Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced puts us in a room and confronts us with our world through his art. He
dramatizes the politics of our moment of history. He thinks about the survival of ages-old
religious beliefs, customs, and conflicts, about how in our globalized, post 9/11, postmodern
world people of differing ethnicities are neighbors and co-workers who sometimes choose to
follow their cultural norms and sometimes choose to abandon them, about human relations at
work and human relationships as citizens, friends, and lovers, about how income and social
class affects our understanding of ourselves, people like us, and people unlike us, and about
what it means to make art in this world and at this time, no matter if that means painting or a
drama. His characters each in their own way have some relationship to an idea of “purity,” or of
being “essentially” who they are as a Muslim, Jew, Caucasian, American, artist, lawyer, etc.
Some argue over who has “the right” to draw on traditions that are not “native” to them; some
live in a world where others, and maybe they themselves, do not believe they “belong.”
While we always want to resist placing too much emphasis on a writer’s biography and even on
“current events,” we also want to respect a writer’s art and the way an artist uses a medium to
see and think about the world and the times. I don’t believe it would be too much of a stretch,
or an illegitimate critical question, to consider the ways Akhtar is himself dramatizing the
situation of a writer trying to make sense of himself and his art today. What does it mean for a
writer of Pakistani heritage to be using this form of art perfected by Shakespeare during an era
of colonialist expansion? What does it mean for him—“a person like him”—to stage a play at
the Lincoln Center in New York City (or Chicago or London) and set it in the Upper East Side of
Manhattan? What does it say about the state of his art and our idea of literature that his play
won a Pulitzer? If it is questionable whether or not Emily has the “right” to appropriate Islamic
forms of art, is it also a question Akhtar wonders about himself? The play is charged with all of
our uncertainties and anxieties about “identity” and where on earth we belong.
In this explication analysis, I ask you to consider ways Akhtar uses the forms and conventions of
drama to redefine what kind of a thing a play is in this, our postmodern, global world. How can
a play show us this world? Teach us about its anxieties? Point out our own?
Essay Arrangement Requirements (1250-1500 words)
1) Introduction
 Start with a line or two or three from the play (set this up with a good signal
phrase to provide context) that you think captures the essence of the play and
the essence of the case you want to develop about it.
 Use this passage to discuss what kind of a thing is a play, and what kind of a thing
this play is.
 Is it like or unlike a poem or a novel?
 Is it an aesthetic object meant to provide pleasure?
 Is it a mode of critique?
 Is it a device to persuade an audience about a real-world problem or suggest
solutions?
 Is it place to contemplate being and time and the essence of things?
2) The Narrative
 The goal of a narrative is to narrate the problem you are going to argue: set the scene,
establish parameters, lay out your terms, or limit the field: how does Akhtar create
scenes, situations, and characters; how does he stage his vision of the world and the
times; how does he dramatizes cultural issues, etc.?
3) The Thesis
 Briefly and concretely state your argument about Disgraced: detail a few specific
literary elements it uses and what they become in Akhtar’s hands and on his stage; that
is, how does he appropriate and re-appropriate the conventions of drama to explore an
issue you think is central to his play.
4) The Argument
 Logically support your thesis through a well-structured critical and analytical
examination of the play’s characters, dialogue, literary elements, themes, questions,
and arguments.
 Every paragraph needs a strong, orienting topic sentence and properly cited textual
evidence from the play to support your argument about the literary elements and how
they work to portray a theme or question or argument.
Some Literary Elements and General Aspects to Consider in a Play Analysis
 Many literary elements of poetry and fiction apply to plays, too: review them
 Name of the play
 Period of play; characteristics of the period; period style
 Staging: set, set design, costumes, stage directions
 scene changes or changes within single set as play progresses
 mood (color, light, stage elements)
 symbolism
 The playwright’s oeuvre and overall themes and purpose of the plays
 Audience the play was written for and where and when it was staged
 Genre: tragedy, comedy, drama, farce, melodrama?
 Plot/Acts/Scenes: main action, rising action, crisis, conflict, resolution or
denouement
 Unity of time, place, and action (“the unities”): limiting the time, place, and action of
a play to a single spot and a single action over the period of 24 hours.
 Initiating incident: what preceded this or caused this situation?
 Complication: the part of a plot in which the entanglement cause by the conflict of
opposing forces is developed.
 Peripeteia/reversal: reversal of fortune for the tragic protagonist—from failure to
success or success to failure.
 Climax of action: major turning point; when rising action becomes falling action
 Denouement: the unraveling of the plot of the play
 Obstacles or dramatic conflicts; fate or chance
 Characters:
 Protagonist: character analysis—motivation, traits, fatal or “tragic” flaw
(hamartia) or comic weakness, virtues, changes in character
 Tragic hero: According to Aristotle, the protagonist or hero brought from
happiness to misery; a person who is extraordinary—a king, for example.
 Hubris: overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the
protagonist; leads the protagonist to break a moral law, attempt vainly to
transcend normal limitations, or ignore a divine warning with calamitous
results.
 Anagnorisis/recognition: the point when the hero experiences a kind of selfunderstanding, has a discovery, or makes an important recognition
 Antagonist and other characters: complex/simple/rounded; their function in
relation to protagonist and their function within structure of play
 Foil: character in a play who through contrast underscores the distinctive
characteristics of another, particularly the protagonist.
 Stock character: conventional character type the audience recognizes
immediately: the country bumpkin, the shrewish wife, the braggart soldier
 Setting: where, when, duration / changes of time or place / thematic?
 Staging: simple and minimalist, or maximalist, or in between
 Theme: major theme; minor themes—moral significance; important problems of life;
view of the world or about the meaning of nations, cultures, religions, etc.
 Katharsis: According to Aristotle, the end of tragedy is the purgation of emotions
through pity and terror. The audience should feel purified of the flaws, sins, and
hubris of the tragic hero.
 Dramatic irony: words or acts whose meaning is unperceived by the character/s but
is understood by the audience.
 Use of dramatic devices: foreshadowing, suspense, surprises
 Language: verse? realistic, heroic, archaic, poetic? Difficult, unusual? Thematic?
 Relationship to other forms of theatre or art.
 Breaking “the fourth wall”: a disturbing moment that shatters preconceived notions
of theatre conventions separating audience and actors
5) The Conclusion
 Discuss how the play exemplifies the power and possibilities of drama and of literature
as an art and a thing in a network of worldly things.
 What kind of a thing is this play? A fun night out for a show? Entertainment? Selfdiscovery? An examination of people and the world?
 How does this place talk to us about “truth” or “meaning” in the world of a play and its
relation to our own?

Sample Solution