Look Homeward, Angel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1957 stage play by Ketti Frings, adapted from one portion of Thomas Wolfe's much longer 1929 novel of the same name.
The story, which Thomas Wolfe originally took from his own life,note is set in 1916 at "Dixieland", the Gant family's boarding house in Altamont, North Carolina. Patriarch W.O. Gant is a stonecutter, and also a bitter alcoholic. He is very unhappily married to Eliza Gant, who runs the boarding house and exerts a tyrannical control over her husband and their children.
Youngest son Eugene (Thomas Wolfe's Author Avatar) is a bookish sort who desperately wants to leave and go to college at the University of North Carolina, but his mother, who wants him at home doing unpaid menial labor for the boarding house, won't give him the money for tuition. When a young lady named Laura checks into Dixieland, Eugene falls in love, and becomes even more determined to leave.
Anthony Perkins starred as Eugene in the original Broadway production. The play was subsequently adapted into a 1972 Made-for-TV Movie starring Timothy Bottoms, and the 1978 stage musical Angel.
Tropes:
- Awful Wedded Life: Gant hates his wife for being a controlling harpy and she hates him for being a raging alcoholic, and they're both right. Gant sometimes pisses off Eliza by talking about his late, beloved first wife Cynthia, but in a private moment he tells Eugene that actually he hated Cynthia too, and he talks about her that way in order to make his wife mad.
- Bad to the Last Drop: The boarders, who are in general awful whiners, complain about the coffee.Mrs. Clatt: I don't know what Mrs. Gant makes this coffee out of. There isn't a bean invented tastes like this.
- Call-Back: When sending Eugene out to distribute advertising fliers, Eliza tells him to "spruce up", straighten his shoulders, smile, and look like "you are somebody." She delivers identical advice at the end, more emotionally, when Eugene is leaving forever.
- Comforting Comforter: Eliza "tucks the bedclothes about" Mr. Gant when he goes to bed drunk, indicating that no matter how bad their marriage is now, there's at least some vestigial affection.
- Edgy Backwards Chair-Sitting: During an emotional conversation with Laura in which his feelings are coming to the surface, Eugene sits down, but he doesn't simply sit down in the chair, he "straddles it, facing her."
- Imagine Spot: Ends with a brief epilogue in which Eugene, on a train out of town, talking to Ben's ghost. Ben urges Eugene to go and find himself.
- Like a Son to Me: Madame Elizabeth says of the hooker that died in the brothel that "I couldn't have done anything more for her if she'd been my own daughter."
- Malicious Misnaming: Laura calls Jake Clatt "Mr. Platt". It's implied that she does it on purpose, as Jake is hitting on her in a scene where she is trying to talk to Eugene.
- Miss Kitty: Miss Elizabeth, the "madame" of the local brothel. She tries to buy the stone angel off of Gant as a grave marker for one of her prostitutes, but Gant refuses.
- Most Writers Are Writers: The protagonist, Eugene, is a young man who wants to go away to college so he can learn to write.
- The One Who Made It Out: Eugene, who escapes a life beholden to the boarding house, finally making it out to UNC-Chapel Hill and freedom (and, since he's actually Thomas Wolfe, fame).
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Most of the play does have realistic diction, actually. But once in a while Frings sneaks in some of Tom Wolfe's extremely flowery prose, like when Eugene talks about all the places he and Laura will see when they run away.Eugene: And we'll go to Europe, and beyond...the cool, green land of Shakespeare, the gloomy forests of Gaul, the great Assyrian plains where Alexander feasted...the crumbling walls of Babylon, the palaces of the kings of Egypt, the towering white crags of Switzerland...
- The Reveal: Laura finally confesses the real reason why she's been reluctant to accept Eugene's affections. She has a fiance back home, and she only traveled to Altamont because she had pre-wedding jitters.
- Say My Name: Eugene is bidding his mom a rather bitter goodbye. He starts off, and then turns around and screams "MAMA!". He adds "GOODBYE...GOODBYE...GOODBYE" for good measure, before he runs back and they embrace.
- Stutter Stop: Older brother Luke, who appears briefly towards the end, has a stutter. A stage direction attributes it to "the marks of a distressing childhood", although otherwise Luke seems to have moved on from his past.
- The Unsmile: Eliza the overbearing mom instructs her son to smile. According to the stage direction, Eugene "grins, manicly."
- Visual Title Drop: The "angel" is a statue, Gant's prized possession, that he keeps in his shop.
