39 pages • 1 hour read
Alice ChildressTrouble in Mind
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1955A 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
Blues Music
While Trouble in Mind is, for the most part, a naturalist drama, there is one motif that Alice Childress employs that breaks the world of naturalism. The sound of Blues Music seeps into the world on stage at various points within the play. Act I begins and ends with the sound, and Act II also starts off with Blues Music. It is later revealed that this music is likely a memory from a gig Wiletta had years ago. She discusses it with Henry at the beginning of the play:
HENRY (Welcomes an old memory): You…you are Wiletta Mayer…more than twenty years ago, in the old Galy Theater… (Wiletta is pleased to be remembered) You was singin’ a number, with the lights changin’ color all around you… […]
WILETTA: Was a doggone rainbow.
HENRY: And you looked so pretty and sounded so fine, there’s no denyin’ it (8).
Later, Wiletta moves downstage and poses like she did when she sang the blues at the Galy all those years ago. The motif reminds the audience of the time Wiletta felt good on the stage, the longing she has to return to that feeling, and the decades that have passed since.
