Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross Clip 3

Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross Clip 4

Success and Failure

Glengarry Glen Ross is a scathing attack on American business practices. The only characters in the play whom we do not witness in some attempt to steal from, cheat, or trick one of the others are Aaronow and Lingk—both extremely meek men who, it is implied, do not have much chance at great success. The sales office of the play serves as a microcosm of capitalist culture: as the top man gets a Cadillac and the bottom man gets fired, every man must not only work for his own success but also hope for—or actively engineer—his coworkers' failure. The top salesman on the board—at this point, Roma—is also entitled to the best leads. Success, then, is rewarded with further opportunity for success, while failure is punished with the guarantee of further failure. The system is brutal and compassionless. Levene grasps at anything that might help him appear successful, but his guise is unfortunately transparent, which only makes him appear like a greater failure. Like a man flailing in quicksand, Levene's struggle to evade failure at all costs ends up hastening his professional demise. At the play's climax, Levene asks Williamson why Williamson is going to report him to the police, and Williamson responds, "Because I don't like you." This response is borne partly of Levene's having recently insulted Williamson, but it is also because Levene has been emitting an air of failure from the start of the play, and Williamson, a businessman himself, has been trained to fear and hate failure. (Source)