Love! Valour! Compassion!

Upon analyzing Love! Valour! Compassion!, I think that a future historian would conclude that USA 1994 was a time and place of fragmented capital-T Truths. In my opinion, the disjointed structure of the play seems to reflect the play’s portrayal of Truth. For example, sometimes the characters appear to be omniscient, and sometimes they seem to live in the moment, limited in their human knowledge. Starting on page 137 of Act III, the characters reveal how they will die. In Perry’s case, he even knows exactly how when he will die when he says on page 137, “I have twenty-seven years, eight months, six days, three hours, thirty-one minutes, and eleven seconds left.”

It is as though the artists are unsure whether to portray Truth from God’s perspective (as is common in the pre-modern era) or from human perspective (as is common in the modern era). This fragmented approach to portraying Truth is also evident in the characters’ habit of breaking the fourth wall. The characters do not stay in their own world, nor do they speak exclusively to the audience. When the characters do this, they refuse to choose one single method of portraying Truth.

The fragmented nature of Truth is also present in the title of the play itself, Love! Valour! Compassion! In this case, three nouns are separated by exclamation marks, meaning that the single title technically contains three sentences. However, if the playwright had chosen to separate each word with a comma, the three nouns would have been part of the same sentence. Thus, the play’s title is fragmented, as is Truth.

One thing that makes this play different from the typical well-made play is that the play does not end with a curtain line. On page 142 of Act III, the last thing John says is, “Anyway.” This word seems to indicate that John will start a new thought, but he never completes it. McNally’s refusal to wrap up the show with a bow reflects the fragmented nature of Truth.