Male bonding in David Rabe's "Hurlyburly"

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: The Crisis of Masculinity - The American Drama of the 1960s to 1980s, language: English, abstract: Rabe¿s play is set in a Hollywood Hills house shared by the characters Eddie and Mickey, the place of their meetings with their friends Phil and Artie as well as with the female characters. Each of the four men has to find ways to meet the necessary requirements of Hollywood business, and to cope with the exigencies of human communication to which they are unaccustomed ¿ in short: to deal with life.

The impact of this play lies in emotional and verbal aggression: the cathartic shock desired by Artaud¿s ¿theatre of cruelty¿ is reached by the excessive use of degradation and obscenities.