Almost, Maine

“[…] people from Maine are different, that they live life ‘the way it should be.’”

An important aspect of this play is its setting and inhabitants, whom Cariani is invested in portraying accurately. Here, Glory, an outsider, is revealing her perception of the people of Maine, a perception she has gained from a tourism brochure. This prompts the reader/audience to question how these characters are similar to and different from the people that populate their own lives, and presents a guiding question for the rest of the play: what really does it mean to be a resident of Northern Maine?

“Feels like the end of the world, and here I am at the end of the world, and I have nowhere to go, so I was counting on staying here.”

One of the recurring features of the setting in this play is how remote Almost, Maine is. Here, Glory is expressing this remoteness as a sort of logical end point, making its location either an end or a beginning, or both. This is symbolic of the end of her relationship with her husband, as well as the potential to move on from it into a new beginning, with a newly-repaired heart.

[Responding to Sandrine, who says, “People talk”] “Not about things they know you don’t want to hear, they don’t.”

This is an insightful moment from Jimmy, who previously might have seemed overly desperate and even pathetic. Here, however, he is standing up for himself in a way, noting that Sandrine is passing the buck, hoping the small town’s gossip mill will tell Jimmy what she has not been able to. This provides more complexity to a character than otherwise could fall into the realm of stereotype.

“Just tell me you’re sad, and you’ll drink free. […] Just say the word. Let me know. ‘Cause I know […] sad, and you’re lookin’ pretty sad.”

This scene, in which the as-yet-unnamed waitress is asking Jimmy to admit his feelings reveals a common occurrence for characters in the play: a reticence to vocalize or admit to their feelings. Here, even despite pretty tempting compensation, Jimmy still refuses to admit he is sad. It is interesting that in this scene, he seems to be rewarded for this by learning the waitress’s name is Villian.

“I’m glad you found me.” 

This line from Jimmy provides the resolution of the scene, contrasting the sadness Jimmy has been feeling with a renewed sense of gladness, a gladness that feels more genuine than when he had previously said that he was glad Sandrine had found a new partner. The idea of being found here also recalls this previous part of the conversation and allows for the possibility of Jimmy moving on and finding what he is looking for, just as Sandrine has.

“This business of learning what hurts, what doesn’t hurt, what to be afraid of, what not to be afraid of [is getting very complicated].”

In this scene, Steve’s condition—not being able to feel physical pain—serves to illustrate the complexity of the very concepts of “hurt” and “fear,” and the relationship between pain and fear. By defamiliarizing the concepts through the character of Steve, Cariani is able to reveal the bizarre reality that sometimes things that hurt are not necessarily things that should be feared—in this case, an ironing board.

“Well, buddy, you can be hurt and not even look like it.”

Drawing a contrast between physical and emotional pain is one of the major themes of this scene, and this reaction from Marvalyn serves to highlight that while the manifestations of physical and emotional pain might be different, it does not make emotional pain less real. This also serves to highlight the absurdist nature of Steve’s only two criteria for pain: blood and discoloration.

“I have to know what hurts, so I know when to be afraid. See, my mind can’t tell me when to be afraid, ‘cause my body doesn’t know what being hurt is.”

Continuing to defamiliarize the concepts of pain and fear through the character of Steve, Cariani also clarifies the role of the mind in this process, as a mediator and interpreter of sensations and feelings. 

“All the love I gave to you?, I want it back.”

This line from Gayle is the jumping-off point for everything that follows in Scene Four. It highlights the absurdity of some of the common phrases around romantic love—“giving all of one’s love”—by making it literal and imagining what this might actually look like. If one does really give and receive love like a physical object, what does it look like, ad what happens when couples break up? The conceit of this scene is nicely summarized in this line.

[Responding to Lendall’s question of whether she needs help] “Nope. I got it. It’s not heavy.”

As Cariani writes in the stage direction that follows, “it” (Lendall’s love that he has given to Gayle over the years) takes the form of “HUGE bags full of […] batting, foam, and/or pillow stuffing). By having the love be represented by such light, airy material, Cariani is able to further highlight both its insubstantiality—at least in physical terms—of a feeling like love, as well as the contrast with the physically denser, if seemingly smaller, love that Gayle has given Lendall over the years. 

“I’ve tried to make you love me by giving you every bit of love I had, and now … I don’t have any love for me left, and that’s … that’s not good for a person.”

The preceding absurdist physical manifestations of love help bring the audience to this moment of Gayle’s insight about love. By making it a physical thing, Cariani is able to provide more concrete ramifications of this act of giving all of one’s love away to another person, which again provides a visual for the abstract idea of becoming codependent on someone else to the point of self-detriment. This gets at the crux of Gayle’s issue with their relationship and the reason for her drastic decision.

“But then I kinda came out of bein’ sad, and actually felt okay, ‘cause I realized there is one thing in this world that make me feel really good and thatdoes make sense, and it’s you.”

This is a pivotal moment in the only same-sex love story that appears in the play, in which Chad confesses his love for Randy without even really knowing it. As the stage directions put it, “[Chad] isn’t quite sure what he has just said. Randy isn’t quite sure what he has just heard. Long, long beat of these guys figuring out what was just said and heard” (50). This moment highlights the ways in which one’s own feelings can be a mystery even to oneself, especially if there is the added pressure of societal disapproval to tamp them below a conscious level.

“‘Cause you know somethin’, you’re about the only thing that feels really good and makes sense in this world to me, too, and then you go and foul it up by doin’ this.” 

