Come Back, Little Sheba: Analysis of Major Characters
"Come Back, Little Sheba" is a play that intricately explores the lives of its major characters, particularly focusing on the Delaney couple, Doc and Lola. Doc Delaney, a chiropractor in his forties, grapples with deep-seated frustrations stemming from unfulfilled ambitions and personal failures, including his struggles with alcoholism and the emotional toll of a past tragedy. His wife, Lola, remains emotionally stunted and dependent, clinging to faded memories of her youth and beauty, symbolized through her lost dog, Little Sheba.
Their dynamic is complicated by the presence of Marie, a vibrant college student boarding with them, who embodies the youthful ideals both Doc and Lola yearn for but cannot attain. Marie's romantic involvement with Turk, an aggressive young athlete, ignites tension and repressed rage within Doc, ultimately leading to a dramatic climax. In contrast, Bruce, Marie's fiancé, represents a conventional future that lacks the passion she finds with Turk. Additionally, Mrs. Coffman, the Delaneys' neighbor, serves as a foil to Lola, highlighting her irresponsibility and offering a glimpse of a more grounded domesticity. This complex interplay of relationships reveals the struggle between youthful dreams and harsh realities, making the characters' journeys both poignant and relatable.
Come Back, Little Sheba: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: William Inge
First published: 1950
Genre: Play
Locale: A Midwestern college town
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: The late 1940's
Doc Delaney, a chiropractor in a Midwestern city. This outwardly gentle, courteous, and patient man in his early forties seethes inside because of his frustrating life. He felt compelled to drop out of medical school about twenty years earlier and marry Lola because he had made her pregnant. Married to a woman who is his social and intellectual inferior, and disappointed in his ambitions and by the fact that Lola was rendered sterile by the botched delivery of their stillborn first child, Doc became an alcoholic who was nearly homicidal when intoxicated. He squandered all the money he had inherited and allowed his practice to go to ruin. For the past eleven months, he has belonged to Alcoholics Anonymous and is trying to rebuild his shattered life.
Lola Delaney, a housewife. Married to Doc at the age of eighteen, Lola has remained mentally an adolescent for the past twenty years. In contrast to her shy, introverted husband, she has no internal resources and is completely dependent on other people. She has let herself become fat, and she neglects her housekeeping, along with her personal appearance. At the age of eighteen, she had been strikingly attractive and much sought after by young men. Because this was the only area in which she ever experienced success and satisfaction, she has never gotten over her youthful illusions about romantic love. Her small lost dog, Little Sheba, symbolizes for her, on an unconscious level, her own lost youth and beauty, which she hopes somehow will come back to her.
Marie, a college student who boards with the Delaneys. At the age of eighteen or nineteen, she is pretty, cheerful, sprightly, and friendly, a ray of sunshine in this unhappy household. Both Doc and Lola project their fantasies onto this fairly ordinary girl. Doc sees her as pure and almost saintly. Lola sees her quite simply as herself at that same age. Marie's passionate relationship with Turk, in which Lola takes a strong vicarious interest, triggers Doc's repressed rage and leads directly to the violent climax of the play. Through their emotional involvement with Marie, both Doc and Lola eventually come to realize their mistaken illusions about the glamour of youth.
Turk, a college athlete, good-looking, aggressive, muscular, and narcissistic. Although only nineteen or twenty years old, he has been in the military service and has acquired a superficial sophistication. His attitude toward young women is predatory; he is interested only in sex. Although Marie is strongly attracted to him on this level, she knows he is not a suitable prospect as a spouse. Doc hates him because he is sensual and uninhibited, everything Doc is not. When Doc realizes that the two young students are sleeping together under his roof, he gets roaring drunk and threatens to kill Turk as well as Lola, whom he blames for acting as a pander in the illicit affair.
Bruce, Marie's fiancé, who lives in another city. This intelligent, ambitious, and well-mannered young man comes from an upper-middle-class family and is already making headway in the business world. Marie regards him as a good catch, but he does not fire her blood the way Turk does. When she and Bruce go off to get married at the end of the play, it is clear that they will have a conventional middle-class marriage without any physical excitement.
Mrs. Coffman, a housewife, the Delaneys' next-door neighbor. This middle-aged mother of seven children serves as a contrast to the slovenly, irresponsible Lola. Mrs. Coffman speaks with a German accent and has the hardworking, no-nonsense attitude often associated with members of that ethnic group. She is kindhearted, however, and proves helpful to Lola in her hour of need.