August: Osage
County
Study Guide by Course Hero
What's Inside
aging, time, waiting, and death.
j Book Basics ................................................................................................. 1
d In Context
d In Context ..................................................................................................... 1
a Author Biography ..................................................................................... 3
American Tragic Dramas
h Characters .................................................................................................. 4
Focused on the Family
k Plot Summary ............................................................................................. 6
August: Osage County joins a long-running tradition in
c Scene Summaries ................................................................................... 11
g Quotes ........................................................................................................ 24
l Symbols ..................................................................................................... 26
American theater: tragic dramas focused on dysfunctional
families. Tragedy is the branch of dramatic literature
concerned with the terrible downfall of a heroic individual. The
Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) famously claimed
that tragedy inspires terror and pity in the audience, leading
m Themes ...................................................................................................... 26
them to a catharsis, or a purging of emotion that improves
people's moral condition. Tragedy began in Ancient Greece,
reaching its first peak in the city-state of Athens during the 5th
j Book Basics
century BCE. Tragic drama is considered to have reached
three subsequent peaks after this period. The second peak
was in England during the reigns of Elizabeth I (1533–1603;
AUTHOR
reigned 1558–1603) and James I (1566–1625; reigned
Tracy Letts
1603–1625) in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The third
peak was in France during the 17th century. Tragedies from
FIRST PERFORMED
each of these periods often concern themselves with the
2007
downfall of kings or other mighty personages. The genre saw
GENRE
Drama
its fourth peak in Europe during the late 19th and the first half
of the 20th centuries, with plays such as those of Norwegian
dramatist Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) and Russian author Anton
ABOUT THE TITLE
Chekhov (1860–1904). These later works focus on ordinary
The title August: Osage County is borrowed from a poem of
people, but they reveal the tragic flaws and conditions of
the same title (1995) by American poet Howard Starks
human society.
(1929–2003), who served as a mentor to playwright Tracy
Letts. The play unfolds over the course of several weeks in
August in Osage County, Oklahoma, specifically in the town of
Pawhuska. The poem and the play both address themes of
More recent plays contain tragic elements but diverge from the
tradition in significant ways. Some literary critics have
proposed that contemporary life no longer lends itself to
tragedy, as the stakes of an individual's fate are no longer
August: Osage County Study Guide
In Context 2
understood to be bound up with more powerful forces. In a
admiringly about other poets who have taken their lives, calling
society where humans have little value, for example, the tragic
them "Olympian Suicidalists." In various cultures and historical
hero does not have as far to fall. There is also no longer a
periods, suicide has been condoned, and in others, it has been
shared concept of fate, mediated by the gods, as there was for
condemned. Sometimes there is mixed approval and
Ancient Greeks. In the 19th and 20th centuries, American
disapproval. In Ancient Greece and Rome, for example, there
playwrights responded to this challenging situation with
was not blanket approval for suicide, but it was sometimes
dramas about downfall in families that are not important or
viewed as a rational choice. Illegal in the United States, suicide
wealthy but are nonetheless bound to forces greater than
is generally condemned. (In some U.S. states there are
themselves. American playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953)
exceptions for people with fatal illnesses who choose
wrote a trilogy of plays called Mourning Becomes Electra (1931)
physician-assisted suicide.)
modeled on a Greek tragedy. In the events of several relatively
undistinguished American families, O'Neill seeks to show the
Mental illness, especially depression, has been linked to
workings of a subconscious death wish. As playwright Tracy
suicide. Studies have found additional risk factors that
Letts does in August: Osage County, O'Neill also shows
predispose some people to committing or attempting suicide.
characters undone by pessimism and alcoholism in the third
These factors include physical illness, loss of a spouse,
play of his trilogy, Long Day's Journey into Night (1956). In
isolation, a high standard of living, and retirement or an inability
Death of a Salesman (1949), American playwright Arthur Miller
to work. In August: Osage County it is possible Beverly has all
(1915–2005) represents the humdrum, despairing life of an
or nearly all of these risk factors. Beverly seems outwardly
ordinary salesman as a tragedy.
upbeat in the one scene where he appears, the Prologue, but
his dialogue indicates a gloominess about life. As his wife,
August: Osage County shares characteristics with these and
Violet, reveals in the play, Beverly has not written much of
other American tragic dramas. Like Long Day's Journey into
consequence in decades. The aging poet is now retired from
Night, Letts's play features an intoxicated, deranged matriarch.
teaching, and most of his children have moved away, so he is
The staging of August: Osage County is similar to that of Death
isolated. He is not personally suffering physical illness, but his
of a Salesman, in that both feature a cut-away, multistory
wife, Violet, has mouth cancer, and so Beverly is confronted
house. Also in August: Osage County, drunken characters lash
with mortality. His relative affluence is also a possible risk
out at each other with vicious truths, as often happens in the
factor. Though not a tremendously rich man, Beverly grew up
pathos-ridden dramas of American Southern playwright
poor and then climbed to a level where he could send three
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983), such as A Streetcar Named
daughters to college. However, his final act also leaves these
Desire (1947). The violent, drunken dinnertime argument of
same daughters with a troubling legacy. People whose parents
August: Osage County is also a feature of American playwright
commit suicide are three times as likely as others to die the
Edward Albee's (1928–2016) play Who's Afraid of Virginia
same way.
Woolf? (1962). Although Letts seems to deliberately reference
these American tragic dramas, in August: Osage County the
tragic hero, Beverly Weston, leaves the stage in the Prologue
T.S. Eliot and "The Hollow Men"
and does not appear again. Rather than focus on the absent
hero, the play explores the ramifications of Beverly's suicide
The first and last words spoken in August: Osage County are
and the circumstances that could have led to his decision to
from a poem, "The Hollow Men" (1925), by Anglo-American
end his life.
poet T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Between the beginning and the
end of the play there are many references to both "The Hollow
Suicide
Men" and to Eliot, who is Beverly's favorite poet. Eliot was part
of the modernist movement in 20th century art, music, and
literature that sought to break with the past and discover new
In August: Osage County, a central character, the poet Beverly
forms of expression. In Eliot's case, part of this new form of
Weston, takes his own life. The tragic act of this depressed
expression involved filling his poems with many learned,
man has terrible consequences for his widow and his
obscure quotations. Eliot's sources for these quotations were
daughters. Before Beverly takes this step, he speaks
as varied as French, German, and Hindu works, ranging across
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August: Osage County Study Guide
fiction, poetry, philosophy, myths, and religious texts. In
bringing together these multilingual passages, Eliot wanted his
Author Biography 3
Early Life and Acting Career
poetry to be "exact without vulgarity" and "precise but not
pedantic." These quotations add an extra depth to the poems.
Tracy Letts was born July 4, 1965, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He
For example, in "The Waste Land" (1922), the speaker of the
grew up in Durant, Oklahoma, where his father, Dennis, was an
poem, observing the spiritually empty stockbrokers streaming
English professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
over London Bridge at dusk, says, "I had not thought death had
His father also acted in community theater, which may have
undone so many." This line is a quotation from The Inferno (ca.
inspired him to become an actor. His mother, Billie Letts, was a
1308–1321) by Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). Dante
journalism professor and a best-selling novelist. Tracy Letts
was writing about the denizens of Hell, so this quotation
briefly attended Southeastern Oklahoma State, and then he
emphasizes that the spiritual emptiness of these London
moved to Dallas, Texas. At age 20, Letts moved to Chicago,
stockbrokers is akin to eternal damnation. Spiritual emptiness
where he acted and wrote plays. During the 1990s Letts
is also the theme of "The Hollow Men."
continued to act, although his playwriting career was gaining
momentum. He moved to Los Angeles briefly and appeared in
Letts uses "The Hollow Men" to give broader significance to
such television series as Seinfeld (1989–98) and Judging Amy
the spiritual struggles of fictional American poet Beverly
(1999–2005). Back in Chicago, Letts appeared on stage in
Weston. A prominent theme of Eliot's poem is spiritual
several productions by the famed Steppenwolf Theatre
emptiness, and some scholars have interpreted its titular
Company, and in 2002, he was invited to join the company.
hollow men as succumbing to gloom and a world-weary sense
of the futility of life. This defeat exacts a terrible price: both on
the hollow men of the poem and on Beverly in the play. For the
Writing Career
hollow men, "life is very long," a line of the poem that Beverly
quotes at the beginning of the Prologue. It may be long
Letts's first play, Killer Joe (1991), concerned a killer-for-hire
because of its futility. As the speaker explains in the poem,
and a family murder plot. Initially, Letts could not get a theater
"Between the idea / And the reality / ... Falls the Shadow."
company to produce the violently graphic play, so he and other
Nothing can be accomplished, according to the speaker,
actors staged the play themselves. It received mixed reviews
because some disorder or corrosion—"the Shadow"—will
but enjoyed popular success and was subsequently produced
always disrupt the realization of an idea. This sentiment is
at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in New York and London.
congenial to the depressed poet Beverly, who has not written
A film adaptation was released in 2011, directed by American
much poetry in decades. Letts also borrows the poem's
William Friedkin (b. 1935) and starring American actor Matthew
emphasis on the dreadfulness of a slow corrosion rather than
McConaughey (b. 1969) in the titular role. Letts's next play, Bug
an abrupt end. This weathering, too, applies to the women in
(1996), about drug addiction and delusions, was staged in
the play as much as to Beverly. As the speaker in "The Hollow
London and New York. Again, Friedkin directed a film
Men" says, "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the
adaptation (2006), starring American actor Ashley Judd (b.
world ends / Not with a bang but with a whimper." Johnna
1968).
recites these words at the end of the play, and Barbara also
alludes to them when she says, "Dissipation is actually much
The Man from Nebraska (2003), Letss's next play was staged
worse than cataclysm." Although Beverly's suicide could be
by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago and was a
called a "bang" or a "cataclysm," the play is about the slow ruin
finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2004. It concerns an
that unfolds through many years and generations of the
insurance agent who loses his religious faith. This play was
Weston family.
followed by August: Osage County (2007), about a family
coping with the death of its patriarch and the illness of its
matriarch. Both The Man from Nebraska and August: Osage
a Author Biography
County depart from the physical violence of Letts's earlier
plays, though they are still dark. August premiered at
Steppenwolf and later moved to Broadway, winning a Pulitzer
Prize and five Tony Awards, including one for best play. It was
adapted to the screen in 2013. The film, directed by American
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August: Osage County Study Guide
John Wells (b. 1956), featured a star-studded cast including
American actors Meryl Streep (b. 1949) and Julia Roberts (b.
Characters 4
Ivy
1967) and Scottish actor Ewan McGregor (1971). Later plays
include Superior Donuts (2008), which was adapted as a
Ivy is the daughter who dutifully remains unmarried and at
television series (2017–18); Mary Page Marlowe (2016); and The
home while her sisters, Barbara and Karen, go on to build new
Minutes (2017), which garnered yet another Pulitzer
lives far away. Taking care of the aging Beverly and Violet has
nomination. Letts has also written the screenplay adaptations
fallen to Ivy, and she is bitter about it. She hopes to find
of all his plays that have been released on film. He has
happiness in New York with Little Charles, who turns out to be
continued to act in stage, screen, and television roles and has
her half-brother.
appeared in several Academy Award-nominated pictures.
Karen
h Characters
Karen has a new relationship every year, and she is
unreasonably optimistic about her prospects with her latest
Barbara
fiancé, the sleazy, unworthy Steve, who has already been
married three times. She is self-absorbed, prattling about her
honeymoon while the family gathers to bury her father, Beverly.
