Previous
Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Clybourne Park, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Racism
Neighborhoods and Ownership
Communication and Miscommunication
Men, Women, and Gender Roles
Disability and Inclusion
Summary
Analysis
The play begins in September 1959. Onstage the audience can see a cross-section of the first floor of a bungalow in the Clybourne Park neighborhood of Chicago. Visible is a living room, dining room, staircase and a series of doors—one that leads outside, one to the basement, and one to the kitchen. The house is well-furnished, but in chaos, with cardboard boxes piled across the stage. It is clear the white couple living in the house, Russ and Bev Stoller, is in the process of moving out.
The play begins with a description of the interior of a house in Clybourne Park. It is well taken care of, indicating that the neighborhood is affluent. This is notable mostly in how it compares to the set for Act 2, when the demographics of the neighborhood have changed, and the house’s dilapidated interior reflects the economic depression of the neighborhood.
Active
Themes
Russ sits, reading a magazine, eating Neapolitan ice cream out of a carton. Although it is midafternoon, he’s barefoot and dressed in a pajama top and chinos. Bev comes downstairs and begins to pack a box. She tells Russ he doesn’t have to eat the ice cream, and he responds that it would just be going to waste otherwise.
Russ’s clothing and behavior is out of place in the 1950s, when middle class families dressed fairly formally even inside their own homes, and the concept of loungewear had yet to become popular. His strange outfit indicates that there is something wrong with his mental state.
Active
Themes
Francine, a black woman dressed in a maid’s uniform, enters from the kitchen to talk to Bev. Bev tries to give Francine a chafing dish that she never uses. Although Francine admits she doesn’t have that type of dish, she tells Bev she can’t accept the gift. Bev continues to insist Francine take the dish, and Francine continues to decline it. Eventually Bev gives up and Francine returns to the kitchen.
Active
Themes
Bev continues packing boxes in the living room. She sees Russ’s ice cream and considers the name, Neapolitan. She thinks it’s funny and wonders what the origin of it is. Russ thinks Neapolitan comes from Naples, Italy, but Bev disagrees. Russ isn’t initially engaged in the conversation. When Bev begins considering, out loud, what a person from Naples would be called, Russ grumbles, “Told you what I think,”
Active
Themes
Get the entire Clybourne Park LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Bev looks for grammatical rules that govern the naming of people from cities that end with the letter “S.” Russ joins in, suggesting Des Moines, Brussels, and Paris, all of which Bev rejects as good examples, but in a good-natured way. Russ laughs at the word Muscovites (people from Moscow), and Bev jokes that they might be musky. As they talk, Francine enters and exits from the kitchen with packaging, but is either not noticed or actively ignored.
Active
Themes
Riffing on residents of the Congo, called Congolese, Russ wonders why people don’t say Mongolese. Bev tries to correct him, suggesting “Mongol-oid,” but is immediately embarrassed when Russ reminds her that term is used to refer to people with developmental disorders or learning disabilities. Bev mentions “the Wheeler boy,” a disabled boy who works bagging groceries at the local grocery store. There’s an awkward silence, before Bev says, “But that’s nice, isn’t it, in a way? To know we all have our place.” Russ agrees.
There is another silence before Russ starts the game again. He has remembered the capital of Mongolia, which does not impress Bev. It does remind her, however, that Russ was supposed to change the mailing address of their National Geographic subscription. Russ pretends he had forgotten, and Bev becomes angry, since she reminded him numerous times, but then he reveals he did it the previous week, and was just joking with her.
Active
Themes
Unamused by Russ’s joke, Bev asks if he has moved the footlocker down from upstairs like she asked. He says he hasn’t because it’s a two-person job. She then asks him if he’s going to change out of his clothes, but Russ says he hadn’t thought about it. After another silence, Bev starts to remember, out loud, a joke Russ told at the Rotary last year. She tells Russ that he’s funny, but he rejects the compliment. Bev wonders why Russ doesn’t go to the club anymore.
Active
Themes
Bev asks Russ not to shrug off her question and say “what’s the point,” because, by that logic, there’s no point in anything. She tells Russ that although he might want to “sit in a chair all day and wait for the end of the world,” that kind of behavior frightens her, and is not the way she wants to spend her life. Russ quietly tells Bev “Not trying to frighten you,” before announcing “Ulan Bator!”—the capital of Mongolia, a relic of their earlier conversation.
