Identity
At the core of Funnyhouse of a Negro is Sarah’s internal struggle to understand and accept her identity as an African American woman in America. Sarah's four "selves"—manifestations of her subconscious wrestling with identity issues—each embody different facets of her character.
Two of these selves are white European women of royal descent: the Duchess of Hapsburg and Queen Victoria. Sarah has a large statue of Victoria in her room, underscoring her desire to connect more deeply with her mother, who is depicted as either white or light-skinned African American, depending on the interpretation. Both the Queen and the Duchess despise Sarah’s dark-skinned father and what he represents to her: impurity, savagery, and evil.
The other two of Sarah’s inner selves are men: Jesus and Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba, an African revolutionary and the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was assassinated after his term, symbolizes Sarah’s father—the darker aspect of her heritage and her self-hatred. Through Lumumba’s persona, Sarah claims she has killed her father.
Sarah's fourth self, Jesus, is portrayed as a dwarf and a hunchback with yellow skin. Jesus represents Sarah’s father as a martyr. Through this persona, Sarah expresses her desire to kill Lumumba and escape her black identity.
By the end of Funnyhouse, Sarah comes to the realization that she cannot escape her racial identity—despite her assertions of not having particularly black features—and as a result, she takes her own life.
Alienation and Loneliness
Sarah's identity crisis in Funnyhouse of a Negro leads her to experience feelings of isolation and solitude. With a mixed heritage and confused perceptions of what each cultural background signifies, she finds herself disconnected from both black and white communities, leading to an intense sense of loneliness.
The narrative hints that Sarah’s father has tried multiple times to build a relationship with her, but she has repeatedly turned him away. Some facets of her identity even suggest that he took his own life. In doing so, she distances herself from that aspect of her identity.
Sarah also distances herself from her white background. She claims her mother is either deceased or institutionalized. Her landlady fails to comprehend her situation. Sarah mentions she does not love her white Jewish boyfriend, Raymond, a poet, implying, “He is very interested in Negroes,” which suggests his fascination is more with her racial identity than with Sarah as an individual.
Appearances and Reality/ Truth and Falsehood
In Funnyhouse of a Negro, both truth and reality are unclear. The details regarding Sarah’s parents—their marriage, courtship, the circumstances of Sarah’s birth, and whether they are alive—are left uncertain. Each of Sarah’s four personas, along with Sarah herself, offers slightly different versions of the story, particularly about her father.
Additionally, Sarah's self-image is also ambiguous. It is clear that she grapples with her mixed heritage. However, she cannot express any positive traits of either background, except for the belief that white is better than black. Her true emotions remain largely hidden. Even Sarah’s landlady and boyfriend do not know her true self—Raymond calls her "a funny little liar" after her death.
Since the play is primarily set within Sarah's troubled mind, it is often difficult to separate truth from lies.
Expressionism and Internal Reality
Funnyhouse of a Negro is a one-act play that combines the playwright’s personal experience and larger social concerns through a deliberately nonrealistic, often dreamlike style of dramatic presentation. To a significant extent, the play uses devices that are expressionistic, that is, that depict the main character’s internal rather than external notions of reality. Much of what...
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the audience and readers encounter is intended to depict what is going on inside Sarah’s torn and troubled mind. Thus, the images of Queen Victoria and the Duchess of Hapsburg as they appear at the beginning of the play are meant to reveal something about how Sarah feels about herself. Because both characters are represented as women with distinguished European titles who wear masks or makeup to hide their black identities, they seem to suggest that Sarah tries to use her knowledge of Western culture to cover up her African American ancestry.
Theatre of the Absurd
The play also relies on some of the conventions of what has become known as the Theatre of the Absurd. The plot seeks to explore how certain situations feel rather than to tell a story. The importance of language is diminished, while spectacle and nonlinguistic sound take on a larger, highly symbolic meaning. Thus, the play appears to be fragmented and illogical, progressing in short scenes with irrational dialogue and bizarre visual effects. The often repetitive and nonsensical speeches by different characters make the audience look to the sights and sounds of the play for meaning. For example, in the long jungle scene near the end of the play, what the characters are saying seems to matter far less than their tone of voice—frenetic, maniacal laughter—and their dramatic emergence from the jungle, which has taken over the stage.
Symbolic Patterns and Motifs
With these techniques in mind, audience members and readers may see particular symbolic patterns surface that on first sight appear peculiar but after some consideration appear to make sense, much as an image in a dream may initially seem incongruous but eventually becomes understandable. The playwright’s preoccupation with hair, for instance, remains an odd but consistent motif. Sarah’s loss of hair, the bald head carried by the Mother, the fear of various characters of disease characterized by hair loss, and the red bag that contains hair may at first seem meaningless but begin to connect various pieces of Sarah’s mind.
Identity and Sociopolitical Issues
Although the play is obviously not written as a realistic protest drama, it clearly points toward major sociopolitical and cultural issues that originated in the 1960’s. The theme of identity is crucial to an interpretation of the play, and ideas about race and background permeate the script. At the same time, one of the play’s most appealing aspects is its ambiguity, perhaps best exemplified by its title. Is the “funny-house” a carnival funhouse, a lunatic asylum or madhouse, or the comedy theater where audiences see the play?
Internal Conflict of African Americans
The struggle of the individual with internalized social and cultural forces is the focal point of most of Adrienne Kennedy’s plays. In particular, she focuses on the internal conflict of the African American, whose existence is a result of the violent blending of European and African cultures. This conflict is imaged in the Negro-Sarah’s idolatrous love of her fair-skinned mother and rejection of her black father. The mother’s whiteness has driven her insane; the father’s darkness has tied him to revolution and bloodshed. Sarah’s eventual escape is suicide.
Symbolism of Sarah's Space
The play is set in Sarah’s space. The characters in the play are views of herself, or they are inspired by the objects in her room. The space is filled with relics of European civilization: dusty books, pictures of castles and monarchs, the bust of Queen Victoria. Sarah’s occupation is writing, the geometric placement of words on white paper. The space is also a coffin; the white material of the curtain looks as though it has been “gnawed by rats.” Throughout the play the space becomes more confining as the walls drop down. Eventually it becomes the jungle, overgrown and wild. In the context of the play’s imagery of death, the jungle represents the earth’s reclamation of the body.
Representation of White Society
On another level, the play is set within a “funnyhouse,” an “amusement park house of horrors.” Raymond and the Landlady are representations of the two grinning minstrel faces outside the funnyhouse. They are white society mocking the Negro’s confusion. The bald heads and dropping walls are cheap effects designed to create confusion and fear; the mirrors in Raymond’s room conceal true reflections, as distorted funnyhouse mirrors do.
Roles of Black and White Women
Kennedy is also a woman writer, and the play makes a statement about the roles of black women and white women in society. The mother was light-skinned and beautiful by European standards. There was no destiny for her in society except madness: To be a light-skinned woman is to invite the rape of black men. Sarah is dating a white man, and this seems to give her some power in the scene with Raymond when she is the Duchess of Hapsburg. It is Raymond, however, who is asking the questions and who has control over the environment. Even the white female characters in the play who represent powerful figures are victims of hair loss; they too are unable to escape the dark man who pursues them.
Powerlessness and Madness
In the playwright’s view, the world is a disturbing place. The lure of power is held out to women, when in fact they are powerless. For the African American, to be assimilated into white society is to go mad or self-destruct.