Barbara lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her teenaged
daughter, Jean. She is in the process of separating from her
unfaithful husband, Bill, a university professor who is having an
Mattie Fae
affair with one of his students. Barbara once had ambitions of
being a writer, ambitions her father thought she had the talent
Mattie Fae seems devoted to her sister, Violet, but she once
to realize. But instead she became a faculty wife, like her
had an affair with Violet's husband, Beverly. Her only son, Little
mother.
Charles, is Beverly's child. Some combination of anger or
sorrow over the affair seems to have left her permanently
Violet
Violet is a sharp-tongued woman who has raised three
daughters, Barbara, Ivy, and Karen. A lifelong smoker, at the
disappointed in her son, Little Charles, whom she treats with
scorn.
Little Charles
start of the play she is suffering from mouth cancer and has
become addicted to prescription drugs, not for the first time.
Bumbling and inept, Little Charles has never learned to drive
She prides herself on telling the often unkind truth, but she
and can't hold down a job for long. His nickname shows the low
never talked to her husband about his love affair or the child he
regard in which most of the family holds him, as if he were a
fathered, Little Charles.
permanent child. Little Charles's lack of confidence seems to
come from the scorn with which his mother, Mattie Fae, treats
Beverly
Beverly Weston is an alcoholic who takes his own life at the
start of the play, leaving his wife, three grown daughters, and
extended family to deal with the consequences. Beverly grew
up poor and was homeless for a time. He becomes a
successful poet and professor, although he never liked
teaching and eventually his talent for writing dries up.
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him.
August: Osage County Study Guide
Characters 5
Character Map
Violet
Cruel, drug-addicted
cancer patient
Sisters
Daughter
Spouses
Karen
Beverly
Daughter
Self-absorbed,
Depressed poet
optimistic woman
and professor
Sisters
Daughter
Barbara
Daughter
Angry homemaker
Niece
Sisters
Mattie Fae
Ivy
Half
sister
Mean-spirited homemaker
Mother
Long-suffering
college librarian
Incestuous
lovers
Little Charles
Timid man
Former lovers
Main Character
Other Major Character
Minor Character
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Biological father
August: Osage County Study Guide
Plot Summary 6
Full Character List
Johnna
Johnna Monevata, 26 years old, is a
Native American of the Cheyenne tribe
who works as a housekeeper for the
Westons.
Character
Description
Barbara
46-​year-​old Barbara Fordham is the
oldest daughter of Violet and Beverly
Weston.
k Plot Summary
Violet
Violet Weston, 65 years old, is Beverly's
wife and is addicted to prescription
drugs.
Prologue
Beverly
Beverly Weston is a 69-​year-​old poet
and university teacher.
Ivy
Ivy Weston, 44 years old, is the
Westons' middle daughter.
Karen
Karen Weston, 40 years old, is the
Westons' youngest daughter.
drugs and slurring her words. Johnna is hired.
Mattie Fae
Mattie Fae Aiken, 57 years old, is the
younger sister of Violet Weston.
Act 1
Little Charles
37-​year-​old Little Charles Aiken is the
son of Violet's sister Mattie Fae and is
named for his purported father, Charlie
Aiken.
The play is set in August 2007, in a large house in rural Osage
County, Oklahoma. Beverly Weston, a poet and retired
professor, is interviewing Johnna for the job of housekeeper.
Beverly wants a housekeeper to cook and clean for him and
his wife, Violet, who suffers from mouth cancer and is addicted
to painkillers and other prescription pills. Violet enters, high on
Beverly has been missing for several days, and family members
have gathered to support Violet. Beverly has disappeared
before. Violet's sister, Mattie Fae Aiken, recalls one time when
Violet put Beverly's books on the lawn and set them on fire. But
Violet and Beverly's middle daughter, Ivy, says this time is
Charlie
60-​year-​old Charlie Aiken is an
upholsterer. He was a close friend of his
brother-​in-​law, Beverly Weston.
different. Violet enters with bad news: Beverly's boat has been
found, making it more likely something bad has happened to
him. The oldest daughter, Barbara, arrives from Boulder,
Bill
Bill Fordham, 49 years old, is a
professor of English and is separated
from his wife, Barbara.
Colorado, along with her estranged husband, Bill Fordham, and
their daughter, Jean. Violet picks on Ivy, criticizing her
appearance and the lack of a man in her life. At five the next
morning, Sheriff Gilbeau arrives and announces Beverly has
Jean
14-​year-​old Jean Fordham is
precociously experimenting with
cigarettes, pot, and vegetarianism.
Sheriff
Gilbeau
Sheriff Deon Gilbeau, 47 years old, used
to date Barbara in high school. He
delivers the news that Beverly has been
found dead.
been found drowned. Barbara goes to identify the body.
Act 2
Three days later, the family has returned from Beverly's funeral
and is about to eat a dinner cooked by Johnna. The youngest
daughter, Karen, has arrived from Florida with her new fiancé,
Steve
Steve Heidebrecht, 50 years old, a
former Oklahoman and current Florida
businessman, is engaged to Karen.
Steve, and she chatters about her honeymoon plans. Ivy
reveals she is seeing a man but won't say who it is. Little
Charles, Mattie Fae's 37-year-old son, missed the funeral
ceremony because he overslept, something for which his
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August: Osage County Study Guide
Plot Summary 7
mother criticizes him. Steve and Jean discover they're both pot
Gilbeau comes by and reveals that Beverly had been staying in
smokers, and Steve flirts inappropriately with Jean, who is only
a motel in the days before he committed suicide.
14 years old. When alone, Little Charles and his cousin Ivy kiss
and talk, revealing to the audience the identity of Ivy's mystery
Three days later, at dinner, Ivy tries to tell Violet that she and
lover. At the funeral dinner, a wasted Violet rails against the
Little Charles are lovers. Barbara keeps interrupting, but Ivy
other family members. Little Charles drops Mattie Fae's
finally blurts out the truth. Then Violet reveals to Ivy that Little
casserole on the floor, disappointing her again. Violet claims
Charles is Beverly's son. Barbara is shocked to realize her
Barbara broke her father's heart by moving away, and Violet
mother already knew about Little Charles's paternity. Ivy,
needles Barbara about her separation from her husband, Bill.
distraught, says she will never tell Little Charles the truth about
Barbara fights back physically, and then she announces
his father and will still go to New York. Violet and Barbara
everyone must search the house to get rid of Violet's pills. The
argue, each blaming the other for Beverly's suicide. Two weeks
scene concludes with Barbara yelling, "I'M RUNNING THINGS
later Ivy leaves for good. Barbara also leaves soon after, and
NOW!"
Violet is left alone with Johnna. Violet keeps repeating, "and
then you're gone, and then you're gone," while Johnna quotes
from the T.S. Eliot poem "The Hollow Men": "This is the way the
Act 3
Barbara, Ivy, and Karen talk about Violet, who fuels her pill
addiction by seeing several doctors for multiple prescriptions.
Ivy tells Barbara and Karen that she and her first cousin, Little
Charles, plan to run away to New York together. She is tired of
being bound to the family home, caring for their aging parents.
Ivy tells Barbara it was Violet, not Beverly, who was
heartbroken when Barbara moved away. Violet enters, sobered
up but as sharp-tongued as ever. She tells a story about her
mother cruelly taunting her. In a private moment Violet and
Barbara make up, calling a truce.
Mattie Fae taunts Little Charles, and his father, Charlie, blows
up, threatening to leave Mattie Fae if she does not stop being
so mean to their son. Barbara overhears the argument. She
tells Mattie Fae about Ivy and Little Charles being lovers. Then
Mattie Fae tells Barbara that she had a secret affair with
Beverly, and that Little Charles is actually Beverly's son and the
girls' half brother. It falls to Barbara to break up Ivy and Little
Charles without telling Ivy the truth.
Steve and Jean smoke pot together, and Steve gropes Jean.
Johnna comes upon them and hits Steve with a frying pan.
Awakened by the noise, Barbara, Bill, and Karen turn up, and a
big argument ensues. Jean defends herself by attacking her
father, Bill, for having an affair with a student. Outraged,
Barbara slaps Jean. Karen and Steve depart and so do Bill and
Jean. Before he goes, Bill tells Barbara he is never coming
back to her.
Two weeks later, a drunken Barbara tells Johnna she should
quit and leave the Weston household, but Johnna stays. Sheriff
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world ends, this is the way the world ends."
August: Osage County Study Guide
Plot Summary 8
Plot Diagram
Climax
7
Falling Action
6
Rising Action
8
5
4
9
3
Resolution
2
1
Introduction
Climax
Introduction
7. Violet admits she did nothing to prevent Beverly's suicide.
1. Beverly disappears.
Falling Action
Rising Action
8. Barbara leaves, and Violet is completely without family.
2. The extended Weston family comes home.
3. Beverly is found drowned.
4. Barbara and Violet brawl with each other after the funeral.
5. Bill, Jean, and Karen leave with Steve after Steve gropes
Jean.
6. Violet tells Ivy that Ivy's lover is her half brother.
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Resolution
9. Babbling, Violet crawls to Johnna's room.
August: Osage County Study Guide
Plot Summary 9
Timeline of Events
August 2007
Beverly hires Johnna as a housekeeper.
Saturday, few days later
Beverly disappears.
Monday
Violet empties the safety deposit box.
Thursday
Violet asks Ivy to call Mattie Fae and Barbara.
Thursday night
Beverly is found drowned.
Some days later
Beverly is buried.
That day
Barbara and Violet have a tumultuous fight at dinner.
That day
Barbara enlists her sisters in throwing out Violet's pills.
That night
Ivy reveals to Barbara she is in love with Little Charles.
That night
Mattie Fae reveals that Beverly is Little Charles's real
father.
That night
Steve gropes Jean, and Johnna hits Steve with a frying
pan.
That night
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August: Osage County Study Guide
Plot Summary 10
Steve, Karen, Bill, and Jean leave.
Two weeks later
Sheriff Gilbeau reveals Beverly spent his last days in a
motel.
Several days later
Ivy tells Violet she and Little Charles are lovers.
Minutes later
Violet tells Ivy that Little Charles is Ivy's half-brother.
Minutes later
Violet says she knew about Beverly and Mattie Fae's
affair.
Minutes later
Violet and Barbara blame each other for Beverly's
suicide.
Minutes later
Barbara leaves Violet behind for good.
Minutes later
Violet babbles, and Johnna recites a poem.
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August: Osage County Study Guide
c Scene Summaries
Scene Summaries 11
Penn Warren puts the tragic aftermath of Beverly Weston's
suicide in the context of other families. In all families, Warren
suggests, there is a conflict between the generations. "When
you get born your mother and father lost something out of
Epigraph–Prologue
themselves," Warren writes, and the parents try to get this
"something" back from their children. Getting this something
back involves a terrible struggle. Thus families are necessarily
Summary
at each other's throats, both Warren and Letts suggest. The
family's name, Weston, is similar to West, suggesting their
downward trajectory parallels a broader social or civilizational
Epigraph
decline.
The first words spoken on stage are a quotation from the
The text begins with a long epigraph from the novel All the
poem "The Hollow Men" (1925) by Beverly's favorite writer, T.S.
King's Men (1946) by American writer Robert Penn Warren
Eliot. "Life is very long," says Beverly, quoting the poem. "The
(1905–1989). The epigraph suggests human families are
Hollow Men" is about moral and spiritual paralysis. In the part
always estranged from one another, unlike the animal families
of the poem that Beverly is quoting, long life is not joyous but
in "happy brute creation." So family reunions are always
painful and beset with failure. The speaker of the "The Hollow
fraught with conflict, "like diving into the octopus tank at the
Men" says that life is long because something always
aquarium."
intervenes between our plans and their fulfillment. "Between
the potency / And the existence / ... Falls the Shadow," writes
Prologue
The setting is a large old house in rural Osage County,
Eliot. This means that between the possibility of an act and its
fulfillment, something negative or evil intervenes, putting life in
disarray or leaving it unfulfilled.
