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Growing Up As Teenagers

Am I Blue, is a one-act play written by a southern woman playwright, Beth Henley. At the age of twenty, Henley wrote this first play; and it may also have been a play that reflected her passage to adulthood. As a play written for her love, Stuart White, this is a comical, yet very serious play because it deals with problems that many teenagers face. In the play, two teenagers, John Polk Richards and Ashbe Williams, meet for the first time at a bar and become very well acquainted with each other by the end of the play, even in spite of their differences in personalities and personal problems. Billy J. Harbin also stated that “the play examines the lives of two lonely teenagers who are deprived of both parental and peer group acceptance” (Harbin 89). Henley’s Am I Blue uses literary elements such as language, setting, symbolism, and character to suggest her general theme that for teenagers, being able to feel accepted by others is a very important factor, especially during times of pain, rejection, or loneliness.
First, the language of the play helps one understand the plot more easily from the exposition to the resolution. This play is in modern English and written in a colloquial form that makes it definitely a lot easier for the reader to relate to normal conversations that typical teenagers may have today. There are also a lot of questions that are involved as well. These questions show the readers how John Polk and Ashbe have never met each other and do not know each other from the beginning. These also help the readers get the answers to the five “what? who? why? when? where?” questions. Throughout the play, the tone is mostly comical, but also depressing when John Polk and Ashbe describe their background problems, and that helps make the play become more interesting and entertaining to the readers or audience. The language that is also used helps the readers learn more about what is happening in the play as well as why things are the way they are....