Suddenly, Last Summer

Content Warning: Suddenly Last Summer features brief descriptions of murder, mutilation, and cannibalism. An unseen character is also implied to be both gay and a pedophile, playing into stereotypes about gay men. The play contains extensive discussion of outdated and harmful approaches to mental health treatment. The guide also references suicide.

According to Violet, Sebastian was drawn to the Galápagos by a passage in Herman Melville’s The Encantadas describing the “extinct” purity of the islands’ desolation. However, he was both terrified and enthralled by what he found: not the tranquil timelessness he expected based on Melville’s work but rather thousands of ravenous birds who preyed insatiably on defenseless sea turtles who had just hatched on the sand. In this slaughter, Sebastian saw the face of “God”—that is, the essence of nature and of life. For the young aspiring poet, this revelation brought him face to face with the toothlessness of the written word in capturing the truth of life and death; as Catharine later notes, humans have long tried to “spell” God’s name with the “wrong” alphabet blocks. This conflict within himself—a writer who struggled painfully to produce a single poem each summer, trying and failing to capture the full breadth of experience—hastened his dissolution and death.