Thom Pain

The opening of the play is bizarre, and the speaker, Thom Pain, talks in a casual and disjointed manner. He speaks directly to and about the audience, something that the other books we have read this term do not do. Even Moods, which sometimes made reference to the reader, could not interact with its audience in the same way as Thom Pain, a play. For example, Thom Pain directly mentions a man walking out of the theater, and the laughter of the audience. He also involves the audience, telling them what to imagine in their mind's eye. He's controlling the atmosphere. I think it's kind of funny when he recounts the story of the boy and his dog and insists that it's a true story, in the same way the audience's laughter and the man leaving is written into the script regardless of whether or not it happened.