Oklahoma, outside the town of Pawhuska. It is an August day in
This poem by Eliot resonates with the situation of poet Beverly
the year 2007. In his book-lined study, poet Beverly Weston is
Weston. He may seem to be a success, sitting in his book-lined
interviewing Johnna Monevata for the job of housekeeper.
study with enough money to hire someone to do his chores.
Beverly does most of the talking, rambling about poets who
But later in the play the audience will learn he has not written
have committed suicide and about his favorite poet, American
much poetry in decades. He also seems weary of life. This
writer (1888–1965) T.S. Eliot. From offstage, Violet can be
weariness is reflected in his allusions to two American poets
heard cursing. Beverly explains to Johnna that he drinks and
who took their lives. He calls American poets Hart Crane
his wife takes pills. With their two addictions, they can no
(1899–1932) and John Berryman (1914–1972) "Olympic
longer keep up with the housework.
Suicidalists." Just as Beverly will, both these poets took their
Violet enters, drug-addled and muttering something about the
police ("pullish"). At first she bristles at the idea of a "hired"
woman, but then she takes to Johnna, flirting with her. Violet
reveals to Johnna she has cancer of the mouth. Beverly lists
some of the many pills Violet takes. Johnna accepts the job,
and Beverly gives her a volume of T.S. Eliot's poetry.
lives by drowning. Beverly calls them "Olympian," perhaps
because the manner of their death was effortful and athletic.
Hart leapt from a ship into the Caribbean Sea, and Berryman
leapt from a bridge into the Mississippi River. Berryman was an
Oklahoman like Beverly, which may strengthen Beverly's
identification with him. Beverly's admiring description of both
poets as "Olympian" also suggests that in his distorted,
depressed way he sees their deaths as great achievements.
Analysis
The Weston family is atypical in some ways, but author Tracy
Letts gives hints that they are meant to represent more than
just these particular individuals. The epigraph from Robert
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Since he has ceased writing much poetry, perhaps he imagines
that imitating their deaths will secure his own literary legacy.
The allusions may indicate Beverly is already intending to take
his life, days before he does so. It is also possible Beverly
himself is unaware, at this point, of his desire to end his life, but
the mention of these "Suicidalists" betrays his unspoken
August: Osage County Study Guide
despair.
Scene Summaries 12
upstairs and talk, while downstairs Mattie Fae and Charlie
bicker. Violet takes a pill. Ivy announces she has also called
Violet's name hints at T.S. Eliot's wife's name, Vivienne, or Viv
Karen, who will "try" to come to Oklahoma. Then Violet carps
as she was known and as Beverly refers to her. Speaking of
about Ivy's appearance, picking on her hair and makeup. Violet
Eliot's wife, Beverly remarks that other poets, less strong than
takes another pill and asks Ivy how many pills that makes, but
Eliot, would have been driven to suicide by her. Thus Beverly's
Ivy says she isn't keeping track. Violet says her mouth is
suicidal despair is not located only in himself. At least in
burning "like a son of a bitch." Ivy points out she's smoking.
Beverly's eyes, Violet is driving him to his death. Just before
They wonder about Mattie Fae and Charlie's marriage. Violet
the scene ends Beverly quotes from "The Hollow Men" once
says Charlie copes with her by smoking grass, "a lot of grass."
more, saying, "Here we go round the round the prickly pear /
Prickly pear prickly pear." The cactus, a desert plant, suggests
Barbara and Bill arrive and they stand on the porch arguing
aridity, the opposite of flowing, abundant life. And Beverly has
while their daughter, Jean, sits in the car smoking. Barbara
just identified himself with the desert plant, telling Johnna he is
complains about the heat. Violet is opposed to air conditioning,
"a sort of human cactus." Beverly gives Johnna a volume of
and she once had several pet parakeets who died of the heat
Eliot's poems, saying she can "read it or not," as if it didn't
in her house. "These are tropical birds," Barbara points out.
matter. But it matters structurally to the play. Johnna does
She wonders why Europeans settled the Plains anyway. She
read the book, and later she will quote from it. She takes over
compares the Plains to "a state of mind, a spiritual affliction."
Beverly's voice by quoting Eliot just as he once did. This is one
Then Barbara remarks she is having a hot flash.
of the ways the absent Beverly casts a long shadow over the
whole play.
Barbara, Bill, and Jean enter the house. Mattie Fae greets them
affectionately, asking Jean and Bill for "some sugar." She also
comments on Jean's having grown up and even remarks on the
Act 1, Scene 1
size of Jean's breasts. Violet comes downstairs and tearfully
embraces Barbara. She tells Barbara and Bill she needs them
to help her with Beverly's paperwork. Violet asks Charlie which
Summary
One week later, at night, Ivy, Mattie Fae Aiken, and Charlie
Aiken sit in the living room, talking about Beverly Weston's
disappearance. Mattie Fae says Beverly has done this—left
room they're staying in, but Mattie Fae says she and Charlie
need to drive back home and feed their dogs. Barbara asks if
Jean can stay in the attic, and Violet says, "No, that's where
what's-her-name lives," meaning Johnna. Just then Johnna
enters and says, "Welcome home."
without a word— before. She also mentions she is the one who
first introduced Violet and Beverly, long ago. Charlie replies
that Mattie Fae stood Beverly up and that's how Beverly ended
Analysis
up with Violet, perhaps foreshadowing the truth about Little
One of the themes of August: Osage County is truth and
Charles. Changing the subject, Mattie Fae says she thinks
evasion, and the chief way the Westons evade the truth is by
Beverly will come back, but Ivy is skeptical. Mattie Fae says
intoxication. Almost everyone in the extended Weston family is
Beverly "was a complicated man," and Charlie reminds her to
using some kind of intoxicant. Fourteen-year-old Jean is
use the present tense when talking about Beverly. He and Ivy
smoking—a mild stimulant, but still a drug. Maybe she smokes
think Beverly is similar to Charlie and Mattie Fae's son, Little
in an effort to rebel, or to be closer to her father, who seems to
Charles. But Mattie Fae rejects the comparison. "Little Charles
appreciate her precocity. Charlie is apparently in the habit of
isn't complicated, he's just unemployed," she says.
smoking "a lot" of marijuana to cope with his wife. Violet and
The house is hot because the windows are shut. Additionally,
the shades are taped to the windows, blocking the light. Violet
Beverly have already been introduced to the audience as
addicts, though that is not evident this scene.
enters. Sheriff Gilbeau has told her that Beverly has not turned
The Westons avoid confronting reality; nonetheless, the truth
up at the hospital and his boat is missing from the family's
seems to be pressing in on them as hints of Beverly's possible
dock, though it might have been stolen. Ivy and Violet go
death emerge. Officially there is as yet no word of Beverly's
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August: Osage County Study Guide
death and no real reason to believe he is dead, but some family
Scene Summaries 13
sometimes, as in the Prologue, turn her speech into nonsense.
members appear to be anticipating his demise. Mattie Fae
speaks of Beverly in the past tense, as if he were dead. Violet's
request that Bill and Barbara go through Beverly's paperwork
Act 1, Scene 2
also seems rushed. And Ivy thinks that although her father has
taken off before, this time is different. One fact that goes
unsaid is that Violet has marshaled the entire clan. Although
Mattie Fae and others try to act as if Beverly has disappeared
before, it is not clear that the entire family usually gathers
when he does. It seems unlikely that they are called every time
Beverly takes a long weekend away from his burdensome life.
The anecdote Mattie Fae recalls of a similar event does not
include the family gathering to await his return. Instead she
recalls an act of bitter retaliation on the part of Violet, who had
gathered her husband's books on the lawn and burned them.
Another way the family avoids the truth is by busying
themselves in the logistics of a family gathering. It is clear that
Ivy is her mother's adjutant or second in command, dutifully
making all the phone calls and gathering the scattered family
together. The women also absorb themselves in the logistical
details of who will sleep where. The Westons' family life
combines ritualistic displays of affection with suffocating
conformity. Mattie Fae asks Jean and Bill for "some sugar" and
pries into the details of Jean's development as a woman,
commenting on her breasts. But the closeness of the family
can be suffocating, as symbolized by the house's stultifying
Summary
It is Thursday, and the setting is the dining room. Violet tells
Barbara and Bill about Beverly's disappearance. He left on a
Saturday morning, walking out the door after breakfast without
a word. By Sunday, Violet was feeling worried, and on Monday
she went to empty their safety deposit box. She reveals she
and Beverly had "an arrangement." If something happened to
one of them, "the other one would go and empty that safety
deposit box." Barbara wonders why Violet didn't have Ivy call
her until "Five days later."
Bill asks whether there was "some event ... some incident" that
precipitated Beverly's disappearance. Violet says no, and then
she admits Beverly did one unusual thing recently: he hired
Johnna, whom Violet refers to as "this woman" and "an Indian."
Barbara points out Violet should say "Native American" rather
than "Indian." In retaliation Violet gets in a shot about how
Barbara will soon abandon her again, "never to return." She
says Barbara was Beverly's favorite and she broke his heart
when she left Oklahoma.
heat. The window shades also symbolize the way the Westons,
especially Violet, shut out the truth. With the shades taped to
"Are you high?" Barbara asks Violet point blank. Violet denies it.
the window, no one can tell if it's night or day.
"I will not go through this with you again," Barbara says,
reminding Violet of a previous stay in the "psych ward." Violet
Barbara's hot flashes are symbolic of the increasing heat or
pressure she experiences inside this tinderbox of a home. The
heat itself is symbolic—things are reaching a fever-pitch. The
fact that the parakeets (tropical animals) died in the heat is
weeps for herself, saying, "I'm in pain." She also bitterly points
out that Barbara didn't come back to take care of her when
she got cancer, "but as soon as Beverly disappeared you
rushed back." Barbara apologizes to Violet.
symbolic of the terribly difficult conditions inside the house.
These women are stronger than the parakeets, but Barbara is
In the attic, Jean and Johnna talk. Jean asks Johnna, "Do you
getting to the point where she cannot take the heat.
mind if I smoke a bowl?" Johnna agrees, reluctantly, but
declines to get high herself. Jean says her father is okay with
Violet has cancer of the mouth, which emphasizes the play's
theme of decay. Author Tracy Letts could have given Violet
any number of fatal illnesses, and they all would have
adequately signaled decay. Violet's particular form of cancer,
however, strikes at the ability to speak and seems fitting given
the damage that Violet has done and continues to do with her
words. Her husband, Beverly, is a non-writing poet in the
decline of his career. Violet is on the edge of no longer making
verbal sense. Her mouth is "burning" from cancer, and the pills
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her getting high but her mother isn't. She also reveals her
parents are separated. Bill is having an affair with a student,
"which is pretty uncool if you ask me." Jean asks Johnna about
her parents. Johnna says they're dead. Johnna is reading the
T.S. Eliot book that Beverly loaned her. Jean admires Johnna's
necklace, which turns out to be a pouch holding her dried
umbilical cord. Jean is repelled, but Johnna explains it's a
Cheyenne tradition. If they lose their pouch, their "souls belong
nowhere."
August: Osage County Study Guide
Analysis
Scene Summaries 14
who is, the 50-year old Steve, with disastrous consequences.
