23rd
Critical Review Essay “My Name is Rachel Corrie”
In their edited play, ”My Name is Rachel Corrie”, Katharine Viner and Alan Rickman use the journal and email’s of Rachel Corrie to describe particular events that took place and led up to the death of Rachel Corrie. It deals with issues that a young girl questions throughout the period of her life and expresses her developing personality as well as her changes in the view of life. The play begins by describing the goals and questions that she plans on exploring by breaking away from her sheltered life in a small community in Olympia, Washington. Growing up in this community, she describes herself as an individual that has a different perspective on things than that of others in her school as well as community. Her passion allows her to break free from the normal occupation that would lead to a prestigious career and directs her to become an artist and a writer. Her zeal guides her to travel to Palestine as an activist in the International Solidarity Movement to try to make a difference in the lives of others. Through her visit to residential areas in Palestine, she reflects back to certain parts of her life in Olympia, Washington which reflects a picture of how her experience has led her from being a naive young girl to a thoughtful responsive adult. In her visit to Gaza among other residential areas in Palestine, she bonds with residents who shelter her. Through this she finds that the people that she comes across are merely innocent people who through the destruction of their homes and food supply, still choose to maintain hope and live their lives the best that they can manage. On her trip, as a member of the International Solidarity Movement, she organizes various rallies and speeches to reach out to others to highlight the chaos in Palestine. One day, while trying to save a home from being demolished of one of the families that sheltered her, her fight is brought to an end. Similar to what she had dreamt in her dreams, she was run over by a bulldozer, crushing her and leading her to her last act as an activist, daughter, sister, student, and a courageous young lady.
This passionate play has a collective approach in describing a young lady’s thoughts and actions from adolescence through the period of her life. The use of her actual writings and exert from her journal seem to add a more realistic view to the play. It not only allows the audience to see Rachel Corrie’s perspective on issues, but it also gives the audience the perspective of other people, like her mother and father, a response to her perspective. The emails to and from her parent really seem to put things that she had been describing in her journal as well as add her true feelings and pieces of the active movement in a manner that allows the audience to get an idea of the events taking place in the play. Then the audience is also presented to her mothers growing enthusiasm on learning more about the issues taking place as well as her father’s changing views. Another aspect of that the emails to her parents showed was her changing attitude. She goes to Palestine with a courageous attitude and after about two weeks is realizes the dangerous environment that she has come to. Her emails also showed how attached she became to helping the residents of Palestine and how, even though she really wanted to go back to Olympia, Washington, she felt guilty that those people could not leave and come back in the same manner that she was able to do. This not only showed how dedicated she was to the causes that she took part in but also how she was determined to make a difference and was not going to leave without doing so.
The play has an excellent depiction of the character of Rachel Corrie. Being in Palestine, she realizes how much freedom she had and how she pictured herself as not fitting into her community in Olympia, Washington. This is the opposite of the residents in Palestine; these residents were trying to keep their community, but were unable to do so. Through her emails to her mother and father she mentioned how she felt bad about leaving, although she did miss her home. This makes it seem as though she felt that she has taken advantage of what she had growing up and was punishing herself for not appreciating it.
One of the strengths of the play is how it forms relationships with situations that take place in America and compare them to Palestine, catching the readers’ attention and portraying the difference between them. By mentioning the chaos, destruction and loss that America suffered on September eleventh, she gives the audience an image and then uses this to describe the destruction going on on a daily basis in the environment that the residents of Palestine have to live in.
Another compelling aspect of the play is how the play is brought together from her dreams to her fate. In a journal entry she mentioned that she dreamed of dying by “falling into to my death of something dusty and smooth and crumbling like the cliffs in Utah”. It almost seemed unreal that she dreamed of dying in a way that so similarly led to her death before she even went to prevent the destruction of the Gaza homes. This aspect of her journal not only bought an incredible scrutiny to the play, but also brought irony. What seemed to be a dream became reality.
However, one of the plays major weaknesses was the de-emphasis on historical context. The play sort of jumped into Rachel Corrie going to Palestine as an activist, and described bits and pieces of the hostilities going on between Israelis and Palestine. It was rather difficult to put the pieces from her journal on what the conflict was about, with no prior knowledge of the situation. Although this was a weakness, it was also a strength for the sake of Rachel Corrie’s views on the conflict. Since the audience sees the destruction that the Israel Defense Forces are implementing on the residents of Palestine, they are almost forced to take the side of the residents of Palestine and disregard any acclimations that Israel may have toward the conflict. Even though there is not likely to be a valid explanation to all of the destruction and death that the Israel forces were implementing on the residents of Palestine, the idea that only one side of the conflict gets described with little information on the conflict as a whole, adds to the heroism to the character of Rachel Corrie.
Altogether, the play does an excellent job on giving an outlook on the characteristics of Rachel Corrie. The use of metaphor describes the details that shows her personality and views in life. By including the list of heroes, past relationships, as well as the other activities she participated in shows how she engaged in the world and was an individual who loved to discover and learn new things through her many experiences before and after leaving her sheltered community. Unlike some of the cases that Piper mentioned in Reviving Ophelia, Rachel Corrie shows a collective individual who freely expresses her thoughts and views regardless of the opinions of others including her fathers. By becoming a member of the International Solidarity Movement and going to another country as an activist, she challenges her fathers’ neo-liberal view and gets him to see the major conflicts going on there. She is depicted as an altruistic individual who is open to exploring and learning as well as a courageous young girl standing up for what she believes in and does so to the last day of her life.
