INTERPRETATION POTENTIAL OF NUMBER IN (MATH) DRAMA: A STUDY IN ELMER RICE'S THE ADDING MACHINE

Abstract

In certain Math drama, the playwrights employ the mathematical thinking as a theme or as a technique to help their characters as well as the audience to analyze their financial status, evaluate their current situations, and solve their problems. And the American playwright Elmer Rice(1892-1967) exploits such idea in The Adding Machine(1924) whose the treatment of the unsolved social problem of modern depressed era is conveyed through the dramatization of numbered characters. This study aims at presenting an evaluation to the treatment of numbered character in Rice's dynamic text, The Adding Machine and an assessment to Mr. Zero's dynamism by using different manners of literary criticism including modern approaches in psychiatry and psychoanalysis