WASP Essay | Critical Essay #1

WASP Critical Essay #1

Dell'Amico is an instructor of English literature and composition. In this essay, Dell'Amico explores Martin's critique of traditional W.A.S.P. values.

The title of Steve Martin's play WASP is an acronym of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and his play is an exploration of the values of this particular U.S. ethnicity and culture. Martin's play conveys mostly his criticism of W.A.S.P. values, with which he grew up. One thing he questions is the W.A.S.P. value of emotional reticence. Like most commentators on W.A.S.P. culture, Martin sees the culture's anti-emotionalism as a type of unhealthy repression, as opposed to a healthy form of adult self-control. Thus, Martin's play dwells throughout on its W.A.S.P. characters' desperate, secret yearnings for intimacy and passion. The religious underpinnings of traditional W.A.S.P. culture, its Protestantism, is also explored and critiqued in Martin's play. For example, the play parodies Dad's outmoded, fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the Bible, and Martin...
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