Almost, Maine

“[…] the farthest away you can be from somebody is if you’re sitting right next to them.” 

This piece of dialogue from Pete, spoken to Ginette, is an example of Cariani’s technique of layering lines with multiple meanings. Pete has had an insight about another way to view literal distance, but in so doing, has abstracted himself from this moment with Ginette, ruining their moment of intimacy. Pete is metaphorically almost further from her now than when the scene started.

“[…] people from Maine are different, that they live life ‘the way it should be.’”

An important aspect of this play is its setting and inhabitants, whom Cariani is invested in portraying accurately. Here, Glory, an outsider, is revealing her perception of the people of Maine, a perception she has gained from a tourism brochure. This prompts the reader/audience to question how these characters are similar to and different from the people that populate their own lives, and presents a guiding question for the rest of the play: what really does it mean to be a resident of Northern Maine?

“Feels like the end of the world, and here I am at the end of the world, and I have nowhere to go, so I was counting on staying here.”

One of the recurring features of the setting in this play is how remote Almost, Maine is. Here, Glory is expressing this remoteness as a sort of logical end point, making its location either an end or a beginning, or both.