Oleanna: Act 2 Summary & Analysis

John and Carol are seated in his office again, looking at one another across John’s desk. John is telling Carol about how much he loves to teach—how he loves the performance aspect of the job. He tells her that he never wanted to be like the “cold, rigid automaton[s]” he had as teachers growing up. At the same time, he didn’t want to be contrarian and unorthodox just for the sake of nonconformity.

When the possibility of tenure, John says, presented itself, he found himself desiring it—but wanted to make sure that he was pursuing it for the right reasons. At the same time, he was “covetous” of the security tenure would provide, and knew that being granted tenure would allow him to purchase a home in which he could raise his family. Now, John says, because of a “complaint” Carol has brought forth against him, the tenure committee will have to delay signing John’s contract and meet to hear and discuss Carol’s complaint. In the process, John says, he will lose his deposit on the house, and will not be able to provide a home for his wife and children. Carol asks John coolly what he wants from her.

John tells Carol that he was “shocked” and “hurt” when the committee informed him of her complaint. He tries to explain that he always wanted to be the teacher he never had as a child, and has been searching all his life for a new “paradigm” in his profession. Carol asks John what “paradigm” means, and he tells her it means a model. Carol asks John why he couldn’t just use the word “model.” John revises his sentence, explaining that he has always been looking for a model for how to be a good teacher. One thing he’s always seen as important, he says, is “concern for [his] students’ dignity.” He asks Carol point-blank what she feels he has done to her—and how he can make amends. He wants to “settle” the matter between them now before the tenure committee gets “pointless[ly]” involved.

Carol tells John that she thinks he’s trying to figure out what he can do “to force [her] to retract,” or otherwise “bribe” or “convince” her to recant her statement. John insists that is not what he is trying to do, but Carol says that in stating he wants to make “amends,” John is only trying to get her to “retract.” John says he knows that Carol is upset, and just wants to know what he has done to wrong her. Carol retorts that everything John wants to know is already in her report.

John looks down at a piece of paper on his desk—Carol’s report. He looks through it, narrating as he does. He says aloud that the report calls him “sexist” and “elitist,” that he insists on “self-aggrandizing and theatrical diversions from the prescribed text,” and that these diversions “have taken both sexist and pornographic forms.” John goes on: Carol has, in the report, accused him of telling a “rambling, sexually explicit story [about the] frequency and attitudes of fornication of the poor and rich”—and lastly has accused him of trying to “embrace” her, and kept her in his office because he “liked” her.

After a pause, John tells Carol that her report is “ludicrous.” He claims that it is going to do nothing but “humiliate” Carol and make John lose his house. Carol asks John if he’s denying the things that are in the report, and says he couldn’t if he tried. She points out that he “drag[ged]” her into his office and made her listen to him rant about his beliefs. John looks down at the report and reads more from it; one part states that Carol alleged that John told her he’d give her an A if she “stay[ed] alone with him in his office.” John asks Carol what she thinks he has done to her, and insists he was only trying to help her.

John says he wants to help Carol now “before this escalates,” and she replies that she doesn’t need John’s help—or anything else he has. She accuses him of being part of a group that misuses power, and states that because of her report, he won’t be able to do such things anymore. John tells Carol that her anger is “betraying” her. Carol says she doesn’t care what John thinks. John asks her how she can say that when she talks about rights—he says that he has rights too. He begins babbling about his house and speaking sarcastically about the tenure committee, composed of “Good Men and True.” He tells Carol that he’s not a “bogeyman” and doesn’t stand for anything—he’s a real person with a real life and real problems.

Carol cuts John off. She tells him that she came to his office only as a favor, at his personal request—she came, she says, on behalf of herself and her “group.” She points out that in referring to the tenure committee as “Good Men and True,” John is ignoring that there is a woman on the committee, and that his remarks are thus sexist and exclusionary. John asks if his oversight in such a remark is “sufficient” to deprive him and his family of a home. Carol retorts that it is sufficient, as it is “vile and classist, and manipulative and pornographic.”

Carol begins ranting against John, accusing him of speaking inappropriately to a woman in the privacy of his office. She says he not only calls higher education a “joke,” but treats it like one—and does so proudly. She claims that John loves the power he has as a professor, but won’t admit it. He calls teaching, publishing, and securing tenure “rituals,” and yet goes through the steps to achieve them. She accuses John of being a hypocrite and mocking his hardworking students, who have come to college to learn. She urges John to look inside himself and “find revulsion equal to [her] own,” then stands up and prepares to leave.

John, though, comes back at Carol with a fiery rant of his own. He says he’s not an “exploiter”—and that though he participates in systems he criticizes, to do so is human. He admits that sometimes to be human is to be “self-serving” and “conventional.” He asserts that he was never trying to mock Carol or discourage her from pursuing an education—it is his “job,” he says, to tell young people what he thinks and encourage them to develop thoughts and opinions of their own. He says he wants for both himself and Carol to simply admit that they’re human.

John encourages Carol to tell him in her own words what she wants and how she feels. She mentions again that she has been talking to a “group.” John says that “everybody needs advisers,” and it’s essential to hear other people’s points of view. He tells her to go on, but then his phone rings. After hesitating a moment, he picks it up. John’s conversation is clearly still about the house. He is talking to Grace, whom he calls “babe” and “baby,” and insists her to have faith in the fact that the deal will “go through.” He tells her he’s “dealing with the complaint,” and needs to get off the phone.

Carol tells John that she doesn’t want to talk to him about her complaint now—she wants to “stick to the process” and discuss it in front of the tenure committee. She apologizes for being “discourteous” to John, and says she needs to go. She gathers her things up. John tries to stop her, asserting that Carol is making a mistake. Carol says she shouldn’t have come. John says he wants to “save” Carol—she takes offense at this remark and begins to leave. John tells her to sit down, but when she doesn’t listen, he follows her across the room and grabs her. Carol shouts at him to let her go. John says he has “no desire to hold [her,]” and just wants to talk. Carol shouts as loudly as she can for somebody to come help her.