The Last Yankee Summary :: essays research papers

The Last Yankee by Arthur Miller is about a woman named Patricia Hamilton who is about to be released from a mental institution. The story takes place around the 1960 the New England Area. The play contains four characters. Their names were Leroy Hamilton, Patricia Hamilton, Leroy Frick, and Karen Frick. Leroy Hamilton was a relative of Alexander Hamilton. Frick and Hamilton’s wives knew each other as they were friends in the institute. Frick is a rich, young business man. He works with oil companies and other things as well. Hamilton, was a member of an elite family and he was a carpenter. Hamilton described himself as a Yankee as did his wife. The behavior of a Yankee according to his wife was they could be abused and taxed as much as they want, they still would not do anything about it but complain and get even sadder. In the first act, Hamilton and Frick got into a heated discussion. Earlier they talked about how their wives got into the institute in the first place. Karen Frick, got into the hospital because she had a nervous breakdown in which she would alienate the outer world from herself. She locked herself at home and would not go out. Before, that occurred she was a real estate agent. Patricia was a home make and became a depressive. Patricia had been in the institute two times already in the fifteen years of her falling out. This was her third time and she was improving. Hamilton, got mad when Frick talked about labor as if it was a bad thing. Hamilton said nothing was wrong about being a carpenter and nobody was proud to be in labor it was just something people talked as if they were so low in the dirt. In the second act Karen and Patricia talk about their lives. Karen often trailed off into her own thing, while Patricia tried to talk about herself. Patricia talked on how she grew up in Sweden and how her family was full of beautiful people. Her brothers had died by committing suicide. Her mother’s beauty was everlasting until she died at 81 years old. Also, she talked about how she stopped taking her medication and then was gradually getting better. She had been off drugs for 21 days. So now she could be able to do much more. All that she wanted was to make her husband happy and how the church she like d and the preacher who would talk to her.