29 pages • 58 minutes read
Stephen Adly GuirgisBetween Riverside And Crazy
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Pops’s Apartment
Pops’s rent-controlled apartment has significant symbolic value, both as a representation of Pops’s determination and stubbornness and as an emblem of power. While Pops is able to live in the apartment, he has power and a sense of agency, but as soon as the city is able to find a reason to take it from him, the power dynamics shift, and Pops is left with nothing, with New York City getting to keep what Pops believes he is owed.
Pops’s character is a strong, willful one. His confidence in his position in the apartment can be explained by the fact that he feels secure in his possession of it, thanks to the rent-control laws that enable him to afford the monthly payments. Once his possession of the apartment is challenged and then denied, Pops must find his sense of security elsewhere; fortunately, by the end of the play, it appears he finds it in himself. This triumph is bittersweet, as the audience may wonder what was preventing Pops from finding his own confidence in himself in the first place.
Pops’s apartment is called a railroad apartment, meaning the rooms of the apartment connect in a line, like the spaces in a passenger train. This kind of apartment is perfectly comfortable for one person, or perhaps for a couple, but as nothing separates the rooms except for a doorway, privacy is minimal. The residents of a railroad apartment do not have the freedom of closing the door of a room onto a hallway, which means that boundaries are potentially blurred at any given moment. This blurring of boundaries takes place between Pops and the others who live with him; even family members need a little space from each other sometimes, but the layout of the apartment insists that the apartment’s residents live intimately, and this forced intimacy can place unnecessary pressure on interpersonal relationships, causing conflict and stress.
Detective Audrey O’Connor’s Engagement Ring
Lt. Dave Caro, Detective Audrey O’Connor’s fiancé, is open about the ease with which he obtained the money for his betrothed’s engagement ring from Tiffany’s. When he talks about taking the exorbitant sum of $30,000 as winnings in a poker game with a successful Hollywood actor, Lt. Caro seems unaware of his own hypocrisy; as a man who is openly critical about the showy habits of the wealthy, he doesn’t appear to worry about the message he and Det. O’Connor are sending the world with such a conspicuously expensive piece of jewelry. O’Connor expresses affection for the ring, describing it as an object she loves.
When Pops decides that he wants the ring, which represents the arbitrary nature of luck and the randomness of life in a general sense, he feels no remorse. Just as Lt. Caro is able to possess such a prize with ease, thanks to his skill at cards, so should Pops; the ring does not represent years of hard work, nor does it signify family connections and personal history. It is simply gaudy proof of Lt. Caro’s skill at poker.
Later in the play, when the ring is in Pops’s possession, he gives it to the church lady, gifting her with the random luck that blesses all who receive good fortune undeservedly. To Pops, privileges such as this ring are similar to the prize of a rent-controlled apartment, or the privilege of being born white; they simply arrive to some, making life easier without any clear reason or explanation why.
