Paper 2 English

Levee:
“Bad luck? What I care about some bad luck?... I eat it every day for breakfast!”

The band discusses stories about the devil and selling one’s soul, and Levee bitterly jokes that he’d do it—because God clearly hasn’t helped him.

Cutler warns Levee that he’s inviting bad luck by talking like that.

This is a culmination of Levee’s internalized trauma, especially the childhood story he later reveals—how white men raped his mother and stabbed his father.

This moment is crucial because it:

• Exposes Levee’s emotional unraveling, which builds throughout the play.

• Foreshadows his violent outburst in the final scene.

• Reveals the depth of systemic trauma and how it twists hope into rage.

The Prisoner: ‘Is it true that the experience of cruelty is only thing we share as a species’

The quote also reflects on the dehumanizing power of cruelty. In a world where political oppression, war, torture, and social injustice are widespread, cruelty becomes the common denominator that connects all humans. It suggests that no matter where someone is from or what they’ve experienced in life, they are all vulnerable to being reduced to an object or victim of cruelty.

The narrator wonders if, in a world marked by diverse experiences (such as joy, love, and achievement), suffering and cruelty might be the only truly shared experience across humanity. This points to the idea that humanity’s shared trauma may form a more fundamental bond than any positive or uplifting experience could.

Ma Rainey: “They don't care nothing about me. All they want is my voice. ”

after Ma Rainey arrives at the studio, late and escorted by a policeman after an altercation involving a cab driver. The white producers—Sturdyvant and Irvin—are anxious and irritated, more concerned about recording on schedule than what Ma has just been through. They only placate the situation when Irvin slips the cop a bribe to avoid scandal.

This quote is a clear articulation of how systemic racism dehumanizes Black artists. The producers don’t care about Ma’s feelings, dignity, or autonomy—they just want her to perform and profit from her voice.

Dong Ho: “Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers? … As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them.”

The quote points to the disconnect between the ideals represented by the national anthem (e.g., unity, pride, sovereignty) and the reality of the state’s actions. The soldiers, acting under orders from the state, murdered its citizens, yet the symbolic expressions of patriotism are still applied to the victims. This exposes the hypocrisy of the state's nationalism—its symbols are used to justify violence while simultaneously obscuring the state's responsibility for that violence.

• This statement also highlights the dehumanization of the victims. The act of singing the national anthem and covering the coffins with the flag can be interpreted as a form of emotional manipulation—a way to turn the victims into symbols that serve the state’s agenda. Instead of honoring the victims as individuals who were murdered by the state, the anthem and flag turn them into symbols of national sacrifice, distancing the public from the horrific reality of their deaths.

Toledo: “That's what you is. That's what we all is. A leftover from history.”

Toledo uses the metaphor of being a "leftover" to describe Black identity in a post-slavery, still-racist America—discarded, consumed, and forgotten by a history made by and for others.

Both are reckoning with the dehumanization that lingers even after violence

‘Yet Eun-sook herself wanted nothing more than to speed up the ageing process.’

The quote encapsulates Eun-sook's emotional exhaustion and the psychological toll of living through a period of intense trauma and violence. Her wish to speed up the ageing process symbolizes a desperate desire to escape time, suffering, and the seemingly endless pain of her existence. This reflects broader themes in Human Acts of trauma, disillusionment, and the destruction of innocence, where the effects of political violence ripple through the personal lives of individuals, leaving them disconnected from the normal rhythms of life