Analysis Of Maria Irene Fornes's The Conduct Of Life

To understand a play, we need to understand it’s characters. In Maria Irene Fornes’ play The Conduct of Life the character Orlando has many different challenges he faces, and he deals with them in interesting ways. Orlando is a military man who is married to Leticia who is ten years older than he is. He seems to be a wealthy man who struggles with many different things in his life. We will be diving in deeper to exactly what those conflicts are and how Orlando responds to them. As well as what drives him and what is objectives may be. Let’s start with what exactly Orlando wants. The first and probably one of the biggest is Orlando’s want or even need of power. He states this in his opening monologue as he says, “Man must have an ideal, mine is to achieve maximum power.” Having this said flat out to us as the reader or audience is very helpful because it gives us a clear picture of who Orlando will be as a character. We see this exhibited in many other parts of his life. For example, he is determent to keep his wife out of his will so he can have the power over all the money he has. Also, we see his need for power as he uses physical power over Nena later in the play. Orlando also has

These things are avoided action/why and true action/why. All characters do these and it is the difference between what they say and what they actually do. An example of this is when Leticia is packing to go on a trip. While she is packing she notices that the strap to her suitcase has been replaced and that it is the wrong size. She goes on to ask Orlando where the strap has gone and he says he has taken it but he does not specify why. Orlando’s saying, he took the strap is the avoided action, and what he actually did with the strap is the true action. We do not get any information about what he used the strap for but biased on his work as an interrogator we can make some