Awake and Sing!
Awake and Sing!,play by Clifford Odets, produced and published in 1935.
The Bergers, a poor Jewish family living in the Bronx, struggle for life “amidst petty conditions.” Myron, the father, is a sententious failure; Bessie, his wife and the imperious leader of the household, is obsessed with the need for bourgeois respectability. Jacob, Bessie's father, is a “sentimental idealist with no power to turn ideal to action,” and he encourages the rebellion of his grandson Ralph against their environment. Ralph's sister Hennie, a stenographer, is deserted by her lover after she becomes pregnant, and hurriedly marries her immigrant suitor Sam Feinschreiber, who believes it is his child she bears. She is still sought by her first lover, proud and passionate Moe Axelrod, a one-legged war veteran whose bitter view of the world is in direct contrast with that of Bessie's brother, Uncle Morty, the Bergers' rich relative. Ralph falls in love with...
[The entire page is 240 words long]
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