Active
Themes
The phone rings and Francine answers. Her conversation with the man on the phone, who announces himself as Karl Linder, a neighbor, is interspersed with Bev and Russ’s conversation. Bev tells Francine that she’ll call Karl back, and promptly returns to the topic of the Rotary Club. She doesn’t understand why Russ refuses to go, and why he doesn’t care that people are concerned for him.
Active
Themes
Bev takes the phone from Francine and tries to convince Karl not to come visit, explaining that the house is in disarray and Russ is feeling under the weather. Russ is dismissive of Karl, but Bev’s phone call continues for several minutes. It is interspersed with Russ’s conversation with Jim, a local minister who has just entered through the front door.
Active
Themes
Jim is friendly and good-natured, joking with Russ about the state of the house. Russ, listening in on Bev’s phone call with Karl, is distracted as Jim tells a long anecdote about how he injured his back moving a piano the previous month. Bev gets off the phone and starts to chat with Jim. She is much friendlier to him than Russ had been, and Jim appreciates the attention. Jim jokes that he was “trying to bestow the pearls of [his] wisdom” upon Russ, who insists he was listening.
Active
Themes
Russ asks Bev if Karl is coming over. She ignores the question and starts talking to Jim about Karl’s wife, Betsy, who is very pregnant. As they’re talking, Bev remembers her earlier question about the origin of the word Neapolitan, and asks Jim where it comes from. He agrees with Russ that it is related to Naples, and he and Russ continue to joke about geography. Bev is exasperated because she does not know enough trivia to join in, but encourages Russ to say “Ulan Bator,” which he had been pronouncing in a funny way. Russ refuses to say it, and Jim is left to stand uncomfortably as Russ and Bev bicker.
Active
Themes
Francine, who had entered from the kitchen and waited patiently for a break in the conversation, asks Bev if she is free to go. Bev asks her to move the footlocker she’d asked Russ to move earlier. Francine reminds Bev she needs to leave by three-thirty, which is soon, and Russ tells both women he’ll move the footlocker. Francine exits again, gathering her things to leave. Several times throughout the exchange, Jim repeats—to no one in particular—that he would help except that, as he said before, he recently hurt his back.
Active
Themes
Bev offers Jim lunch, but he declines. She jokes about Russ’s ice cream, and Russ responds, “can’t pack ice cream in a suitcase,” which Bev finds hilarious. Jim jokes you can only do that if you’re moving to the North Pole, and Bev responds, “Thank goodness we’re not moving South!” which leads to a moment of silence. Bev exits to the kitchen to see what food is available.
Active
Themes
Alone again, Jim and Russ make small talk. Jim overheard Bev tell Karl that Russ was under the weather, so Jim asks Russ what’s wrong. Russ explains he’s just taking time off to help Bev. They talk briefly about Jim’s back injury, and Jim confesses in a whisper that he had to wear a truss while he recovered.
Active
Themes
Russ and Jim then discuss the move, including the fact that it will shorten Russ’s commute to just five minutes. Russ also says that he’s getting a new, carpeted corner office. Jim asks how Bev is doing, and Russ responds she’s fine, but that she worries and gets over excited. Jim wonders aloud if Russ is the cause of her anxiety, which Russ denies before suddenly asking Jim if Bev had asked him to come over.
Active
Themes
Russ is clearly uncomfortable, and looks for Bev in hopes she’ll come back into the room. Jim tells Russ that Bev cares about him—that in fact, “everybody cares about [him].” Russ responds that, although he’s not a psychiatrist, he has noticed people have a tendency to “brood,” and his advice is to “get up offa your rear end and do something.”
Active
Themes
Jim, hoping to comfort Russ, tells him his son was a hero to his country. This is the first time the audience has heard of Russ and Bev’s son, but Russ clearly does not want to discuss him: he talks over Jim. Jim assures Russ his son is in a better place and suggests that Russ might want to talk to someone about his emotions. Russ points out Jim is not a psychiatrist and asks him to mind his own business. Finally, Russ tells Jim “to go fuck [him]self,” which surprises and offends Jim.
