Dec 20, 2009

The Ecstasy of Rita Joe | The Ecstasy of Rita Joe

At a glance:

Author: George Ryga
First Published: 1970
Type of Work: Play
Type of Plot: Social realism
Time of Work: The late 1960’s
Setting: A city
Genres: Social realism, Drama
Subjects: Justice, 1960’s, United States or Americans, Memory, Racism, Prejudices or antipathies, Trials, Native Americans or American Indians, City life, Imagination
Locales: United States

Characters Discussed

Rita Joe, a simple, romantic young American Indian woman. She moves to the city to escape the stagnation of life on her reservation, but things go wrong: She loses her job and is arrested repeatedly for a variety of offenses, such as vagrancy and prostitution. At the mercy both of a legal system she does not understand and of people who view her as inhuman, Rita ends up serving time in prison. Her dreams of a good life conflict with memories of a life that was simpler but one that was dominated by white people’s ideas about religion and education. Figures...

[The entire page is 864 words long]

The Ecstasy of Rita Joe | The Ecstasy of Rita Joe

At a glance:

Characters Discussed

Join eNotes