38 pages • 1 hour read
John GuareSix Degrees of Separation
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Sections 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 1 Summary
The play opens with a Kandinsky painting revolving slowly above the stage. It is painted on both sides, one side “geometric and somber” and the other “wild and vivid” (3). The painting stops with the somber side facing the audience.
Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, a middle-aged couple dressed “in nightdress” (3), run onto the stage. They are described as “very attractive” and “very agitated” (3). Addressing the audience directly, they panic about an intruder having been in their home. Frantically, they try to decide if anything has been stolen and exclaim that they “could have been killed” (4) and “it was awful awful awful awful (6).
The Kittredges recount the events of the previous evening. As they do so, they “pull off their robes and are smartly dressed for dinner” (6) and begin alternating between recreating the evening and commenting on it to the audience.
Flan explains that he is “an art dealer” (7) and that he “had a deal coming up” (8) where he could purchase a Cezanne painting and sell it at a considerable profit to “the Japanese” (14). However, he was short by two million dollars, a figure he dismisses as “superfluous” (8).
Fortunately, an old friend, Geoffrey, was visiting from South Africa and had “asked us to ask him for dinner” (7). Ouisa explains that Geoffrey is “King Midas rich” (7) and Flan adds that he has “seventy thousand workers in just one gold mine” (7). Ouisa observes that “[r]ich people can always do something for you even if you’re not sure what it is you want them to do” (9). In this case, they are hoping that Geoffrey will loan them two million dollars for the Cezanne.
Geoffrey is described as “an elegant, impeccably British South African” (9). When he joins Ouisa and Flan onstage, they discuss the political situation in South Africa. When asked why he stays in the country, Geoffrey comments that “[o]ne has to stay there to educate the black workers and we’ll know we’ve been successful when they kill us” (10).
After Geoffrey invites them to visit him, Ouisa comments that they would “sit in your gorgeous house planning trips into the townships demanding to see the poorest of the poor” and saying, “we’ve come all this way. We don’t want to see people just mildly victimized by apartheid. We demand shock” (10).
After remarking that “It doesn’t seem right sitting on the East Side talking about revolution” (10), Ouisa says that she will “come to South Africa and build barricades and lean against them, singing” (10) before joking about “striking coal miners modelling the fall fashions” (11).
The group discuss the Italian restaurant they will be attending for dinner, noting that, “They wrap ravioli up like salt water taffy” and sell them, “Six on a plate for a few hundred dollars” (12). Geoffrey remarks that, “New York has become the Florence of the sixteenth century. Genius on every corner” (12).
Section 2 Summary
Ouisa and Flan’s conversation with Geoffrey is interrupted by the doorman entering with Paul, “a young black man” who has been “beaten badly” (14). Paul is “very handsome, very preppy” (14) and wears a “white Brooks Brothers shirt” (14) that is bloody from the attack.
Paul claims to know “Talbot and Woody” (18), Ouisa and Flan’s children, from Harvard, and explains that he was mugged and his assailants took “the only copy of my thesis” (16). Shocked, Geoffrey tries to leave politely but Ouisa and Flan encourage him to stay while trying to help Paul. They patch Paul up and give him their son’s pink shirt.
Paul says that Talbot and Woody always say that their parents are kind, so he came to them after his attack. He remarks on the Kandinsky, claiming that the children told him that it is “a double. One painted on either side” (18). When the conversation turns to his background, Paul explains that his father is an actor who is currently directing “a movie of Cats” (21).
When Ouisa and Flan ask who Paul’s father is, he tells them he is the son of the famous actor, Sidney Poitier. Speaking directly to the audience, Paul offers a short account of Poitier’s life and career, explaining that he grew up in the Bahamas in a poor and neglectful family and would “sit on the shore” as a child and “conjure up the kind of worlds that were on the other side and what [he’d] do in them” (22-23). He also names some of Poitier’s films, ending the list with, “and, of course, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (23).