Bev reenters from the kitchen, and notes the mood in the room has changed. Russ has stood up, and Jim tells Bev he’s going to leave. Bev asks Russ what he did to offend Jim, while Jim explains to Bev it’s clear Russ wants him out of the house. Bev complains to Russ that he is being ugly and she dislikes ugliness. Russ tells Bev he dislikes Jim encroaching on what he believes are private matters “between me and the memory of my son.” Bev and Jim discuss Russ’s mental state, and it is clear that Bev invited Jim over to talk to Russ about his emotions and recent troubling behavior.
Active
Themes
Russ moves toward the staircase. He tells Bev and Jim they can discuss his son, Kenneth, on their own time if it comforts them. Bev is indignant, and wonders if Russ thinks she doesn’t deserve comfort. Russ responds that Kenneth didn’t receive much comfort, so why should they. Jim interjects that he also served in the military, but Russ responds that Jim sat behind a desk like a coward. He couldn’t understand because he didn’t kill anyone. In the silence following this remark the doorbell rings.
Jim goes to open the door for Albert, Francine’s husband, who has come to pick her up. Russ exits upstairs. Jim doesn’t know whether to invite Albert in, so Bev does and makes small talk before letting him sit and wait for his wife. Jim, within earshot of Albert, whispers to Bev that he should go. Bev asks Jim to stay because she doesn’t want to be alone with Russ. She explains that Russ stays up late and doesn’t see the point in things he used to find fun.
Active
Themes
Albert gets up to wait outside. Bev doesn’t understand why he’s leaving and calls for Francine, who eventually comes out dressed in street clothes and carrying bags of hand-me-downs. Bev jokes how lucky Francine is to have door-to-door service, and then tells Albert how much she appreciates having “a friend like Francine here, and on a Saturday.”
Active
Themes
As Bev says goodbye to Francine she mentions the footlocker, which still needs to be taken care of. Albert offers to move it, but Francine subtly tries to tell him she wants to leave, pretending they have an appointment for which they are running late. Albert doesn’t take the hint. Francine says she can’t help because her hands are full, and Albert offers to put her bags in the car. Francine says she can handle the bags herself, and she and Albert go to drop them in the car so she can help him move the trunk.
Active
Themes
Bev invites Karl inside, but he hesitates, revealing his wife is in the car. Bev tells him to bring her in, and Karl disappears to fetch Betsy. Russ takes this moment to cross from the staircase to the kitchen. He’s now wearing shoes and a shirt. Bev makes a comment but he ignores her. Bev and Jim turn back to each other. She whispers that she hoped two and a half years since their son’s death and a new job would help Russ mourn. She worries she’s being silly but Jim assures her she isn’t. Russ crosses again, from the kitchen to the basement. Bev asks what he’s doing but he gives her no details.
Active
Themes
Karl and Betsy return. Betsy is visibly very pregnant, and Bev coos over her stomach. Betsy is deaf, and her speech is often difficult to understand. Bev over enunciates when she speaks to Bev. Jim knows limited sign language and so finger-spells a greeting to Betsy. She laughs and signs to Karl, who tells Jim he misspelled, and told Betsy she was expecting a storm instead of a stork.
Active
Themes
Betsy jokes aloud that she’ll need an umbrella, and Bev is happy to understand the joke. Jim responds that he must have rusty fingers, which Betsy doesn’t understand at first, and Karl must translate. Betsy responds that Jim must need soap, and Jim laughs politely. Bev then re-explains the joke to Jim, who had laughed politely because he did not find the joke funny, not because he didn’t understand it.
Active
Themes
Russ returns form the basement carrying a shovel. He asks Bev about his work gloves but she ignores him. He acknowledges Betsy because she says hello to him, but ignores Karl. Albert and Francine enter through the front door and go upstairs to deal with the footlocker. Bev invites Betsy to the kitchen to make iced tea. Karl remembers that Bev told him Russ was under the weather. He asks Russ if he’s contagious which takes a moment for Russ to understand, before responding, brusquely, “Not contagious.”
