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Machinal
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Episodes 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Episode 6 Summary: “Intimate”
In these two episodes, which are separated in time by one full year, the critical steps to Helen’s supposed freedom take place. We see her with her boyfriend in his apartment. In these two episodes, she is no longer referred to as a “young woman,” and, instead, only “woman.” When we see her in Episode 7, with her husband, she is again referred to as the “young woman.” The two episodes contrast markedly in their manner of speech. The Episode 6 dialogue is much more realistic, with two young people actually talking, trying to be honest, and caring about what the other says. We see the woman feeling joyous, purified, and teary from happiness. Episode 7, which takes place at the home of George Jones and Helen, signifies the rote nature of their marriage. The dialogue is clichéd, and they don’t look at each other or listen to each other. The young woman goes from feelings of the possibility of freedom to again being in bondage and having a deadening life. It’s in Episode 7 that Jones is murdered by Helen, in the same way the two men in Mexico were murdered: with a bottle filled with stones.
Episode 6 takes place on the same day as the previous episode in the bar. Helen, however, talks to the man as if they’ve been together forever and will stay together forever. “You got awful pretty hands,” he tells her (1073-74), echoing Mr. Jones’ line in Episode One: “let me look at your little hands, you have such pretty little hands” (416).
How Helen responds to the man in Episode 6 is quite different. She intimates to the man that she’ll take care of her hands now that he’s in her life. They sing for a while; he sings in Spanish, and Helen sings nursery rhymes: “And the dish ran away with the spoon” (1096). She says she now understands that line: “It’s you and me […] You’re the dish and I’m the spoon […] And I guess I’m the little cow that jumped over the moon” (1099-1102).
Helen believes they met because they were destined to meet. He doesn’t directly respond to this comment and finally tells her that someday he’ll be moving on, back to Mexico: “You’re free down there! You’re free!” (Line 1140).Helen realizes it is much later than she thought, so she gets dressed. The stage directions tell us that this act of dressing “turns […] into a personification, an idealization of a woman clothing herself” (1156-1158). The directions continue to say that everything she does while dressing is natural, easy, and full of grace. In other words, this is what a woman, any woman, all women are like in moments where they are allowed to be truly themselves.
Helen notices a flower on the man’s window sill, which he bought to remind him of San Francisco. She wants to go there with him, “to ride over mountains with [him]” (1179). She tells him she feels she’s on top of the world at that moment: “I never knew I could feel like this! So, so purified!” (Lines 1185-1186). As she leaves to go home, she takes a stance reminiscent of statues of women, lifting her right arm, letting him hold her. She takes the flower as she leaves. She says goodbye and thanks him.
Episode 7 Summary: “Domestic”
The scene opens with the music stopping. There is only silence.
In the Jones household, everything is rote. No one listens, and all talk is cliché: “Did you put it over”; “Sure I put it over”; “Did you swing it”; “Sure I swung it” (1213).
Occasionally, Helen says something that hints at what will happen on the evening she murders Jones: “Girl turns on gas,”“Woman leaves all for love,” “Young wife disappears” (1212-1217). Jones periodically talks on the telephone, ignoring Helen.He tries to touch herand she flinches. Jones tells her she flinches because she is “pure,” ironically mimicking her own words when she was with her boyfriend. He asks her what she’s reading, and she responds, “Prisoner escapes, lifer breaks jail, shoots way to freedom” (1234).Jones dismisses her response.
They speak about Helen’s mother and Helen directs the conversation to whether Helen herself is a good mother. Jones tells her, “A child’s a very precious thing. Precious jewels” (1256). He is all about making the sale, making money, thus he turns everything into a commodity. Helen responds, “sale of jewels and precious stones,” (1257)thereby accentuating Jones’s greed, and asserts her need to be free of motherhood. She also hints at murder and comments that she feels she is drowning with stones around her neck.
Jones feels cold air, though the woman tells him the window is closed. Every time Jones asks her what she’s reading, her answer points to what will happen. One of her responses is, “Woman finds husband dead” (1248). We learn there’s been a revolution “below the Rio Grande” and the voice of her lover speaks again repeating what he told her in the bar: “[They were] holding me there. I had to get free” (1326). More offstage voices fill the room, chanting the words “free” and “stones” again and again. The repetition of these words with the music drive Helen to distraction. The voices continue: “stones, stones, stones” (1329-1334).
Episodes 6-7 Analysis
The workings of these two episodes show us Helenfirst as a ‘free’ woman and then as a captive. Because a year passes between the two episodes, we get the sense that she has become that much more oppressed and longs much more for freedom. The themes of greed and the mechanical, and of freedom and the ability to act on one’s own behalf, are developed here. Treadwell moves from the specific to the general again, showing us how the specificity of the young woman’s predicament is universal for women. She does so using the offstage voices and the rote conversations. These act like a Greek chorus, underlining the key issues, and pushing to the forefront the fears of the young woman.
Helen’s responses to Jones illustrate her as both obsessed with killing Jones and as figuratively addicted to media. She is at once fixated and utterly numb—the former due to Jones’s oppression of her, via their dysfunctional marriage, and the latter through being a sequestered housewife, where her primary access to society is through media. While not yet literally imprisoned, she longs for escape in the same manner an inmate would.
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