Essay comparing two plays about the US between 1939-1941 over the role

Comparing two plays about the US between 1939-1941 over the role America played in WWII - Essay Example Lillian Hellman was blacklisted after the war for her work with Dorothy Parker and others with communist ties. Odets was also blacklisted for his organizational work and writings, but was able to remain free of the punishment that Hellman received due to co-operation with authorities, something that calls his greater legacy into question and doubt. As both advocated resistance, in their personal lives it is important to see in what ways their ideas were applied personally to the greater society as a whole and actually lived. Odets was a long-time Socialist organizer in the tradition of Eugene Debs and Upton Sinclair, a radical Leftist constantly at odds with the government and established authority, seeking reform and justice in the political system. Lillian Hellman’s play, Watch on the Rhine, and Odets’ Waiting for Lefty, both show political organization as the answer to State repression and fascism in their themes, but Hellman’s play delivers a patriotic, pro-war message that can be considered supportive of the government’s foreign policy at the time, and advocating organized, violent resistance in the humanitarian context of the war in Europe, with respect to German dissidents and organizers in America. â€Å"For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt,† she famously wrote, and this is remembered to this day as a rallying cry for WWII. (Helman, 1941) Odets, however, can be seen as sending the message of the need for organization and a rmed resistance through the Labor movement of Socialism, and his violence is directed to a type of domestic fascism of the corporate State in American political expression. Edna (with great joy): â€Å"I dont say one man! I say a hundred, a thousand, a whole million, I say. But start in your own union. Get those hack boys together! Sweep out those racketeers like a pile of dirt! Stand up like men and fight for the