Machismo and Homosociality in Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross

One of the distinctive persons of American literature and cinema, David Mamet has written a great number of plays and scripts and many of which are produced or directed by Mamet himself. Glengarry Glen Ross consisting of all male characters deals with four real estate salesmen who do not want to be the bottom name on the board in their office for fear of dismissal. This fear leads them to manipulation, falsehood and even illegality. The most conspicuous thing in the play is characters’ relationships to each other. Characters have a lack of morality and principle. The homosocial office turns into a macho arena where characters endeavor to survive. Mamet satirizes a dog-eat-dog society in the play, which has also a reference to American dream. The characters’ interaction to each other seems primitive and manipulative despite modern age. In this sense, the play also reveals male’s inner psychology because human’s instinctual aims such as surviving and potency are unearthed in the play. In this study David Mamet’s distinctive play Glengarry Glen Ross will be argued with machismo, homosociality, man’s psychology.