Active
Themes
Karl tells Russ he has something he needs to talk to him about. Jim tries to leave but Karl says he thinks Jim’s insight could be helpful. Russ is uninterested but allows Karl to talk. He begins a speech several times but Bev interrupts to ask if he wants tea, and then again to deliver the tea. The second time Bev enters, Karl panics, worried something has happened to Betsy, but she’s fine. He asks Bev to make sure Betsy takes small, slow sips of her iced tea.
Active
Themes
Betsy and Bev go to the dining table where they communicate by writing on a pad of paper. Karl resumes speaking, and explains he’s been so concerned about Betsy because her last pregnancy, two years before, ended with the death of the baby during delivery. Russ says he knew that, but offers no condolences. Karl begins to tell Russ he’s not trying to compare “our little…setback…to what the two of you endured,” but Russ interrupts him, asking him to get to the point.
Active
Themes
Karl announces that the neighborhood Community Association has uncovered that the buyers of the Stollers' house are black—or, as he says, “colored.” As he speaks, Jim, Russ, and Bev talk over him: Jim is incredulous, and Russ calls to Bev. Neither of the Stollers knew the identity of their buyers, as they sold the house through Ted Driscol, a real estate broker.
Active
Themes
Jim interrupts Karl, asking if he should be saying “Negro” instead of “colored.” Karl responds that he says them interchangeably, “and of course I said Negro to them.” He continues that the broker, Ted, is the sort of man to put his financial interests over that of the community, and reminds the room of a black family who moved onto Kostner Avenue, nearby.
Active
Themes
Karl continues to talk, saying that he’s gone to meet with the family, and although he believes Clybourne Park is a “progressive community,” which has accommodated Gelman’s grocery store, which used to be Kopeckne’s, this is too far. Murray Gelman, he points out “found a way to fit in,” and “fitting into a community is what it all comes down to.” Everyone also agrees that Mr. Gelman integrated more easily because he did things like hiring Mr. Wheeler, who is disabled.
Active
Themes
Karl doesn’t think integrating will lead to positive change, and argues that to let a black family move in would disregard the needs of the community. Bev wonders if the family moving in has needs, but both Karl and Jim reject her condescendingly, saying she’s right in principle, but is ignoring the commandment to “love thy neighbor,” specifically the neighbors she already has. Bev wonders why she can’t love these people who would become her neighbors, but Karl says she can’t have it both ways, and points out that she’s moving, anyway. Bev continues to argue but Karl, frustrated, shuts her down saying, “Darling, I came to talk to Russ.”
Active
Themes
Albert comes down from upstairs, his jacket off. He tries to interrupt the conversation but is ignored until a large Army footlocker comes crashing down the stairs. Francine, who had been holding on to it, has lost her grip. She comes running down the stairs after the trunk, apologizing. Russ, frustrated that Bev ignored his promise that he would move the trunk, yells that he said he’d move it. Albert offers to move the trunk from where it sits, blocking the stairs, but Russ tells him to leave it, before getting up and storming down to the basement.
Francine doesn’t want to offend anyone, and keeps repeating how nice the neighborhood is. Bev keeps trying, unhelpfully to rephrase Jim’s question, until Albert cuts her off: he understands that Jim is asking how they would feel “living next to white folks.” Bev, uncomfortable, recalls how she and Francine “over the years […] have shared so many wonderful” memories, a reverie Karl interrupts.
Karl shares that he believes different groups of people have different customs, for example Betsy is Scandinavian, and eats a dish called lutefisk that he dislikes. Karl wonders if Francine would even find food she enjoyed at the local grocery store. Albert jokes he couldn’t shop anywhere that didn’t sell pig feet and collard greens, and Francine says, defiantly, that she likes spaghetti and meatballs.
Active
Themes
Jim points out that the local church is more reserved than the First Presbyterian in the Hamilton Park neighborhood.
Active
Themes
Russ interrupts Karl, and reminds him the house is sold, and that he and Bev are moving on Monday. Karl reveals that the Community Association made a counter offer to the buyers, who rejected the offer, but he points out that the Stollers could halt the sale and say that Ted had deceived them about the buyers. Bev points out the family “could be perfectly lovely,” but Karl thinks that is beside the point. He predicts that once a single black family moves in, white families will begin to leave, and the neighborhood will decline, until it is a primarily black neighborhood with a few white families, like his, that are unable to leave.
