4000 Miles of Leo Smiling

Seriously though does the guy ever stop smiling? When I was reading 4000 Miles, this was one of the things that kept grabbing my attention. Every time he was in a bad situation or for lack of a better word emotionally compromised he smiles.He never yells or cries, he just smiles. It's a defense mechanism that he can't seem to shake. I thought it was interesting that he does do this because it's such a little kid thing to do, smile really big to make it impossible to be mad at him for whatever he's done. This adds to his character because he is this young adult who refuses to grow up. Everything that goes wrong for him in the play his first response is to smile like it'll make the situation less upsetting. Also you see that at the end of the play he doesn't smile as much as he does at the beginning showing that he's growing up. This motif is a good way to track Leo's character development.

Judith

This was intense. I went into the play not knowing anything about, all I knew was from the comments made it class that it was "light heartened comedy" (insert sarcastic tone). It was definitely not what I expected.

Will Judith be able to handle killing Holofernes? This is the MDQ that came to mind while I was reading. At the beginning she seems very shy and timid, not a killer at all, then suddenly she chops off his head and basically has a mental breakdown. She goes through all the different stages and you're not really sure how it's going to turn out for her. As a reader another question I had was did she fall in love with Holofernes (mainly because I tend to be a hopeless romantic). The reason that I don't think that it's the MDQ is because the answer doesn't really influence the the play in my opinion. For me it was more about this woman becoming something more than what she was and dealing with the consequences. Also you really don't know whether her or the servant is going to get out because Judith keeps having these "episodes" and doesn't seem to realize that his entire army is just outside waiting for dawn. You see her turn from this timid shy woman, to a strong scary woman and until you see her transform you think that killing Holofernes might break her, but it just makes her stronger.

Night Mother

While “Will Jessie kill herself?” makes sense as the MDQ, it pretty obvious throughout the play that she’s going to do it. She’s very calm and collected, not acting like she’s second guessing her decision and is continuously bringing it up. I think the more interesting option is “Will Mama be able to stop Jessie from killing herself?". The more I read the more it seemed to me that Mama was the protagonist of the play rather than Jessie, do for me it's more appropriate that the MDQ have something to do with Mama rather than Jessie. As an audience member you don't want Jessie to end her life, you want her to find a reason for living. It's obvious from the beginning that she's not and you hope Mama can do something. You want her to find a way  to stop Jessie from killing herself. The play doesn't end with Jessie killing herself, it ends with Mama failing to stop her and accepting that she couldn't.