When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Mark Medoff
- First Published: 1974
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Social criticism
- Time of Work: The late 1960’s
- Setting: Southern New Mexico
- Genres: Social realism, Drama
- Subjects: Values, 1960’s, North America or North Americans, Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Perception, Restaurants, bars, taverns, or pubs, Antiheroes, West, U.S., Vietnam War, New Mexico, Southwest, Smuggling or smugglers, Machismo
- Locales: New Mexico, Southwest (U.S.)
Characters Discussed
Stephen “Red” Ryder, the graveyard clerk at a restaurant. A small, plain, nineteen-year-old man with brown hair, Stephen dresses in the style of the 1950’s and has a tattoo on his arm that reads “Born Dead.” Intense and unhappy, he feels stifled by the small New Mexico town in which he lives and has elaborate dreams of leaving, but he feels responsible for his ill mother. His dissatisfaction with his life is reflected in his negative relationships with others. His association with the cowboy hero Red Ryder serves to magnify his inability to mold...
[The entire page is 720 words long]
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