Karl then asks Francine and Albert how they would feel, if white people moved into their neighborhood, reflecting, “that might be to their advantage,” before Russ asks him to stop speaking. The two argue back and forth about Karl’s right to speak before Karl, offended, finally leaves. Betsy, unable to keep up with the conversation, asks Karl what happened as they head outside.
Active
Themes
Jim rises to leave, and Francine asks Bev if it’s okay to go, but before anyone can move Karl bursts back in through the front door. He threatens to tell the new family moving in why the house is being sold below market value. Russ forcefully asks Karl to leave, but Karl continues talking, accusing the Stollers of behaving in their “own selfish interests,” instead of that of the community. Russ halts the conversation by calling Karl a “son of a bitch.”
Russ, fed up, begins an explosive monologue. Throughout, Karl tries to cut him off for the sake of pregnant Betsy, whom he tells to wait in the car (though she does not go). Russ questions the notion that he has a community, explaining that he feels people have treated him and Bev like outsiders for the past two and a half years. He questions the importance of having a community if that community would not even help his son, Kenneth, after he was discharged from the military, accused of murdering civilians. Russ is outraged that Gelman’s Grocery would hire a man with a disability but they wouldn’t hire Kenneth.
Active
Themes
Bev doesn’t believe Kenneth committed the crimes of which he was accused, and remembers how he was a gentle boy, calling on Francine to corroborate. Karl begins to apologize for bringing up this fraught family history, but Bev accuses him of intentionally using the tragedy of their son’s death to manipulate them.
Active
Themes
As Bev and Karl speak, Russ crosses to the footlocker and extracts a letter, which he begins to read. It is Kenneth’s suicide note, which addresses his mother and father and tells them not to blame themselves. Bev becomes immediately agitated, and locks herself in the bathroom until Russ stops reading. Jim tells him to calm down, but Russ just swears at him. Karl is upset that Russ is cursing around Betsy, but Russ simply tells Betsy to “go fuck [her]self,” which she doesn’t understand.
Russ sarcastically tells Karl he can make copies of the letter and hand it out at Rotary, saying “Rotary news: Kid comes back from Korea, goes upstairs and wraps an extension cord around his neck.” He tells Karl he can tell the buyers whatever he wants, but he personally doesn’t care if “a hundred Ubangi tribesman” move in: he’s through with the neighborhood and all the people in it.
Active
Themes
The room is stunned into silence for a moment. Jim suggests bowing heads in prayer and Russ threatens to punch him. Jim backs up and trips over a moving box. Karl, afraid for Betsy’s safety, sends her running out of the house to the car.
Active
Themes
Albert goes to intervene. Francine tries to make him stay out of it, but he puts his hand on Russ’s shoulder. Russ then turns on him, offended that Albert touched him in his own home. Karl and Jim take this moment to leave. Albert backs away from Russ, and Francine reprimands him. She thinks “they’re all a buncha idiots,” and Albert was idiotic for trying to get involved. Francine exits to the car without Albert, who is left in the middle of the living room.
Bev returns to the living room from the bathroom. She offers to pay Albert for moving the footlocker, which he declines. She insists that “it’s just money,” but he refuses to take it. She tries to give him the chafing dish, which he does not want, and he eventually tells her “we don’t want your things. Please. We go our own things,” which offends her. As he leaves she tells him she would be “proud” and “honored” to have Albert, Francine, and their two children as neighbors. Albert corrects her: they have three children. Bev continues that maybe people, black and white, could learn from each other if they lived together, but trails off. Albert leaves to the car.
Russ, who had dragged the footlocker out to the backyard through the kitchen, returns with the work gloves he was looking for earlier. He tells Bev he’ll dig a hole to bury the footlocker tomorrow. He apologizes for losing his temper, but she tells him it’s all right. He then brings up his commute, and how easy it will be to get to the office. Bev wonders what she’ll do while he’s gone, and the two of them struggle to come up with anything. Bev says, “things.” Russ suggests “projects.” The lights fade as Russ says, one final time, the capital of Mongolia: “Ulan Bator!”
