Style
While there are some depictions of unrealistic events, such as Loomis's "possession" and Bynum's stories about his shining man and inner song, style of Joe Turner is based in realism. In a relatively simple definition of realism, David Rush describes it as
"a style that attempts to depict life on stage as it is actually lived by the members of the audience. It shows us so-called everyday events happening to people like us who live in a world like ours and tells its story in a way that makes it appear logical and believable (191).
Joe Turner is exactly that, a linear story line with depictions of everyday life for the residents of the boardinghouse. While modern audiences can’t necessarily relate with all aspects of this culture, it is definitely plausible in the context of American history. Later Rush goes on to qualify realism by "three unities: time, place, and action (192)". Again this play follows this definition of realism in that it is linear plot, remains in the place- the boardinghouse in Pittsburgh- and effectively tells the story of the few people that live in this house.
In a review of the Ethel Barrymore staging of the play, Clive Barnes comments on the language, idiom, and mix of naturalism and symbolism are beautifully staged and the cast is excellent at depicting the realistic play and develop it a heartrending climax.
Read more about this topic: Joe Turner's Come And Gone
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)