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.It is only after she has insisted on deeper involvement in their game,which is set up to include major crime (grand theft and murder), that shemoves into a third dimension within the underworld, discovering that thegame has been an elaborate sham.That third dimension is the world inwhich she has been engaged but now seen from backstage, the vantage pointof the audience when it sees through the illusion of the stage, and from thatnew position, sees the trappings of the performance.Wishing herself, as shesays to Maria, out of the dream What would I not give if this was a dream,and. (55; Mamet s ellipses) Maggie comes to see that her participationin the events has been as in a theatrum mundi, that the world of the con men,117David Mamet and the Power of Illusionswho have been forthcoming in revealing their reality to her, has indeed beenan elaborate orchestration for her.Discovering that Billy Hahn is driving the vintage red Cadillac (60) that they had stolen for their getaway, she goesto Charlie s Tavern at night, evidently to learn the full truth about theirdeception and/or to confront Mike. Sneaking into Charlie s through the back, she witness the actors whohad roles in the drama they staged, for her as participant and audience, beingpaid for their performances and discussing the details of how well theyperformed.The businessman/policeman asks, How come I always got toplay the straight guy.? (Mamet s ellipses).Like a disoriented audience,from backstage she sees actors appraising the roles they played, in a dramadirected by Mike for her as an audience, and now interpreting her, the naîveparticipant.The relationship is a structure whose possibilities Mamet hadfound attractive for A Life in the Theatre, a play wherein the actors mightperform for an audience that is, for the real audience, backstage: Thus wesee the actors backs during their onstage scenes, and a full view of themduring the backstage scenes in effect, a true view from backstage (A Life9).As Maggie becomes the backstage audience, Shielded by a stack of beercases (61), she watches and listens to the men; and she stands looking atthem through the open woodwork of a booth, in effect a stage curtain or avisual frame that sets the other world apart.This appearance of a reality behind the performance prepares her forthe next-to-last scene, in which she casts, directs, and plays a role in a dramaor con game that she devises for Mike.Her self-justification to Mike Youraped me.You took me under false pretenses.You used me (68) elicitshis counter-interpretation: And you learned some things about yourself thatyou d rather not know. His self-justification I never hurt anybody.I nevershot anybody (69) and his naming her a whore (70) raise the samequestions about identity that the Woman Patient had earlier proposed (29):whether someone can be made a whore and is not responsible for whathe/she becomes, or whether, in becoming a whore, the becoming is what shealready was.Mike s and Maggie s self-justifications are uses of language that,rather than resolving questions of motive, action, and reality, direct attentiontoward the unknown.The questions hover irresolutely over the final scene,where Maggie s stealing the cigarette lighter is an action that presents, beforethe audience s eyes, her withdrawal from their understanding and freedomfrom their judgments.In adopting Maria s words forgive yourself inautographing a copy of her book, has she gained new insight and a newlesson for life or is she merely providing a new rationalization allowed by herold Freudian psychology?118Howard PearceAn audience trying to understand Maggie, to appreciate her, to identifywith her, or to make use of her in a mimetic act of justifying the self or anunderstanding of the world, cannot bring her and her world of illusions tofull interpretation and Aristotelean resolution of form.Attending her in herjourney into and out of the underworld remains a marvelous adventurefilled with.risk and danger as well as pleasure
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