The conversation with Johnna also reveals something about
This scene establishes a timeline for Beverly's disappearance
her family. Her parents are dead, but she keeps them in
while also deepening its mystery, which turns out to be one of
remembrance. There is a picture of them in her room—which
Beverly's enduring traits. As Barbara comments, Beverly was
Jean bumptiously praises for "costumes" which are "fantastic."
and is "Good old unfathomable Dad," while Violet admits she
Presumably Jean is referring to their Native American dress.
initially loved his "mystery." Though Beverly is absent for most
Johnna also reveals a Cheyenne custom which keeps her
of this play, it turns out he has been, in some sense, absent all
connected to her family. The necklace or pouch she wears
along.
contains her "dried umbilical cord," symbolically connecting her
However some of the mystery surrounding Beverly's
disappearance will turn out to have been manufactured.
Although Violet tells Bill and Barbara that Beverly simply
walked away without a word on Saturday morning, in the play's
final scene she reveals he left a note. Violet is only partly
truthful about Beverly's disappearance. When Bill asks if he did
anything unusual before leaving, Violet at first says no, but then
she realizes that he hired Johnna. This is insightful of Violet.
to mother and the rest of the family. Without it, Johnna says,
she would be rootless and disconnected. The question for the
audience is whether this means Johnna's family is different
than the "octopus tank" described by Robert Penn Warren in
the play's epigraph. Perhaps a cord keeps pulling the Weston
sisters back to Osage County. Or perhaps they are, as Johnna
would be if she lost her necklace, lost souls that "belong
nowhere."
During the job interview in the Prologue, Beverly tells Johnna
This scene also introduces the theme of pain. Violet says
that Violet will need to be driven to Tulsa for her "final
aloud, "I'm in pain," referring to the physical pain of cancer.
chemotherapy treatments." He may have been trying to make
However, she also has emotional and psychological pain, and
up for abandoning his gravely ill wife by arranging for her
that is a major theme in this play–suffering trauma, having pain,
medical treatment. There is also an ominous ring to the word
and inflicting it on others.
"final," even though chemotherapy infusions are given in a
specified number of sessions. Violet was there during that part
of the interview. This raises the possibility that she witnessed
some of Beverly's preparations for his own death, though she
Act 1, Scene 3
may not have realized it.
But Violet seems to know something she does not let on. Her
Summary
behavior around the safety deposit box is peculiar. She says, in
her slurring, drug-addled way, that she and Beverly had "a
In the living room of Beverly and Violet's house, Barbara and
urge-ment ... arrangement." The arrangement is that if
Bill get ready for bed. Bill is excited to find a copy of Beverly's
"something happens" to one of them, the other will empty the
most highly regarded volume of poems, but Barbara is
safety deposit box of its cash and jewelry. Barbara is alert to
unimpressed. When Bill won't drop the subject, Barbara snarls
how strange this is, but Bill deflects by focusing on the
at him, asking him to "shut up about that ... book." She says he
technical details of getting an estate tangled in probate court.
is "dripping with envy" over Beverly's acclaim, an aspect of
Neither Bill nor Violet openly admits that talking about probate
writing she says Beverly cared nothing about. She also
means talking about Beverly as if he were dead.
criticizes Bill for his affair with a student, a symptom of "male
menopause."
Meanwhile, Jean reveals she, too, is into the Weston family
tradition of using substances to escape or cope with pain. She
Bill tries to change the topic, saying Violet is the reason for
asks Johnna if she wants to "smoke a bowl" with her. Johnna is
Barbara's bad mood, but Barbara disagrees vehemently. She
26 and Jean is 14, so offering marijuana is Jean's way of
also points out that it's painful to "go from sharing a bed with
soliciting the attention of adults and acting like she, too, is one.
you for twenty-three years to sleeping by myself." Bill tries to
She has a teenager's view of adulthood: a utopia in which
wriggle out of the discussion again, saying they should talk this
grownups indulge nonstop in the pleasures denied to children.
over another time, "when your father's come home." Barbara
Johnna isn't interested in this, but later Jean will find an adult
says, flatly, "My father is dead." She goes to bed and turns
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August: Osage County Study Guide
away from Bill.
Scene Summaries 15
The phrase insinuates that he too has aged past his sexual
prime and is seeking a younger partner as a kind of denial.
Analysis
Act 1, Scene 4
This brief scene tells the audience something Violet and the
other characters don't know yet: that Bill and Barbara are on
the verge of divorce. Like a novel with an omniscient narrator,
the play's stage set with its cut-away three-story house allows
author Tracy Letts to show the audience things before other
characters find out. The same can be accomplished, of course,
in any play by having other characters exit the stage. But the
open house emphasizes the family as an entire ecosystem, like
the viciously fighting "octopus tank" mentioned in the play's
epigraph by Robert Penn Warren.
Summary
It is much later the same night—actually dawn, although that is
not apparent at first. Johnna comes to the living room and
wakes Barbara up to tell her Sheriff Gilbeau is there. Jean
wakes up too, but she is shushed and told to go back to bed.
Bill and Barbara wake up Violet, but she is high on drugs,
slurring her words and babbling nonsense. They leave her in
Because they are trying to keep their separation a secret, the
her bedroom, and Barbara goes back down to the living room
still-married Fordhams are forced to share a makeshift
to talk to the sheriff.
bedroom. This forced togetherness enables Letts to put their
fighting styles on display. Barbara lashes out, taking multiple
lines of attack, but she aims well. She is insightful about how
Bill's professed admiration for Beverly's poetry just barely
conceals a roiling envy. Bill focuses on things slightly external
to the poems themselves: the dedication to Violet, the rarity of
a hardback edition, the praise of the critics, and how he
imagines Beverly anxiously ruminating on that praise. Barbara
is right that these things reveals more about Bill's concerns
than about Beverly's poetry. Bill, for his part, largely avoids the
fight, pleading to put it off under the guise of reasonableness.
The sheriff turns out to be someone Barbara once dated, Deon
Gilbeau. He tells Bill and Barbara that Beverly has been found
dead, drowned in the lake. He also says somebody needs to
come identify the body—at the lake, not at the station house.
Bill volunteers, but Sheriff Gilbeau says it has to be a relative.
Barbara quails, saying, "I can't do it." Jean volunteers, but then
Barbara says she will do it. While Barbara goes to get ready,
Bill pulls Sheriff Gilbeau aside. He asks whether there is any
way to tell whether Beverly died accidentally or took his own
life. Sheriff Gilbeau says they can't tell for sure, but he thinks it
was suicide. He adds that Beverly's body has been in the water
A darkly comic moment occurs when Bill reveals just how blind
for three days, so Bill should try to prepare Barbara for the
he is to his wife's needs. He asks Barbara, sarcastically, to
sight.
please choose one topic for their argument because he is
having a hard time keeping up. Aggravated, she shouts, "The
subject is me, you narcissistic ... I am in pain! I need help!"
Instead of attending to Barbara's pain, Bill turns the talk back
to himself. "I've copped to being a narcissist," he says, being
defensive about himself and obtuse about Barbara's suffering.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Barbara tells Jean about her high
school prom date with Deon Gilbeau. On prom night Deon's
father got drunk and "stole his own son's car." When Deon
showed up for their date, Barbara could see he had been
crying. They set out on foot, planning to walk three miles to the
dance. Tired and sweaty, they gave up on the long march,
One of Barbara's attacks on Bill also continues the play's
bought some beer, and drank it in a chapel. They "stayed up all
theme of decline and decay. Barbara accuses Bill of suffering
night talking and kissing." At the end of the story Barbara asks
from "male menopause." Since menopause literally means the
Jean to promise her something: "Outlive me, please."
cessation of menses, it is not possible for cisgender men to
experience it. There is some support in the medical community
for the idea that men's hormonal changes lead to something
like menopause, but that is not important in the context of this
play. What matters is the implied insult in the phrase "male
menopause," especially in the way Barbara uses it as an insult.
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Violet comes downstairs to the study, where she joins Sheriff
Gilbeau. She is half-incoherent, slurring her words. "Did sum
Beer-ly come home?" She asks for a cigarette and keeps
rambling, "I'm in the bottom. Izza bottom of them. Inna ... ell."
Then Violet shuffles to the living room, where she puts on an
Eric Clapton song, "Lay Down, Sally." She dances jerkily, and
August: Osage County Study Guide
Scene Summaries 16
then she asks Sheriff Gilbeau the time. He tells her it's 5:45 in
technique at the end. There Violet seems to be numbly
the morning. Violet shouts Barbara's name, and then she goes
recounting the losses of her life: "and then you're gone, and
back to talking nonsense, repeating the phrase "and then
Beverly, and then you're gone, and Barbara."
you're here, and then you're here."
Analysis
Sometimes the play's theme of decline is presented in comic
terms, as with Barbara's frequent mentions of her hot flashes
or Bill's so-called "male menopause." But in Violet's addiction
and Beverly's suicide, the decline of the Weston family is
shown to be tragic. August: Osage County has some
similarities to The Tragedy of King Lear (1608) by William
Shakespeare (1564–1616). In that play, King Lear abdicates his
throne while trying to hold onto his role as family patriarch. The
greedy infighting occasioned by his abdication leads Lear into
a hellish night of madness in a storm. Like Lear, August: Osage
County is a tragedy about old age—a difficult period of life in
which to set a character's fall from greatness, since that fall is
generally assumed by the audience to have already happened
Act 2
Summary
It is three o'clock in the afternoon, three days after Act 1,
Scene 4. The family has just come back from Beverly's funeral
and is preparing to eat dinner. The house has been cleaned up
and tables are set for dinner. Violet stands alone in the study,
apparently addressing Beverly: "August ... your month." She
swallows a pill, saying, "one for me." She picks up her late
husband's most famous book of poems, Meadowlark, and
reads the dedication: "Dedicated to my Violet." She drops the
book, apparently in scorn. "You made your choice. You made
this happen," she tells the absent Beverly.
by the time one reaches old age. If August: Osage County can
Barbara and Karen talk in the dining room. Barbara barely gets
be considered a version of Lear, there is a key difference. In
a word in while Karen natters excitedly about herself. She says
this version the patriarch, Beverly, abdicates by taking his own
she now sees everything is about "the present." Then she
life, and it is the matriarch, Violet, who both tries to hold onto
recounts all the mistakes she made before she had this insight
her sovereignty over the family and endures a night of hellish
about the present. She also talks about her fiancé, Steve, and
madness. But in Violet's case the "night" of hellish madness
their honeymoon plans in Belize and asks about whether
stretches over several weeks in August. Her erratic and—to
Barbara will come to her wedding in Miami on New Year's.
Sheriff Gilbeau—horrifying dance to Eric Clapton echoes Lear's
night of derangement. Her slurred words, "I'm in the bottom...
While Barbara and Karen go to the kitchen, upstairs Violet,
Inna... ell," might mean "I'm in hell."
Mattie Fae, and Ivy look through old photographs. Mattie Fae is
wearing a black dress; Ivy, a black suit. Violet needles Ivy about
Violet's nonsensical repetition of the phrase "and then you're
her fashion choices. She says Ivy won't be able to attract a
here, and then you're here" is an inversion of what she says in
man. Ivy retorts that she has a man, but then she refuses to
the final scene of the play: "and then you're gone, and Beverly,
say who it is. Meanwhile, Mattie Fae remarks Little Charles has
and then you're gone, and Barbara." At the very end the names
been talking about moving to New York. She comments on
drop out and she simply repeats "and then you're gone"—just
how unfit Little Charles is for city life, and for life in general. He
as here in Act 1, Scene 4, she repeats the phrase "and then
slept through his grandfather's funeral. At age 37, he still
you're here." In piling up phrases connected only by end,
doesn't know how to drive. "I've seen a chimp drive," Mattie Fae
playwright Tracy Letts is using a literary technique called
says in disgust. Violet talks about "downsizing" and tries to give
parataxis. In its strictest definition, parataxis means to pile up
away her clothes and furniture.
phrases without using conjunctions to connect them, as in "I
came, I saw, I conquered." Violet uses the conjunction "and,"
Downstairs, Ivy rushes inside and turns on the TV. Bill and
but she seems to using parataxis to narrate a life devoid of any
Steve follow, carrying groceries. Steve talks about his business
order or logic. Repeating "and then you're here, and then you're
dealings, which involve offshore accounts, "Florida politics,"
here" is similar to the saying "one thing after another." The
and "the situation in the Middle East." He says, "It's essentially
interpretation of Violet's speech as a narration of a
security work." When Bill asks if that means being a mercenary,
meaningless life is supported by Letts's repetition of the
Steve doesn't answer. Barbara enters and asks Jean if she
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August: Osage County Study Guide
Scene Summaries 17
rushed home to watch TV. Jean is watching The Phantom of
offers Barbara the sideboard. "I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff,"
the Opera (1925). Bill talks to Jean about the movie
she explains. Barbara demurs, trying not to get into this
knowledgeably, like a film buff, while Barbara criticizes Jean for
discussion at the funeral dinner.
wanting to rush home to watch TV on the day of the funeral.
