Plot Synopsis
The play begins with a father, Salter, and his son Bernard (B2) discussing the fact that the son has found out that he has been cloned. The father claims not to have known this and claims that a hospital must have stolen his cells at some point and made illegal copies of him. He talks about suing the hospital for money. The son then mentions that there were others and the father admits that the son is a clone. He says that the original son and his mother died in a car crash and that he wanted his son back so he had him cloned. Then the original son confronts Salter and has a discussion about the clones, Salter again denies knowledge about the others. It turns out Salter lied about the mother dying in a car crash; she killed herself by throwing herself under a train; and that the original son did not die, but was instead 'sent away' by Salter, unable or unwilling to care for him due to his grief. The first clone then finds out the original is still alive. Bernard (B1) meets with Bernard (B2) and murders him, and then proceeds to commit suicide. Salter then meets with Michael Black, another clone. Michael Black lives a very normal life, has a wife and three children, and is happy. Salter ends up miserable and seemingly alone even though he knows that there are 19 more clones.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)