This is an important moment for Randy in this scene, who, after being freaked out by Chad’s profession of love, realizes without realizing it that he loves Chad in return. However, this moment also serves to highlight one of the important differences between the two, with Randy valuing the friendship they have so much that he would perhaps err on the side of caution in order to preserve it.

“[…] Randy and Chad are no closer to each other than they were when they started. They just look at each other. It’s all scary and thrilling and unknown.”

This moment ends the scene on the incipient point of something but does not offer easy or over-sentimentalized resolution. Rather, in having Chad and Randy physically distant from one another and unable to reach one another, Cariani leaves the audience with a fair amount of doubt as to whether or not this will work out for the best. Moments of suggestion rather than resolution like this one are a staple of this play and avoid schmaltz in favor of illustrating the sometimes-imperfect nature of true human feeling.

“[…] but I am scared ‘cause I’ve been goin’ out and nothing’s comin’ of it, you know?, And I feel like I’m runnin’ outta chances.” 

This line from the female counterpart to Chad, Shelly, highlights one of the subtle differences between the Male and Female Versions. Chad doesn’t say this line in the Male Versionalthough in general there is much overlap between Chad and Shelly’s dialogue. This highlights the way in which female friendships are traditionally freer and more open with regard to feelings: Shelly is able to admit to being afraid that things will not work out with all these heterosexual dates she has been going on. Moreover, the idea of “runnin’ outta chances” reveals the added pressure women often feel to settle into stable relationships—get married, have children—that men traditionally feel less forcefully.

“MARCI. You don’t pay attention, Phil. (Beat.)

PHIL. See, when you say things like that, I feel like you’re still mad.”

This exchange between husband and wife serves to distill their entire night into a single moment and highlights the root of the issue with their marriage. Marci feels that Phil is not present like he used to be, and yet does not really come out and say what she truly means. Meanwhile, Phil senses his wife’s anger, but does not know how to handle it, since she doesn’t admit to it. This moment of miscommunication or lack of communication represents the flip-side to romantic love’s often giddy and joyful beginnings.

“No! No! No! Because you don’t know how to tell me what you feel like about me, so I never know where I am, where I stand! Maybe that’s why I go away!”

This moment in Scene Six is an important one in that it reveals the complexity of the human relationships Cariani is attempting to portray. Throughout the preceding pages of this scene, the audience/reader has likely been mostly on Marci’s side, as Phil has forgotten he and Marci’s anniversary. However, here, Phil makes a solid point about where his frustrations might be coming from. The blame for their relationship’s decline is not easily assignable to just one of them—there isn’t one hero and one villain. 

“But you didn’t say no. You said nothin’. You just didn’t answer him. At all. And that’s … killin’ hope the long, slow, painful way, ‘cause it’s still there, just hangin’ on, never really goes away.”

As the stage directions indicate, Daniel (whom we do not yet know for sure to be Daniel yet at this point), is “Maybe a little pointed here” (69). This is perhaps one of the harshest and most honest things a character in the play says face-to-face with another character throughout the entire play, and positioned as this scene is, second to last, gives it more of a climactic feeling than it might if placed elsewhere. It shows the darker side of love, before the coming sweetness of Rhonda and Dave’s scene. 

“I, uh, lost a lotta hope. That’ll do a number on you.”

Daniel here is referring to the physical manifestation of the pain Hope caused him by refusing to answer his proposal of marriage and running out on him. Again, like Glory’s heart from Scene One, this physical representation allows the audience/reader to visualize something that is not usually visible to this degree, which helps make an abstract feeling real, despite the fact that the reader/audience is necessarily on the outside looking in.

“You’re early You said you’d be back with an answer to my question before the sun came up, and Jeezum Crow, the sun’s not even close to bein’ up yet!”

One of the few lighter moments in this fairly bleak scene between Hope and Daniel, this line represents a genuine instance of Daniel’s forgiveness for Hope having left him hanging for so long. As Cariani writes, “The people of Almost, Maine are […] honest and true. They are not cynical” (7). Here, Daniel is being un-cynical, attempting to let Hope feel better, despite having been hurtdeeply by her.

“[…] I did it with a buncha little blocks of colors, see, and if you just look at the little blocks of colors, it’s just a buncha little blocks of colors, but if you step back and look at the whole thing, it’s not just a buncha blocks of colors: it’s a picture of something.”

This line from Dave can be seen not only as an important description of the painting so that the audience/reader, who, like Rhonda, doesn’t know what it is a painting of yet, gets a better idea of why Rhonda can’t immediately understand what it is; it can also be seen as a metaphor for the play itself: a “bunch of blocks” of scenes, that could be seen as disconnected when viewed individually, but, when taken together, form a whole that is discernable as belonging together. 

“How many years I know ya?, I come all the way out here every Friday night, and I never been inside your house for beers?! That’s not natural. It’s unnatural, Rhonda!”

This line from Dave serves to show the symbolic nature of Rhonda’s reticence to let him into her house. The physical act of not letting him cross the threshold is analogous to the way Rhonda has not allowed him into her confidence, afraid of being hurt through the experience. Later, when she does allow him into her house, corresponds directly to when she finally allows him into her heart.

“I won arm-wrestling at every Winter Carnival from fifth grade on, and I work in plywood at Bushey’s Lumber Mill, and that’s just not what most men wanna […] want.”

This line from Rhonda serves to highlight another main aspect Cariani discusses through these love stories: ways in which people both conform to and depart from gender stereotypes. Rhonda, because she has felt that she deviated from traditional femininity [being too physically strong to fit neatly into the stereotype of womanhood, leading to a traditionally-male career in a mill], has made her stop thinking of herself as a person men might find attractive. The outcome of this scene pushes back against this notion, revealing the diverse ways love manifests.