Charles asks Jean why she doesn't eat meat. She tells him,
Barbara and Bill leave Jean and Steve alone in the living room
"When you eat meat, you ingest an animal's fear." Jean talks
watching TV. Steve hits on Jean who lies about her age, saying
earnestly about the chemical and spiritual ramifications of
she is 15. He talks about pot and makes lewd comments to Ivy.
vegetarianism while Charlie and other family members snigger.
Karen enters and asks Steve for cigarettes, but he forgot to
Violet remembers a phrase from a commercial, "Where's the
buy them. Jean offers Karen her cigarettes. Karen and Steve
meat?" The tagline is about beef, Karen corrects her. In
then snuggle on the couch, speaking to each other in baby talk.
retaliation, Violet screeches her version of the phrase over and
Karen leaves. Before Steve follows, he pauses. He rubs his
over. The rest of the family is momentarily stunned into silence.
hand over Jean's face and promises to "hook you up later."
Then they start talking about the funeral.
Outside, Charlie and Little Charles arrive and pause on the
Most of the family members compliment the service, but Violet
porch. "I know Mom's mad at me," says Little Charles, referring
complains there was too much emphasis on Beverly as a poet
to his having overslept and missed the funeral. He also fears
and professor. Wickedly, she says the eulogy didn't account for
Beverly must be disappointed in him. Charlie does his best to
the fact he hated teaching and hadn't written any poetry to
reassure Little Charles, extolling Beverly's kindness. Little
speak of since 1965. She then says he was a "world-class
Charles starts to weep. Charles reassures him some more,
alcoholic" who once "fouled himself" while speaking before an
tells him to comb his hair, and gives him a handkerchief. Before
audience, drunk, at an alumni dinner. She concludes her cruel
they go inside they tell each other they love each other.
anecdote by laughing. When Steve tells Bill how well he read
Beverly's poems at the funeral, Violet abruptly asks him, "Who
In the dining room, Barbara and Bill argue about Jean and
are you?" Violet then grills Steve, getting him to admit he has
about Bill's parenting. Bill says Barbara is thoughtful and
already been married three times. "I had that one pegged,"
passionate but she is "not open" and she is "hard." He also says
Violet says, proud of herself.
she is "a good, decent, funny, wonderful woman" whom he
loves. He concludes that she is "a pain in the ass."
A stray remark about "cowboys and Native Americans " leads
Violet into a dig at political correctness. Barbara asks Violet
Dinner begins. The dialogue is given in three parallel columns
what pills she is on. Charlie suddenly seems to be in the throes
on the page as the family members speak simultaneously.
of a fit. But he is play-acting. "I just got a big bite of fear!" he
Initially the conversation is innocuous chit-chat. Little Charles
announces, teasing Jean again. Everyone joins in, eager to
goes out to bring in Mattie Fae's casserole, which he had
focus on Jean; Barbara also joins in, claiming Jean sometimes
forgotten. Ivy and Little Charles steal a kiss on the porch. She
sneaks hamburgers. When Jean calls Barbara a liar, Violet
tells him that she told the family she has a man but didn't say
goes on the attack, saying her own mother would have
who. He says he told the family he's moving to New York but
"knocked my goddamn head off" for talking that way.
hasn't mentioned he's going there with her. Little Charles says,
"I adore you" to Ivy.
The subject changes to Beverly's papers. Violet asks Bill what
he has found in Beverly's office. Bill tries to talk about Beverly's
Back in the dining room, dinner is underway. Little Charles
poetry manuscripts, but Violet starts in about the will. She says
enters and drops the casserole on the floor. Mattie Fae yells at
the will he wrote leaves everything to his three daughters.
him and Charlie tries to smooth things over. Jean refuses the
However, Violet claims, he really meant to change the will and
chicken, saying she doesn't eat meat. Violet enters, and she
leave all his money to her. One by one the daughters all assent.
lights into the family members, starting with an icy remark
Then Violet offers to sell her daughter some furniture, as if in
about the men having removed their suit coats. "I thought we
compensation for the hijacked inheritance. Barbara points out
were having a funeral dinner, not a cockfight," she says. The
they could just wait for her to die, "and then we can just have
men put on their coats again. Violet asks Barbara to say grace.
(the furniture) for free." Violet then offers Bill the sideboard,
Barbara replies that Charlie, now "the patriarch around here,"
asking, "Where are you living now, Bill?" She presses Bill until
should say it. Charlie delivers a long, rambling blessing. Violet
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August: Osage County Study Guide
Scene Summaries 18
he admits he and Barbara are separated. "Nobody slips
meant to commemorate that fact and say farewell to Beverly.
anything by me," Violet says, triumphant. She also guesses,
Violet's unhinged repetition of the question may indicate she
correctly, that there is a younger woman involved in the break-
cannot deal with Beverly's death.
up of the marriage.
This entire act-long scene revolves around truth, one of the
Some family members push back against Violet's viciousness.
play's themes. Characters in this scene flout convention in
Barbara reminds Violet that she identified her "father's corpse"
order to speak the unvarnished truth. Matti Fae admits she has
only three days ago, and now she has to hear Violet "viciously
lost interest in the "project" of her and Charlie's son, though
attack" the family. Violet increases her aggression, standing up
parents are usually bound by custom to at least pretend to love
and launching into a tirade about what an attack really is. She
their children. Barbara tells Violet the truth: "You're a drug
says Mattie Fae once came to her rescue when one of their
addict." Even Charlie tries to get in on the truth-telling, though
mother's "gentleman friends" attacked Violet with a claw
his courage fails him. Violet positions herself as the greatest
hammer. Violet then asks her daughters if they know where
truth-teller, launching one weaponized truth after another. But
Beverly lived from ages four to ten. "In a Pontiac sedan," Violet
she is lying by omission throughout this scene, though
says, revealing Beverly and his parents had been homeless.
audience members won't realize that until later in the play. She
She rants about the sacrifices she and Beverly made and how
claims to tell the truth about Beverly, wickedly disparaging his
her daughters understand nothing about "real problems." She
reputation and laughing about his humiliation. However, the
adds it's "time we had some truths told round here."
truth is that she knew where Beverly was during part of his
disappearance, that he left her a note, and that she did not call
Little Charles says, "I have a truth." Ivy begs him not to say
him for two days. Violet could have reached out to her suicidal
anything. Little Charles thinks the better of it and weakly
husband and did not, but this is a truth she skips over.
announces that he didn't sleep through the alarm; in fact, he
forgot to set it at all. He then walks out to the porch. Mattie
Karen, in relentlessly narrating her own life, is trying to re-
Fae says, "I gave up (on Little Charles) a long time ago," and
invent the truth. Although she claims to have changed her life
she tells her husband their son is "your project now." Ivy quietly
with her discovery of how to live in the present, this is clearly
says that his name is Charles, not Little Charles. Violet says Ivy
false. She talks nonstop about her past, reviewing all the
has "always had a feeling for the underdog." Ivy, fearing an
mistakes she made before learning to live in the present, and
attack, begs Violet not to be mean. Violet says she is only
she also talks about the future, projecting a perfect life for
telling the truth. Barbara tells her, "You're a drug addict."
herself with Steve in Miami. As a later scene reveals, Karen
was neither her mother's nor her father's favorite. The
Taking a new tack, Violet proudly agrees she is an addict. She
neglected child, she puffs herself up, constantly trying to gain
holds up a bottle of pills, claiming they are her best friends.
attention.
Enraged, Barbara lunges at her and they wrestle. Others enter
the fray, trying to separate them. When the physical fight finally
The Weston family reveals itself as a system in which the
ends, Barbara yells at Violet to shut up. She tells the family
strong weaponize the truth—or at least each member's
they are going to hold a "pill raid," finding and disposing of all
personal version of the truth—to attack the weak. Violet heaps
Violet's pills. When Violet protests, Barbara shouts, "I'M
scorn on Ivy, and Matti Fae does the same to Little Charles.
RUNNING THINGS NOW!"
Everyone joins in the teasing of Jean, although they do this in
the belief that it is harmless. Jean's attempts to establish her
Analysis
autonomy through rejecting eating meat strike the family
members as small, harmless, and comical. Everyone piles on
Jean because they think this piling-on does not hurt, unlike the
At this point in the play, Beverly's body has been found.
slashing and cutting that is going on between the adults. In a
However Violet's repeated questions, however demented they
way Barbara upends the Weston family system, or at least
may sound, may actually refer to his death, to his absence, or
climbs to the top of it, when she declares, "I'M RUNNING
to the obscure and unwitnessed moment of his death. "Where's
THINGS NOW!" Although making herself into the head of the
the meat?!" Violet shrieks again and again. The
family would seem to make her the most adult of the adults,
"meat"—Beverly's body—is in the ground, and the funeral is
her cry is a desperate one. Only a child oppressed in a the
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August: Osage County Study Guide
Scene Summaries 19
family system could so desperately need to claim control of
Barbara is furious with Beverly. "He could have talked to us,"
her life by claiming control of her family.
she says. Ivy replies, skeptically, that Barbara might not have
liked what Beverly told her. "What if the truth of the matter is
Act 3, Scene 1
Beverly never liked you ... or any of us?" Ivy asks. She says she
is leaving for New York soon, and Barbara is welcome to stay
in Oklahoma if she's so worried about Violet.
Summary
The shades have been removed from the windows. It is
nighttime. Barbara, Ivy, and Karen talk in the study, drinking
whiskey. Charlie, Mattie Fae, Jean, and Steve play cards in the
dining room. Little Charles is by himself in the living room. Bill is
on the porch, going over paperwork. Violet is upstairs.
The sisters talk about Violet's drug use. Ivy and Barbara reveal
Violet got prescriptions from several doctors, threatening them
with loss of their licenses if they balked. Now with her sisters,
Barbara scoffs about Violet belonging to "the Greatest
Generation," the one that reached young adulthood during
World War II. She recalls another addiction crisis years ago,
when Violet smuggled pills into rehab by hiding them in her
vagina.
Barbara asks Ivy if she is in a relationship with Little Charles,
but Ivy won't say. Barbara points out, facetiously, that they
shouldn't have children since they're cousins. Ivy reveals that
she can't have children. Beside the fact that she is now in her
40s and unlikely to conceive a child, she was diagnosed with
cervical cancer a year ago and had a hysterectomy. The only
person she told was Little Charles, and "that's where it started
between him and me." Barbara and Karen wonder why Ivy
didn't tell them, but Ivy is skeptical of "these myths of
sisterhood." She says they are connected by nothing but
"genetics, a random selection of cells." Barbara is shocked by
Ivy's cynicism. Ivy says maybe her cynicism came from getting
stuck caring for their parents while Barbara and Karen
swanned off to live their own lives far away. When she leaves
Violet enters, apparently sober, and talks about the "warm
feeling" she gets from hearing their voices in her home. Then
tells a story about cowboy boots she wanted as a young
teenager. Her mother wrapped up a box the size of a boot box
and put it under the Christmas tree to make Violet think she
was going to get her coveted gift, but on Christmas Day Violet
opened the present only to find an old pair of men's work
boots, "caked in mud and dogshit." Her mother laughed about it
"for days." After hearing this Barbara tells her sisters she
needs to speak to Violet alone. The two apologize to each
other about the fight at dinner, and they agree to a truce.
