Scenes 15–19 Chapter Summaries and Analysis
Last Updated on May 10, 2021, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 949
Scene 15
Canary is giving Hester a bath in her home. Hester believes that her son is dead and blames the First Lady for his death. Canary is upset because the Mayor and the First Lady have inexplicably reconciled, and she suspects it is a result of the First Lady’s father giving the Mayor more money. Hester is intent on avenging her son by murdering the First Lady, and Canary tries to comfort her.
While she is comforting Hester, Canary mentions that she saw a mark like the one on Hester’s arm on the convict Monster’s arm. However, Hester refuses to believe that her angelic Boy could be the same person as “evil Monster” and continues to plot her revenge.
Scene 16
The sixteenth scene offers a brief glimpse of the Hunters, who have received a tip from a “streetwalker” (i.e., the First Lady) that Monster will be at the ocean overlook at midnight. The same woman has also given them a piece of his shirt so that the hounds will be able to pick up the convict’s scent. The Hunters are all determined that they will catch Monster that night.
Scene 17
At the Butcher’s shop, Hester watches the Butcher carve up the Mayor’s meat order. Since it is the Mayor’s day to “rub shoulders with the people,” he comes to pick up the order himself and offers Butcher a celebratory cigar. He excitedly announces that he and the First Lady are expecting at last while Hester listens from the shadows of the shop. When the Mayor leaves, the Butcher proposes to Hester.
However, Hester asks Butcher that before they get married, he grant her a favor: to help her talk with the First Lady in secret, “woman to woman.” The Butcher agrees and tries to kiss her, but Hester pulls away, entirely focused on her approaching chat with the First Lady.
Scene 18
The eighteenth scene consists of three newly freed prisoners singing “Hard Times.” In the song, they wonder what the point of surviving through the hard times in prison was if they will return home without “a face that knows my face [or] a voice that knows my name.” The men finally realize that there are only hard times ahead of them, despite the fact they are now free, and the song finishes with the declaration “I’ll just lay down and die.”
Scene 19
Hester is in her workroom, where she is readying the tools of her trade. She has decided against murdering the First Lady; instead, she is now determined to “rip her child from her like she ripped mine from me.” Monster appears at her doorway claiming to be carrying the effects of Boy Smith, who charged him with delivering the objects to his mother. Hester is quick to grab the metal cup and spoon before suddenly recognizing Monster from the wanted posters displayed around the town.
Monster finally reveals that he is her son, Boy Smith, producing all the letters Hester wrote to him over the decades and begging her for help. Hester refuses to believe that Monster is her son and runs him off with her shotgun. As Monster flees, Butcher’s car pulls up with Canary guiding the drugged First Lady. Hester whisks the First Lady into her workroom while Canary tries to distract Butcher from the screams that eventually begin to ring out from offstage. Finally, Hester reappears, “horrific. And triumphant,” with the First Lady in tow. Butcher and Canary leave with the First Lady, but Hester is still troubled by Monster’s earlier claim.
Hester starts gathering together a...
(This entire section contains 949 words.)
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bundle of food and money for Monster. Dogs bark in the distance, and Monster appears in her doorway again. The Hunters are hot on his trail, and Monster convinces Hester that it would be more merciful to kill him now than to let the Hunters torture him. Hester cradles Monster in her lap, then slits his throat. The Hunters drag the body away, and Hester is left alone onstage. The play ends with the doorbell ringing and Hester standing up to go back to work.
Analysis
The final scenes of Fucking A focus on Hester’s desire for revenge and her conception of motherhood. When Monster reveals his true identity to Hester and begs her for help, she is faced with the choice between helping her son and taking revenge on the First Lady. Hester’s initial reluctance to believe Monster despite their matching scars highlights the danger of Hester’s black-and-white beliefs about morality. She cannot reconcile the highly idealized version of her son with the criminal standing before her. Hester’s belief that the First Lady is pure evil also informs her decision to prioritize retributive justice over saving her son.
A key image from scene 19 is when Hester emerges from her workroom with the First Lady. Park specifically describes how “in her haste she forgot to put on her apron and so her dress and hands are stained with blood.” This stage direction alludes to a similar moment in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon when Clytemnestra emerges from offstage covered in blood, having just murdered her husband and the Trojan princess Cassandra. In close parallel to Hester’s story, Clytemnestra murders her husband, Agamemnon, because she blames him for the death of their daughter, Iphigenia. However, Clytemnestra is ultimately murdered in turn by her own son, Orestes, highlighting how revenge for the dead has caused Clytemnestra to overlook the concerns of the living. In this way, Parks emphasizes that it is not the First Lady’s actions but Hester’s blind pursuit of revenge and simplistic moral outlook that lead to Monster’s death.