Suzan-Lori Parks - "Topdog/Underdog"

The theatrical mirrors of the Lincoln assassination and three-card Monte are both included in this play to highlight the vulnerability of man. Though Lincoln is described in the text as the topdog and Booth is described as the underdog, it is Booth who is still alive at the end of the play. Throughout the play, Parks plays with the power struggle between the brothers, especially their struggle to make money and the means with which they pursue the green. Though it seems that Lincoln is on his way up, having retired from the game and working for a legitimate business, it is revealed that he is about to be fired due to cost management. Booth, the underdog, is just learning the ways of street business, and he is finding this new way of life to be highly rewarding. Though both brothers think they have done what they need to do to come out on top, the odds suddenly fall out of their favor and their relationship reels from their instability. For the play to culminate the way that it does, it is necessary for Parks to set up the idea of fate controlling the men as much as they are controlling themselves. At the beginning of the text, there is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "I am a God in nature; I am a weed by the wall." Parks's inclusion of this quote into the world of the play brings together the concept of perspective and how drastically it can change a man's fate.