Barbara asks Violet if she needs to go to a rehab center, but
Violet says she can quit pills by herself.
Ivy joins Little Charles in the living room in front of the TV. He
asks her if she's mad at him for almost revealing their secret,
but she isn't. Little Charles goes to the piano and Ivy sits by him
on the bench. He plays Ivy a song he wrote about her. When
Mattie Fae and Charlie enter, Mattie Fae sarcastically calls
Little Charles "Liberace." She then mocks Little Charles more
by saying that if only there were a job where he could be paid
to watch TV. Barbara almost enters the room but, hearing the
fight, hovers nearby.
Charlie orders the "kids" to go outside and then he blows up at
Mattie Fae. He says he cannot understand "this meanness" in
Mattie Fae and Violet. He reminds her, "We buried a man today,
a man I loved very much." In honor of Beverly's memory, Mattie
Fae should lay off. They have been married 38 years but if she
doesn't "find a generous place in [her] heart" for Little Charlies,
they "won't make it to thirty-nine." He leaves the room.
she "won't feel any more guilty than you two did." She and
Mattie Fae becomes aware of Barbara, who apologizes for
Charles plan to move to New York City.
eavesdropping. Mattie Fae asks Barbara if something is going
Barbara asks Ivy, "What about Mom?" Ivy throws the question
back: "What about her?" Barbara has no idea what it's like, Ivy
says, because Barbara is Violet's favorite. Barbara thinks she
was her father's favorite, but Ivy says it's not so. It was Violet
who was heartbroken when Barbara moved away. Then the
sisters discuss their father's suicide. Beverly "killed himself for
his own reasons," says Ivy, and he's probably "better off now."
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on between Ivy and Little Charles. Barbara tries to avoid
answering, out of loyalty to Ivy, but then she says yes. Mattie
Fae says, "That can't happen." Barbara tries to downplay how
"unorthodox" it is for first cousins to be in a relationship. Mattie
Fae tells her they're not cousins. "He's your father's child," she
says, "which means that he is Ivy's brother (half-brother)."
Mattie Fae and Beverly had an affair. Beverly knew he was
August: Osage County Study Guide
Little Charles's father, but Charlie doesn't suspect anything.
Only Mattie Fae, and now Barbara, know the secret, and Mattie
Scene Summaries 20
Act 3, Scene 2
Fae puts it to Barbara to break up Little Charles and Ivy.
Barbara protests being saddled with the task. "You said you
were running things," Mattie Fae points out.
Summary
It is later the same night. Karen is asleep in the living room and
Analysis
Bill is asleep in the study.
Violet is not actually a member of the "Greatest Generation," a
Scantily dressed, Jean and Steve smoke pot together in the
term coined by newscaster Tom Brokaw to describe people
dining room. Steve takes every opportunity to make lewd
who were young adults during World War II. Violet is 65 years
comments. He fondles Jean's breasts, and Jean resists. But
old in 2007, so she would have been just three or so years old
they continue flirting as Steve asks Jean about her sexual
at the close of the war. Nonetheless, the term fits the occasion
experiences. Jean says she is not a virgin, "not technically."
in several senses. The Greatest Generation refers to older
Steve, emboldened, turns off the light. There is a sound of
people, now dying out, who made tremendous sacrifices during
moaning. The light comes back on. Johnna has entered,
the war. When Barbara punctures the solemnity of the phrase
carrying a cast-iron frying pan. She hits Steve on the head.
"Greatest Generation," she is also puncturing the solemnity of
Violet's terrible sacrifices—all her talk of poverty and cruel
suffering. The term Greatest Generation also fits because
Barbara is making jokes about her mother's vagina, referring to
Violet's pill smuggling. Violet is literally Barbara and her sisters'
"generator" or "engenderer." But now, in Barbara's jokey
anecdote about rehab, all Violet gives birth to—all she
"generates"—are prescription pills. Far from being the greatest
Everyone else in the house wakes up. Karen comes in and
rushes to Steve's side, asking him what happened. Johnna
says, "He was messing with Jean." Bill and Barbara come in,
and Johnna tells them what happened. Barbara tries to
physically attack Steve. "I'll murder you!" she shouts. Steve
says he did nothing wrong. Karen and Steve leave the room
and start packing to go.
generator, Violet has sunk to the level of a joke in Barbara's
Barbara and Bill ask Jean to tell them what happened, but she
and her sisters' eyes.
says it was "nothing." Barbara presses her, but Jean keeps
This scene poses the question of whether any members of the
Weston family can join together and make common cause.
Shared suffering provides the Weston sisters with a bond as
they joke about their mother and her pills, but this connection
is limited. As Ivy sees all too well, Barbara, Karen, and now
minimizing it. "What's the big deal?" she shrugs. When Bill says
the big deal is her age, 14, Jean says "Just a few years younger
than you like 'em." Barbara slaps Jean, and they both yell that
they hate each other. Jean runs from the room, Bill follows her,
and then Johnna also leaves.
even Ivy, herself, are committed to lives far away from
In the living room, Karen talks to Barbara while she gets ready
Oklahoma. Karen has sentimental illusions about the sisters'
to leave. She casts aspersions on Jean, talking in a seemingly
bond, but Ivy sees through the myths of sisterhood because
circular or illogical way: "I'm not blaming her. Just because I've
she has borne the brunt of the every-sister-for-herself reality
said she's not blameless." She continues, saying that Steve
of family life. The scene with Ivy and Little Charles also raises
isn't perfect and that she too has done things she is not proud
question of family members joining together to escape the pain
of. She concludes by reminding Barbara, "Come January ... I'll
of the Weston family. Ivy and Little Charles share a tender
be in Belize. Doesn't that sound perfect?" She leaves, and Bill
moment at the piano. But Mattie Fae punctures the mood, even
enters the room.
sneeringly referring to Little Charles as Liberace, a gay
entertainer famous for his flamboyant costumes. Precisely in
Barbara speaks self-deprecatingly about her failures as a wife
the moment Little Charles is engaged in romance, Mattie Fae
and mother. She points out she has physically attacked both
disrupts and insults him. This foreshadows what will happen to
Violet and Karen "in the space of about nine hours." They talk
Ivy and Little Charles' relationship: Mattie Fae's truth will break
about Jean. Then Barbara asks, bluntly, "You're never coming
them up.
back to me, are you, Bill?" He admits he is not. She asks, "I'll
never understand why, will I?" Bill says she probably won't. As
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August: Osage County Study Guide
he walks away, she sobs and says, "I love you ... I love you."
Scene Summaries 21
The scene between Barbara and Bill appears to be his farewell
to her. But she is the one who brings up the topic of their
Analysis
permanent separation. In Act 1, Scene 3, Bill imagines there will
be a future in which he and Barbara will talk over their
differences calmly. He pictures this future as happening when
Johnna, not being a Weston, is the most trustworthy character
Beverly returns. Even though she couldn't know it at the time,
in the play. She is one of the few characters who never lies, the
Barbara claimed, "My father is dead." This meant Barbara knew
other being Sheriff Gilbeau. Thus when Johnna flings on the
there was no future harmony for her and Bill. Now she is
lights and bangs Steve on the head, the audience can trust her
continuing to inform Bill about what she already knows, that
judgment. Jean's agency in the sexual encounter is somewhat
their marriage is over. When Barbara asks if Bill is never
ambiguous. She pretends to be 15, and although she resists
coming back to her, he doesn't answer her right away. He
Steve's groping, she continues to flirt and she appears to stay
initially deflects, saying half-heartedly, "Never say never, but ... "
in the dark room with him willingly. However, as a teenager she
It is Barbara who has to draw out the implications and get Bill
cannot meaningfully consent to the adult Steve's advances.
to admit he is never coming back. Instead of this being the
When Steve tries to say he did "nothing wrong" because he
scene in which Bill tells the truth about their failing marriage, it
thought she was 15, his claim is laughable. But her crack about
is one in which Barbara realizes the truth for herself.
how young her father "like(s) 'em" is on the nose. Bill, too, has
been engaging in predatory behavior, though not with minors.
Karen's siding with Steve is self-serving. Steve represents her
Act 3, Scene 3
"perfect" honeymoon in Belize and her perfect married life.
Perhaps because she feels the need to protect herself, she
struggles to talk coherently about what happened between
Summary
Jean and Steve. She blames Jean while claiming not to blame
her. Karen tries to justify Steve's behavior, but she also tries to
Barbara and Johnna are in the study. Presumably it is the same
elucidate the difference between being to blame and not being
night, moments later. Barbara is drinking whiskey, and she
blameless. This distinction helps the audience understand the
recalls the last time she spoke to her father. He spoke of the
ways in which Barbara accepts her failures as a mother (so
decline of the United States, which he said had gone from a
she is not blameless in those failures), but she isn't entirely to
"whorehouse" to a "shithole." He sounded hopeless, and
blame because her upbringing and circumstances are to blame
Barbara wonders if he was really speaking about something
for many things. Barbara's exploration of the paradox here is
else: "This house? This family? His marriage? Himself?" She
part of the way that theme of generational trauma comes to
says it's much worse for things to slowly decline than suddenly
the surface.
end.
Additionally Karen says, darkly, that she "has done things
Johnna asks if Barbara is firing her. Barbara says no, she is
[she's] not proud of." She also says, regarding her future, "I
apologizing for her own bad behavior. She would understand if
may even have to do some things I am not proud of again."
Johnna wants to quit, since the work of caring for Violet will be
Karen justifies Steve's behavior with the explanation that none
very hard. But Johnna is welcome to stay. "I'm still here,"
of these characters are free of poor decisions, and because
Barbara adds. Johnna says she will stay because she needs
she has made decisions (of an unknown nature) of which she is
the work. Barbara asks what Beverly said to
not proud, she can understand someone else who does the
Johnna—presumably, during the job interview, or perhaps in
same. However, in her review of her shameful choices, she
the few days she worked for him. Johnna says Beverly spoke
neglects to focus on the shameful thing she is doing in the
about his daughters and granddaughter (Jean), saying they
present: taking the word of a predatory adult over the word of
were "his joy." Barbara says she wants Johnna to stay and will
a minor. Although Karen claimed earlier in the play that she had
pay her salary. Johnna leaves the room, and Barbara repeats
learned to live in the present, she is clinging desperately to her
that she is "still here."
illusion of the future. "Come January, " says Karen, "I'll be in
Belize. Doesn't that sound perfect?"
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August: Osage County Study Guide
Analysis
This brief scene serves several functions. On a practical level,
Barbara's taking over the responsibility of paying Johnna's
salary has consequences for later plot developments. If
Johnna's pay remained tied to the now-dead Beverly, and/or if
Johnna quit, there would be no one to care for Violet.
Therefore, when Barbara leaves later in the play, she would
Scene Summaries 22
audiences see of Beverly is far from joyous, and he doesn't
mention his daughters at all during the job interview in the
Prologue. However, when Beverly gives her the book of Eliot's
poetry, Johnna essentially becomes Beverly's surrogate in the
rest of the play, often intoning the words of Beverly's favorite
poet. It is possible Beverly showed her another side of himself
and that Letts uses Johnna to embody this loving side of
Beverly.
potentially be condemning her cancer-afflicted mother to
death since Violet seems in no condition to care for herself.