When Ouisa and Flan invite Paul to join them at the restaurant, he instead offers to cook them a meal in their home as a way to “pay back you kids […] who’ve been wonderful to me” (24). Using “[l]eftovers—tuna fish—olives—onions—” (27), Paul “sort of did wizardry—” (27) and produces a meal that they are surprised to find is “delicious” (28).
When Geoffrey says he is from Johannesburg, Paul says that, “Dad took me to a movie shoot in South Africa” where “the camera moved from this vile rioting in the streets to a villa where people picked at lunch on a terrace […] And I didn’t understand” (28).
When asked about “being black in America” (29), he explains that, having grown up in Switzerland, “My problem is I’ve never felt American” (29) and, “I never knew I was black in that racist way till I was sixteen and came back here” (30). He adds that, “I don’t even feel black” (30).
When Flan asks what Poitier is “like” (30)—causing Ouisa to protest that they should “not be star fuckers” (30)—Paul says that, “My father, being an actor, has no real identity” (30) instead only occupying various roles in movies. Ouisa tells the audience that, “I just loved the kid so much. I wanted to reach out to him” (31).
Sections 1-2 Analysis
The Kandinsky painting that hangs above the stage is of symbolic importance. Double-sided, it represents the dual-nature of the characters and their lifestyles. It is particularly representative of Paul, who has two sides to his character: the formal, “preppy” (24) side he shows to the other characters, and a “wild and vivid” (3) side that is revealed later in the play. Paul will also bring a wilder, more vivid aspect to the lives of the other characters, pushing them out of their comfort zones and challenging their attitudes and values, something that Ouisa will later realize is extremely important to her.
When the audience first meet Flan and Ouisa, they are unaffected by Paul’s influence. They are rich and shallow, interested in lucrative art deals and thinking little of eating at expensive restaurants. In fact, the only thing that makes them appear less rich is their friend Geoffrey being even richer.
Liberal but highly privileged, they appear both blinkered and self-aware, especially when discussing South Africa. They seem broadly sympathetic to the plight of black South Africans, even as Geoffrey profits from the disparity of wealth and power in the region, something they, too, will benefit from if he lends them the money.
They are also ostensibly aware of how their privilege sets them apart. Ouisa, in particular, recognizes and disparages the voyeuristic element of rich people going to visit the poorest townships of South Africa and questions the hypocrisy of “sitting on the East Side talking about revolution” (10).
However, at the same time, their discussion is detached, apathetic, and ironic. It is littered with lighthearted remarks and jokes. Likewise, although they are, on face value at least, sympathetic towards black people battling apartheid, their position is still highly paternalistic, as highlighted by Geoffrey’s remark about staying “to educate the black workers” (10). In some respects, this can be seen as foreshadowing for Ouisa’s mothering response to Paul later in the play, just as her comment that “[r]ich people can always do something for you” (9) prefigures Paul’s efforts to get things from the far-richer Kittredges.
None of this is immediately apparent when Paul first enters, in part because Paul makes such an effort to appear part of their world. He is dressed like their rich children (even more so when he puts on their son’s shirt) and demonstrates a knowledge of art and other “high-culture.” He also claims that his background is extremely privileged and means that, “I don’t even feel black” (30), something which distances Paul from other black people and helps him appear closer to rich, privileged white people like the Kittredges.
There are clues that Paul is not exactly what he appears, however, especially in the discussion of acting and Paul’s supposed father, Sidney Poitier. This is particularly apparent in his suggestion that Poitier used to “conjure up” (22) images of the world beyond the Bahamas and imagine roles for himself there and in his suggestion that, as an actor, Poitier “has no real identity” (30), only a variety of roles. These lines hint at the fact Paul is himself imagining new roles for himself, drawing on two motifs—imagination and acting—that become increasingly significant as the play progresses. The fact that Paul highlights Poitier’s film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner also offers a subtle allusion to the fact that Ouisa and Flan have no idea who Paul, the person who cooks them dinner, actually is.
