Dutchman

“The man looks idly up, until he sees a woman’s face staring at him through the window; when it realizes that the man has noticed the face, it begins very premeditatedly to smile. The man smiles too, for a moment, without a trace of self-consciousness. […] the face would seem to be left behind by the way the man turns his head to look back through the other windows at the slowly fading platform. He smiles then; more comfortably confident, hoping perhaps that his memory of this brief encounter will be pleasant.”

This moment takes place between Clay and Lula at the opening of the play, before they officially meet. It marks their first interaction and gives an optimistic note to the two’s relationship—which, of course, ends up being very wrong. Jones’ note that Lula “begins very premeditatedly to smile” also suggests Lula’s plan and pattern of seducing Clay’s “type” of an educated, black man.

“I was. But only after I’d turned around and saw you staring through that window down in the vicinity of my ass and legs.”

Lula says this to Clay when they first meet, after she accuses him of staring at her through the window. The mention of her “ass and legs” immediately sexualizes Lula and establishes their relationship as a sexual/seduction-based one, which it is until the play takes its final turn.

“You look like you live in New Jersey with your parents and are trying to grow a beard. That’s what. You look like you’ve been reading Chinese poetry and drinking lukewarm sugarless tea. […] You look like death eating a soda cracker.”

Lula speaks to Clay as if she knows him—but insists she simply can tell who he is by looking at him. Lula’s assessment of Clay, which he suggests is spot-on, establishes his character: a “wannabe intellectual” who is still young and attempting to be more mature than he truly is. Her phrase “death eating a soda cracker” also suggests that he is, to her, “boring” and plain, a sharp contrast to Lula’s clearly vibrant persona.