With Violet's care secured by Johnna, Barbara will be free to
Act 3, Scene 4
leave later, even though that is not Barbara's conscious motive
in this current scene.
Summary
But there is more going on than plot mechanics. Barbara asks
whether Beverly was talking about something besides the
It is daytime, two weeks after Act 3, Scene 3. Barbara and
United States when he spoke of its decline. By offering multiple
Sheriff Gilbeau are in the living room. Sheriff Gilbeau has come
possibilities—house, family, Beverly himself, etc.—Barbara's
to talk to Barbara about something, but first they chat and
speech establishes a parallel among all these things. Beverly's
reminisce. Barbara compliments Gilbeau on the way he has
decline is the decline of the house, of the family, of the country.
"filled out." She mentions, in passing, that she's having a hot
Barbara's supposition is that "maybe [Beverly] was talking
flash and that soon she will be divorced. Sheriff Gilbeau is also
about talking about something else" when he talked about the
divorced now. Barbara speaks disparagingly of her daughter,
country's decline. But the supposition can be reversed. Maybe
calling her a nymphomaniac and deriding her name as "stupid."
playwright Tracy Letts is talking about the decline of the
Gilbeau asks Barbara if they might get lunch together one day.
United States, or of civilization, when he writes about the
"Mm-hmm," Barbara answers noncommittally. At the end of the
decline of Beverly and the other Westons.
scene Sheriff Gilbeau comes out with the reason he came to
The theme of decline is also represented in an allusion Barbara
makes to a poem by T.S. Eliot, her father's favorite poet and
one frequently referenced in this play. Barbara says,
"Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm." Although
Barbara is not consciously alluding to Eliot with these words,
talk to Barbara. He has learned Beverly stayed in the Country
Squire Motel for the first two nights he was missing. They
ponder whether he was trying to gather the courage for
suicide or trying to talk himself out of it. Before Sheriff Gilbeau
leaves, he and Barbara share an awkward kiss.
playwright Letts is. They echo an idea in Eliot's poem "The
Hollow Men" (1925), a poem quoted at the beginning and end
of this play. In "The Hollow Men," the speaker says, "This is the
Analysis
way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." The
This brief scene fills in some of the mystery of Beverly's
poem's "whimper" ending to the world is equivalent to
disappearance by filling in the timeline. There is also an
Barbara's idea of "dissipation," and the poem's "bang" is
ambiguous resolution of the attraction between Sheriff Gilbeau
equivalent to Barbara's "cataclysm." Barbara affirms that the
and Barbara in the awkward kiss that concludes the scene.
world (or the Weston family) ends in slow decline rather than
However, the scene's chief function seems to set up the
sudden cataclysm, and she also adds the judgment that the
revelation at the climax of the play that Violet had neglected to
decline is worse.
make any effort to save Beverly. Once the audience knows
That there was perhaps some love in the Weston family before
this decline can be seen in the character of the young Native
American housekeeper. Johnna is telling Barbara a wellintentioned fib when she says Beverly spoke to her about his
daughters and what a joy they were to him. Certainly what
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Beverly was in a motel, it is prepared to learn Violet also knew
this. But the shocking revelation that she made no attempt to
talk her husband out of suicide doesn't come until the next
scene. Throughout the play, Beverly's intentions in the last
days of his life remain a mystery.
August: Osage County Study Guide
Act 3, Scene 5
Scene Summaries 23
safety deposit box. But she also waited so she could show
Beverly she was stronger than he. "Who's stronger now?" she
crows. Barbara leaves.
Summary
Violet calls out repeatedly for Barbara and Ivy, but they are
gone. She calls out to Beverly and then to Johnna. She puts on
Barbara and Ivy are in the dining room. Barbara is wearing a
the Eric Clapton record and then she crawls upstairs on all
nightgown, perhaps from the night before, and they are waiting
fours. She reaches Johnna's room and crawls into Johnna's
for Johnna to serve a meal. The sisters talk about whether
lap. She repeats the phrase "and then you're gone," adding the
Violet is "clean," meaning sober. Barbara says she's "clean-ish"
names Beverly and Barbara. The scene ends with Violet and
and that will have to do. Ivy says she's going to tell Violet about
Johnna speaking simultaneously. Johnna sings some words
herself and Charles. Barbara thinks it's a bad idea, but Ivy
from a poem by T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land. "This is the way the
insists because she and Charles are leaving for New York the
world ends, this is the way the world ends." Violet repeats the
next day. Barbara tries to dissuade Ivy from going, but she
phrase "and then you're gone."
doesn't give a reason. Johnna enters and serves the food,
catfish.
Analysis
When Violet enters. Barbara offers her catfish, but Violet says
she is not hungry. Ivy comments on the fact that both Violet
This scene provides a taste of the future that would have been
and Barbara are wearing nightclothes. Barbara becomes
Barbara's and Violet's, if Barbara didn't leave. She and Violet
insistent, ordering Violet several times to, "Eat it." Ivy tries
have fallen further into dissolution, as shown by the fact that
repeatedly to raise the subject of Little Charles, but Barbara
they are wearing nightgowns at the dinner table. Ivy, too, was
interrupts by screaming about food, throwing plates, and
meant to be a part of this life, and Violet clearly expects her life
claiming Ivy is a lesbian. Finally Ivy gets a word in, but as soon
to go on this way: carping at her two captive daughters and
as she mentions Little Charles her mother interrupts her. "Little
being waited on by Johnna. But Violet's reign over the Weston
Charles and you are brother and sister. I know that," says
household is coming to an end as the remaining members of
Violet.
the family abandon her. For Barbara, the tipping point seems to
be Violet's admission that Beverly left a note and Violet knew
Violet admits she always knew about the affair. She says that
where he was for the first two days of his absence. It seems
she never discussed the affair with Beverly. "But your father ...
likely the note did mention suicide, as Violet's silence when
knew I knew," Violet claims. She sees no reason for Little
Barbara questions her about that is telling. Violet appears not
Charles to be told. Ivy is stunned, and she is angry at Barbara
to have believed Beverly's talk of suicide, if indeed he did
for not telling her. Ivy says she and Little Charles will go
mention it in the note. Instead Violet interpreted the note as a
anyway. She storms out, saying, "You will never see me again."
ploy in a power struggle, and she waited Beverly out so she
Violet comments that it wouldn't be right to let them "run off
could win the struggle. The victory is hollow, of course, as can
together." She is confident Ivy will not actually leave Oklahoma.
be seen in Violet's empty boast, "Who's stronger now?"
Then Violet says she would have told Beverly she knew about
In some ways the power structure in the Weston household
Little Charles if she had reached him at the motel in his final
has changed. Barbara is "running things now," as she shouts
days. He had left her a note saying he was at the motel, and
during the funeral dinner in the final line of Act 2. It is clear
she called the motel on Monday. Barbara is horrified to learn
Barbara is in charge since she keeps ordering Violet to eat her
her mother might have stopped her father's suicide if she had
food, as though Violet were a child. Although Violet begins the
bothered to call him sooner. Barbara asks whether the note
play as the strong if pill-addled matriarch, at the end she is like
mentioned suicide, but Violet doesn't reply. Instead she says
a child. When bossy, maternal-ish Barbara abandons her at
Barbara is at fault and Beverly would never have killed himself
last, Violet simply transfers her neediness and helplessness to
if Barbara were still at home.
the only person left in the house, Johnna. She crawls into
Violet admits she waited until Monday so she could get to the
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Johnna's lap as though the young housekeeper could soothe
her like a surrogate mother. However, Johnna is also
August: Osage County Study Guide
symbolically Beverly's stand-in. She accepted his gift of a book
Quotes 24
— Jean, Act 1, Scene 2
by T.S. Eliot, his favorite, and now she intones Eliot's lines, just
as Beverly might have. So the moment Violet climbs into
Johnna's lap is also a way of reuniting her with her dead
husband. Violet may not look at Johnna as a stand-in for
Beverly, but the audience can, since Letts has taken pains to
identify Johnna with T.S. Eliot.
Jean is in the attic bedroom of Beverly and Violet's house, a
room that is now Johnna's bedroom. Night of the Hunter (1955)
is about two children menaced by a wicked priest. The movie is
a crime thriller but is today regarded as a masterpiece. Jean is
filtering her experience through references to rarefied,
Johnna's final lines from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men"
obscure, or cult movies. The reference also resonates with the
resolve the play's theme of decline. The world of the Westons
play's theme of intergenerational conflict and trauma. The
has dwindled until only Violet is left, whimpering in Johnna's
priest is the children's stepfather, and he tries to get
arms. Violet's last words also resolve the theme of decline by
information out of them. As in the epigraph to the play, the
picking up on a passage from Act 1, Scene 4. In that scene
parents in August: Osage County feel children have taken
Violet repeated the phrase, "and then you're here, and then
something from them, and they resentfully try to get it back.
you're here." Now, in Act 3, Scene 5, Violet takes up the refrain
again, changing it to "and then you're gone" and adding the
names Barbara and Beverly. Her repetitive words sound like
"My father's dead, Bill."
drug-addled nonsense, but they have a kind of poetic logic to
them. Each time, Violet seems to be telling a story of life, but a
— Barbara, Act 1, Scene 3
life stripped of all meaning and reduced to a series of
senseless events—"and then you're here, and then you're here."
Or she might have been, in Act 1, Scene 4, telling the story of
the gathering of the Weston clan. Now she is telling that story
in reverse, recounting her losses, starting with Beverly and
Barbara.
Officially Beverly is still just missing. When Barbara says this,
she can't know for certain that Beverly is dead. This quote
points to more than Barbara's pessimism about her father. In
saying this, Barbara is also making a sharp retort to Bill. He has
just said they will talk over their marriage problems at a later
time, when they can give these problems "care" and "attention."
g Quotes
Bill says that later time will be when Barbara's father is home
again. In saying her father is dead, Barbara is also saying there
is no future time of peace and harmony when she and Bill will
"Life is very long."
— Beverly, Prologue
Beverly is quoting a poem, "The Hollow Men" (1925), by his
talk everything through.
"Summer psalm become summer
wrath."
favorite poet, T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). "The Hollow Men" is about
the futility of life for the characters, "the hollow men" who are
— Violet, Act 2
spiritually empty. Life is long for Eliot's hollow men because all
their acts are doomed to failure. The fact that Beverly is
This line appears with quotation marks around it. Presumably it
quoting this line of Eliot's poem suggests that he is weary of
is a line of Beverly's poetry. The use of the subjunctive verb
his life. It also suggests Beverly is already contemplating taking
"become," coupled with the elevated, biblical diction of the
his own life, days before he disappears.
words "psalm" and "wrath" mark it as poetry. Violet has just
said, as if addressing Beverly, that "August ... (is) your month."
In Beverly's poem, August is the month when summer's
"This is a great room. Very Night of
the Hunter."
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pleasant, almost sublime warmth intensifies into something
awful.
August: Osage County Study Guide
Quotes 25
"The present. Today, here and
Violet has just correctly guessed that Bill and Barbara are
now."
a pretense of still being married, even going so far as to sleep
separated. She guesses this even though they have putting up
in the same room. Violet is right—she is hard to fool. She goes
— Karen, Act 2
on to boast that her husband "thought he's slipping one by me"
but couldn't. She means he thought his affair with Mattie Fae
was a secret. However, one thing Violet seems to have no clue
With these fragmentary words, Karen is announcing to Barbara
that she is now dedicated to living in the present moment.
about is her future, in which all her children leave and she is
alone with Johnna.
