during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Bessie values the appearance of respectability above all else. Her greatest fear is that she and her family might be put out of their home and thrown into the street, as an old lady who lived near them has been. Bessie is domineering and self-righteous. She does not think deeply. Her life is centered on her family, three generations of which live in a cramped apartment in the Bronx.
Myron Berger, Bessie’s...
[The entire page is 951 words long]
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