Six Degrees of Separation

“Rich people can do something for you even if you’re not sure what it is you want them to do.”

When Ouisa delivers this line, she is referring primarily to Geoffrey—a man who is rich even by her standards—being able to help her and Flan afford the Cezanne painting. However, although she does not know it, it also applies to her forthcoming ability to “do something” for Paul, someone who considers her to be extremely rich.

“It doesn’t seem right sitting on the East Side talking about revolution.”

By the end of the play, Ouisa has undergone a dramatic transformation in her attitudes and values. However, in the early stages, she is somewhat shallow and sheltered. Despite this, there are brief flashes of self-awareness that foreshadow her later development, such as her recognition that it is a hypocritical luxury to discuss workers’ revolts in an expensive New York apartment.

“Neglected by his family, my father would sit on the shore, and, as he told me many times, ‘conjure up the kind of worlds that were on the other side and what I’d do in them.’”

Paul’s discussion of Poitier’s invention of new worlds and new roles provides a reflection of his own use of the imagination and acting to create a new life for himself. Like Poitier, he imagines a world on the other side of the social and economic barrier between rich and poor and invents a role for himself there.