The Last Night of Ballyhoo

The Last Night of Ballyhoo is a perfect example of the inner workings of a prejudice person. There are two psychological elements displayed here that are more related than most people realize. The prejudice theme is obvious throughout the play. But notice that in every display of bigotry, there is an underlying sentiment of personal inadequacy. Ballyhoo proves that racial and other forms of prejudice are a concoction created and driven by society. Defensive projection is defined as the process of perceiving one’s undesirable qualities in others (Govorun, Fuegen and Payne par. 1). Most people are not legitimately intolerant of other ethnicities (solely based on ethnicity). I believe that prejudice behavior is often projected from feelings of one’s own shortcoming and feelings that others have haughtily predetermined one’s own character. The feelings of inadequacy cause the person to swell up with pride and project their feelings onto someone different from themselves. There is only one remedy for this disease, and that is love.
Personal feelings of failure would be impossible without some form of standard with which to be judged. Throughout Ballyhoo, the characters who display the most bigotry are the ones who are concerned the most about their public status. Boo’s inadequacies are many, and this explains her harsh demeanor. Her poor late husband and her daughter’s oddball behavior torment her psyche and give fuel to her critical nagging. She is embarrassed by anything that doesn’t conform to the standard. She is embarrassed to be one of the two Jewish families on the street. And notice how that second Jewish family is described:
LALA: I wasn’t thinking of it that way, but yes! Of course! This is just about the best address in Atlanta. Did you know that?
JOE: Not really.
LALA: You have only to look at the mail boxes up and down this street and you’ll see half the membership of the Junior League!
JOE: Huh!
LALA: I’ll have you know that we are the only Jews on Habersham Road except for one house way on the other side of Paces Ferry where it gets tacky.
Lala is proud that she lives in a non-Jewish neighborhood. She is consumed with her social status. She brags about living on the same street as half of the Junior League. Her perception of who she should be is determined by what other people think. Her personal sense of insufficiency is even more evident in her conversation with Sunny, “Poor Miss Wellesley. It must be so exhausting to have to deal with us piddling little inferiors.” This was probably meant as sarcasm, but I believe this is a case of her genuine, bottled up emotions escaping during a heated argument. Lala is jealous of Sunny, because Sunny has less physical Jewish qualities. Adolph doesn’t join in with Boo and Lala in their discrimination of Joe, but he is a past president of the Standard Club. Adolph obviously likes Joe, but in his conversation with Joe about the tickets to the dance, there is a sense that Adolph is trying to keep the true nature of the Club’s membership hidden. The uncomfortable moment in that conversation probably comes from Adolph’s guilt. Reba is genuine and friendly, but she goes with the flow about mostly everything. Her tendency to yield to the popular opinion makes her vulnerable to intolerance. Reba is the second person to mention “the other kind” in the play. The only reason she knows about the other kind is because her grandmother told her when she was young. Her niceness is hampered by her submission to society’s consensus.
For this argument to stand there should be a counter archetype. Joe is the best example of a genuine person whose actions are not driven by social status. He is Jewish, and he makes no apology for it. In fact, he’s dumbfounded by the lack of Jewish dedication by the Freitag family. Sure, he has been a victim of discrimination, but he doesn’t let it consume his life like Boo or Lala. In other words, he doesn’t care what other people think about him. He makes his decisions on what he believes is right.
I believe the last train scene encapsulates my thesis; more specifically, one line from Sunny:
SUNNY: What you said – about Jew-hater talk –
JOE: Yeah?
SUNNY: I thought about it a lot, and it’s not true. How could it be? It would be like hating myself?
JOE: Unh-hunh.
SUNNY: No! Don’t you see? It’s only ignorance. I don’t know anything. There’s just a big hole where the Judaism is supposed to be.
“It would be like hating myself.” If Sunny shows any prejudice, it is only for a moment during her argument with Joe after the dance. The only true way to overcome intolerance is to become rid of self hate. The people who display prejudice are ignorant of their own true feelings. So called racists people do not discriminate because they are racists. They discriminate because they are projecting self hate onto someone different from themselves. Prejudice comes from the fear of not being as good as the “other kind” and not meeting the standard by which society judges. Whether prejudice people realize it or not, this is a source of their bigotry; self loathing and ignorance.
The ending scene has a strong message. Throughout the play the Freitag family runs from their Jewish heritage. They run to escape society’s opinion that they are flawed. In the final scene, Joe brings the family together, and when they embrace their heritage, they shed their grievances. They all had to overcome their pride and look past the illusion of culture’s created divisiveness. Surmounting this obstacle is a difficult task. Without love, the family would have held on to their pride, and their torment would have only been sustained. Sunny and Joe’s love is the paramount ingredient that brings the family together.
Martin Luther King Jr. was the greatest civil rights leader the world has ever seen. In his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech he said, “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” The media and even our Governmental Representatives constantly use race as a tool to divide us for their own promotion. The revenue that this controversial topic generates is too enticing for newspapers and news outlets to pass up. Even some so called “civil rights leaders” of today like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson prosper from the industry of prejudice. They stir up strife and animosity. King’s motive was to unite people, not divide them. His philosophy was, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that” (King - King 's Dreams - History.com par 8). In the Last Night of Ballyhoo we see how love, when it is unrestrained of pride and ignorance, can overcome prejudice and unite a broken people. Works Cited
Govorun, Olesya, Kathleen Fuegen, and B. Keith Payne. "Stereotypes Focus Defensive Projection." University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Website. 20 Nov. 2005. 27 July 2009 .
"King - King 's Dreams - History.com." The History Channel - Home Page. 29 July 2009 .
King, Martin Luther. "Martin Luther King - Acceptance Speech." Nobelprize.org. 29 July 2009 .

Cited: Govorun, Olesya, Kathleen Fuegen, and B. Keith Payne. "Stereotypes Focus Defensive Projection." University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Website. 20 Nov. 2005. 27 July 2009 . "King - King 's Dreams - History.com." The History Channel - Home Page. 29 July 2009 . King, Martin Luther. "Martin Luther King - Acceptance Speech." Nobelprize.org. 29 July 2009 .