Spring Awakening, The Birthday Party, and Entertaining Mister Sloane

Spring Awakening, The Birthday Party, Entertaining Mr. Sloane; despite the fact that Spring Awakening was written a century before The Birthday Party and Entertaining Mister Sloane, and The Birthday Party and Entertaining Mister Sloane were written a decade apart, all three of the plays have common themes underscoring the most sinister predilections of the human experience. Intentions are obscure, hypocrisy is commonplace, and distorted moralism is prevalent throughout all three plays. However, it is the exploitation within each play that resonates strongest within me, reminding me intensely of vampires. Wedekind, Pinter, and Orton did not write Fantasy novels, all of their characters are acutely human. However, it because of this humanity that the vampiric-like exploitation of their characters both horrifies and fascinates.

The underlying exploitation in Spring Awakening is first hinted upon during the third scene of Act One. It is the conversation between three young women. Martha has just told the reader that her family abuses her, “ For God’s sake Wendla! Papa beats me till I’m crippled and mama locks me up in he coal cellar for three nights at a time” (Wedekind 8). It is her next line that suggests exploitation; “Sometimes I think they’d miss something if they didn’t have a disgraceful brat like me!” (Wedekind 8) Miss what exactly, having a punching bag? [Having someone to take their frustrations out on?] Even though it’s subtle Wendla is being exploited by her parents, she’s being used in an unjust manner because of their overwhelming fervor.

The next case of subtle exploitation seen in Spring Awakening is also parental. It is between Wendla and Frau Bergmann in Act Two. Wendla is asking her mother about where babies come...

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...on utilizes Ed and Kath’s hunger for Sloane to take exploitation to another peak, a peak reminiscent of vampirism. Ed and Kath aren’t subconsciously or unknowingly taking away Sloane’s rights. They aren’t wrapped up in a passion-filled thoughtless frenzy that causes them to act a certain way. Ed and Kath are calm and rational as they use the brutal murder of their father to further their own licentious sexual desires. They are denying Sloane is right to live because of their lewd appetite for his flesh. They’re going to pass him back and forth like the child of divorced parents for “as long as the agreement lasts.” This implies that they’re going to use him, and until they use him up. They’ve stuck their claws into his flesh will not let him go until they have sucked the life out of him and rendered him useless—a corpse much like those that Dracula leaves behind.