Karen seems to be the least loved of the Weston daughters.
Barbara is her mother's favorite, and Ivy was her father's, but
no one dotes on Karen. Perhaps for that reason, she talks
about herself nonstop, trying to convince others she exists.
"I have a truth."
Immediately after saying this, Karen launches into a long
narrative of what her past was like long before she acquired
— Little Charles, Act 2
this piece of wisdom. Then she talks at length about her future.
This gives her statement dramatic irony. Dramatic irony occurs
Violet has been slinging barbed insults at everyone in the name
when the audience knows more than the character about what
of truth-telling. The other family members have gone on the
the character says. Here, the audience can see that Karen
counter-attack. For example, just after Little Charles speaks,
does not live in the present as she claims.
Barbara offers Violet a blunt truth: "You're a drug addict." But
hapless, inconsequential Little Charles is ignored during this
battle of truths. He wants to use his own weaponized truth,
"I've seen a chimp drive."
that he and his cousin Ivy are in love. But Little Charles also
embodies a truth that he knows nothing about: he and Ivy are
— Mattie Fae, Act 2
actually half-siblings. Thus, when Little Charles says, "I have a
truth," he says more than he knows.
Mattie Fae is speaking scornfully about the fact that her son,
37-year-old Little Charlie, doesn't know how to drive. Mattie
Fae heaps scorn on her son throughout the play, until her
husband threatens to leave her if she does not stop. Little
"We're all just people ... a random
selection of cells. Nothing more."
Charles is in fact the son of Mattie Fae and Beverly, conceived
during a secret affair. It seems Little Charles disappoints his
mother precisely because he is nothing like his real father, the
— Ivy, Act 3, Scene 1
successful poet, secret lover, and complicated man Beverly
Weston. Mattie Fae claims she is only disappointed "for him
Ivy is speaking with extreme skepticism about "the myths of
(her son)," meaning she is sad he has such limited life choices.
sisterhood." Of all the three Weston sisters, Ivy is the most
But this tender pity does not ring true to the contemptuous
bitter about sentimental family ties because she has paid the
way she speaks of her son.
highest price. Barbara and Karen have swanned off to lovers,
husbands, and careers of their own in distant places, but
homebody Ivy has been saddled with caring for their aging
"Nobody slips anything by me. I
parents. She no longer believes in family ties because she has
seen that her sisters are only out for themselves.
know what's what."
— Violet, Act 2
"Who's stronger now, you son-ofa-bitch?!"
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August: Osage County Study Guide
— Violet, Act 3, Scene 5
Symbols 26
Johnna's Necklace
Violet is addressing her husband, Beverly, who has been dead
for weeks now. She is speaking of the iron will she showed in
not calling Beverly at the motel in the days just before he took
Johnna Monevata, the Westons' housekeeper, shows Jean that
his own life. Late in the play, Barbara learns that Violet knew
she wears a necklace in the shape of a turtle. The turtle is a
where Beverly was when he went missing: at the Country
pouch containing her dried umbilical cord. This item has
Squire Motel. Not calling him was an act of passive aggression
spiritual significance, she tells Jean: it connects the Cheyenne
on Violet's part. She has pretended to Barbara that there was
people to their families. This play's description of the custom
no important reason she didn't call him, as though their missed
seems factual, although scholarly accounts say Cheyenne
connection in his final days was just an accident. But when
people wear these only in childhood. According to Johnna, she
Violet asks "who's stronger now," she reveals the bitter
will wear the necklace her whole life, because without it, her
struggle that was going on between them and the solace she
soul would "belong nowhere." For Johnna, the necklace
seeks in her own perceived strength as she nears the end of a
symbolizes her soul, but for the play it symbolizes a natural
long and very difficult life.
familial connection lacking in the modern white Weston family,
descendants of settlers. The Weston children appear to
"belong nowhere." Even though they yo-yo back to the house
in Osage County, the Weston daughters are scattered to the
l Symbols
Violet's Cancer of the Mouth
four winds and find it difficult to connect to their parents
emotionally.
It is possible author Tracy Letts means only to use Johnna's
necklace to gesture to another way of life, one more joyful than
the wretched and despairing lives the Westons live. But Johnna
is a Plains Indian, and the Westons are descendants of the
Violet is suffering from cancer of the mouth, which symbolizes
both the possibility of muteness and of raging, vindictive
speech. Particularly in the beginning of the play, Violet is often
on the edge of language, slurring her words and gabbling
nonsense. Her speech problems are not directly caused by her
cancer. Instead they are caused by the pills she takes, partly to
dull the pain of the cancer. The site of her affliction, her mouth,
brings to mind the possibility she will one day be unable to
speak at all. In the Prologue and Act 1, she seems on the verge
of falling away from human communication entirely. In sealing
this fate, the cancer might widen the emotional chasm that
already distances her from her daughters.
white people who settled the Plains, displacing them. This
comes close to making Johnna herself into a symbol. In
popular culture, especially, the technique of using non-white
characters to symbolize a purer, more natural, or wiser way of
life is called the "Magical Negro" trope. (The name deliberately
uses the old-fashioned term "Negro," now considered
offensive, to show that the trope is also offensive.) Originally,
trope meant a figure of speech, but it has come to mean an
overused theme or cliché, especially in fiction or film. One
element of the "Magical Negro" trope that is missing from
Letts's portrayal of Johnna is the non-white character's
transformative, saving effect on a white character. Johnna
does not impart any life lessons to Violet or the other Westons.
However, Violet is far from mute yet. On the contrary, she is an
Ultimately Johnna's necklace may symbolize only that there is
aggressive speaker throughout the play. In Act 1 she complains
another way to live.
that her mouth is "burning" from the pain of the cancer. Violet
seems able to turn this burning outward, in angry invective that
acts like a flamethrower, scorching her children. Thus Violet's
mouth cancer symbolizes the ability to use speech to cause
harm as well as the possibility of not speaking at all.
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m Themes
August: Osage County Study Guide
Decline
Symbols 27
Intergenerational Conflict and
Trauma
The plot of August: Osage County concerns the decline of the
Weston family, particularly the suicide of its patriarch, the pill
addiction of its matriarch, and the unhappy struggles of two
None of the Weston family members get along with each other,
subsequent generations of Weston children. Beverly's career
at least not all the time. But the conflicts are particularly sharp
has long been in decline at the start of the play, and the
along generational lines, especially between the oldest
Westons have both entered their declining years. By giving this
generation in the play (represented by Beverly, Violet, Mattie
fictional family the name "Weston," author Tracy Letts may be
Fae, and Charlie) and the middle generation (represented by
making an allusion to the concept of "the decline of the West."
the Weston daughters, among others). In August: Osage
This is the title of a well-known work by German philosopher
County, author Tracy Letts explores intergenerational conflict
Oswald Spengler (1880–1936). Spengler's The Decline of the
in two ways. One, it is an inevitable schism that splits every
West (1918–1922) held that civilizations pass through a life
generation from the one that comes after it. Two, it is a
cycle, just like people or creatures, and that Western
particular sorrow of people who were born in the United States
civilization had already passed through the peak of its life cycle
in the mid-20th century and whose parents climbed from the
and entered its decline.
working class to the middle class.
In August: Osage County, Barbara recalls her father, Beverly,
The play starts with an epigraph from All the King's Men (1946),
talking about the decline of the United States. According to
a novel by American writer Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989).
Beverly, the country had sunk from being a
In somewhat abstract terms, Warren lays out a difficulty
"whorehouse"—already a lowly condition—to being a "shithole."
afflicting parents and children. Childbearing and childrearing
But Barbara wonders if he was really talking about some other
are hard. As Warren puts it, "When you get born your mother
decline, perhaps of his house, his family, his marriage, or
and father lost something out of themselves." This means the
himself. Barbara makes an equivalence: the declining country
same children whom the parents love are also their natural
stands for the declining poet himself. Once Barbara makes
enemies, the thieves who have robbed their youth and their
that equation, it can be run in reverse. When author Tracy Letts
freedom. So even after the children have grown up, according
presents on stage the decline of the fictional poet Beverly, he
to Warren, returning home for a reunion with their enemy-
is also saying something about the decline of the United
parents is a fraught experience, "like diving into the octopus
States.
tank at the aquarium." This tension can be seen in many of the
relationships between parents and their adult children in
Another way August: Osage County presents the theme of
August: Osage County. Mattie Fae scorns and belittles her son,
decline is through its quotations from "The Hollow Men" (1925),
Little Charlie, because he fails to be anything like her one-time
a poem by American poet T.S. Eliot. The speaker of that poem
lover, the smart and capable Beverly Weston. For her part,
points out that when people succumb to slow spiritual decay,
Violet Weston bitterly attacks her favorite daughter, Barbara,
they bring about the end of the world in a way that is worse
for the crime of growing up to live her own life.
than its abrupt destruction. In "The Hollow Men," the speaker
says, "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a
For Warren, parent-child enmity is natural and eternal, an
whimper." Johnna also quotes these words at the end of the
irresolvable conflict that every generation will repeat. But the
play. August: Osage County uses the theme of decline to
play also shows how this conflict plays out with particular
suggest a spiritual corrosion that is worse than violent or
anguish in the case of once-poor Americans who climbed up to
abrupt death.
the middle class, only to raise children who seem ungrateful for
and uncomprehending of their parents' sacrifices. August:
Osage County is set in 2007. Beverly Weston is 69 years old,
so he was born in 1938, and Violet is 65, born in 1942. Beverly
was homeless as a child, and Violet's stories about her
childhood suggest she was also poor. Violet and likely Mattie
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August: Osage County Study Guide
Symbols 28
Fae were extremely traumatized as children by a viciously
return. There is no one in August: Osage County who learns a
cruel mother. Violet says plainly, "I'm in pain," and that is how
welcome truth. However some of the relationships may be
she has lived her whole life. Her badge of pride about being the
better off dissolved.
strongest woman in the family is her way of coping with that
truth. Beverly and Violet grew up at a time when class mobility
in the United States—the ability to better one's social and
economic circumstances—was greater than it is the early 21st
century. Beverly and Violet raised themselves up through
effort, though they lived at a time when such effort was more
likely to pay off than in the early 21st century. Their efforts
eliminated the life of poverty they grew up in, but this means
their children have grown up in a different world, one of ease
and college educations. As Violet yells at her daughters during
the funeral dinner, "What do you know about hard times? ... You
DON'T know!" In August: Osage County the conflict between
generations is eternal, and it also has a particular character at
a certain moment in American history.
Truth, Evasion, and Intoxication
In August: Osage County characters sometimes use the truth
to attack one another while at other times they evade
uncomfortable truths by becoming intoxicated. As Beverly says
at the beginning of the play, "My wife takes pills and I drink." In
Violet, audiences can clearly see the wasting of the human
mind under the influence of heavy drug use. She slurs and
stumbles and appears out of touch with the world. But in the
course of the play nearly all the characters use intoxicants of
some kind. Charles evades the truth of how bitter his wife
Mattie Fae is by smoking "a lot of grass," or so Ivy claims. Many
of the Westons drink throughout the play. At the same time
these evasions can last only so long.
August: Osage County is structured around a series of terrible
revelations of truth. Sheriff Gilbeau reveals that Beverly is
dead, probably of suicide. Mattie Fae reveals that her son,
Little Charles, was fathered by Beverly during a secret affair.
Violet reveals that she knew about the affair, and she reveals
she knew the whereabouts of the "missing" Beverly in the days
after his disappearance. These truths dissolve relationships.
Faced with the corrosive truth of Little Charles's paternity, Ivy
leaves the family, saying they will never see her again. When
she learns her mother did nothing to save her father from
suicide, Barbara also leaves her mother, presumably never to
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