The Character of Andre in Andre’s Mother by Terrace McNally
This story begin when Andre has dead
due to AIDS. His friends and his family gather in Central park to react his
dead by bringing white baloon to let it go up as a symbol of allow Andre to go
in peace/heaven. Actually this young man has no role in the plays, but the
entire plays is based on the life and death of this one man. In this plays Cal
as Andre’s partner tells the memories when he is still alive are able to lead
us to recognize what the Andre’s character is. Although Andre does not exist in
this plays but from the script we can discover that there are two character
that can be analysed from Andre. Andre is gay and introvert. The character need
to be discussed in the next paragraph.
This plays shows that Andre is
someone who keep his secret about his disease and his sex disorder from his
mother. He even never told her mother about Cal because the relationship is
also part of his secret. He becomes introvert with his mother because he is so
afraid of hurting his mother about the real condition of her son and probably
the disapproval from his mother. In spite of he tells the Cal about everything
and Cal want to be friend with Andre’s mother.
The other character from Andre is
gay. This sexual disorder can be clearly seen by the existence of Cal as his
homoseksual lover. It is such taboo opinion in society as the silence of his mother.
The modern lifestyle can get us bad influence with our behaviour such as drugs,
drink alcohol, free sex or even sexual disorder like gay and lesbian. And Andre
is the figure of bad effect of modern life style by becoming a gay. His mother
actually shockly respon it by her silence along this plays.
From the discussion above we can
conclude that those Andre’s character are obviously shown without Andre is
present in this play. His mother’s silence denotes a sense of denial about the
reality of her son's. She is very sad and regret. In the end of the scene, when
all the characters each say their piece about Andre then releases a balloon by signifying
the acceptance of his death, in the other hand his mother still dont blow the
baloon up. She almost lets go of the balloon but she quickly brings it back
down and kisses it gently, accepting Andre for who he was, and lets it slowly
rise into the sky, watching it the entire way.
