Topdog/Underdog

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2001

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Scene Summaries & Analyses

Scenes 1-3

Scenes 4-6

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Gun

Playwright Anton Chekhov famously claimed that a gun that is present onstage in Act I must go off by Act III. Booth presents the gun at the beginning of the first scene, nearly shooting Lincoln for startling him in his costume. The presence of the gun, in addition to the history of the brothers’ names, promises that by the end of the play, one brother will most likely shoot the other with the gun. Booth uses the gun to augment his own masculinity. Lincoln sees the gun as an unnecessary threat, having experienced the loss of his friend, Lonny. When Lincoln is teaching Booth about hustling cards, he takes the gun off him and sets it aside, noting that they are not actually in real danger in their apartment. The gun is both representative of Booth’s masculinity and not quite enough, as Lincoln asserts when he tells Booth that if he wants to hustle with Lincoln’s old crew, he will need a more serious gun.

In the arcade, shooting Abraham Lincoln with a gun becomes a game. Lincoln refers to customers who select their gun before shooting him. The arcade has a variety of real guns that have been altered so that they no longer shoot. These alterations mirror the emasculation that Booth uses his gun to compensate for, and Booth imagines that he might steal one of those guns and restore it to working condition. When Booth admits that he “popped” Grace, his language makes it unclear as to whether he hit her or shot her, although the end result is the same. Booth uses the gun to assert his masculinity. The moment at the end of the play when Booth shoots Lincoln shows how gun violence is instantaneous and permanent. Lincoln has no time to say more than one word before Booth kills him, and Booth’s immediate remorse suggests that he acted impulsively.

Playing Cards

The playing cards represent a sort of lawless success, a way that an underprivileged and uneducated black man can become self-made. Within the system and the law, Lincoln must accept a job that underpays him to be repeatedly humiliated. But the cards allow him to not only make money also but to take that money from rich white oppressors. The con of three-card monte involves using a plant in the crowd who “wins,” making the actual mark believe he can win too. Then, the hustler builds up the mark’s confidence by letting him win a couple of rounds before beating him and taking everything. This is risky, not only because it is illegal but because angry marks might retaliate with violence. Although the circumstances surrounding Lonny’s death are not fully explained, this incident proves that the stakes of the con are high. For the majority of the play, Lincoln takes on the role of the loser, the underdog, allowing Booth to take the place of the winner, or top dog. Lincoln has lost his wife (cuckolded by his own brother), works a demoralizing job, and has no home. He sleeps on his brother’s recliner while Booth takes the dominant spot on the bed—the same bed where he raped Lincoln’s wife.

But no matter how much Booth practices throwing cards, he cannot match his brother’s talent. Lincoln treats the cards like an addiction, refusing to even touch them. When Lincoln stopped playing cards, he started drinking and lost his wife. His reluctance to teach Booth how to hustle might be out of concern for his brother’s safety. It might also be the one way that Lincoln holds on to his dominant status. Lincoln tells Booth, “I was throwing cards like throwing cards was made for me. Made for me alone. […] I never lost. Not once. Not one time. Not never. That’s how much them cards was mines. I was the be all end all” (59). Although Lincoln has given up throwing cards, he isn’t willing to let his brother step in and take his place. When Booth tries to change his name to 3-Card, it is all but forgotten until the end of the play.

In the last scene, Lincoln has become a hustler again, and he hustles Booth out of his inheritance. Earlier in the play, he demonstrates the game, showing how the conman acts reluctant so that the mark is compelled to convince him to play. Lincoln does the same thing to Booth. Lincoln doesn’t suggest that Booth put up his inheritance but prompts Booth to come up with the idea himself. Then Lincoln happens to have $500 in his pocket, the exact amount of the inheritance. Booth wins the first two hands, and Lincoln acts disappointed and surprised, emasculated as Booth gloats and insults him. In the final hand, Lincoln wins. As Lincoln said, he has never lost. Mastery of the cards symbolizes masculine power. Lincoln offers to give Booth the money back, but the damage is to Booth’s ego, not his wallet. Lincoln’s hesitance to touch cards again suggests that the cards change him, making him the kind of person who would hustle his own brother.

The Lincoln Costume

Of his Abraham Lincoln costume, Lincoln says, “They say the clothes make the man. All day long I wear that getup. But that dont make me who I am” (33). The costume, which he says was “not even worn by the fool that Im supposed to be playing” (34), is an “old black coat not even real old just fake old. Its got worn spots on the elbows, little raggedy places thatll break through into holes before the winters out. Shiny strips around the cuffs and the collar” (33). The Lincoln costume makes him interchangeable. The last man who wore it simply left it hanging up so Lincoln could step into his shoes, both literally and metaphorically. In this costume, he plays Abraham Lincoln. The play premiered in 2002, which means that Lincoln is acting as a president in a time when a black man has not yet held the office. But the suit is anything but presidential. It is worn out, with “dust from the cap guns on the left shoulder where they shoot him” (33). And in order to play the president, Lincoln must wear convincing whiteface makeup.

This contrasts with the suit that Booth steals for him. When Lincoln puts it on, Booth comments:

You look like the real you. Most of the time you walking around all bedraggled and shit. You look good. Like you used to look back in thuh day when you had Cookie in love with you and all the women in the world was eating out of yr hand (34).

In this sense, despite Lincoln’s claim to the contrary, clothes do make the man. Of his Abraham Lincoln costume, Lincoln says, “I was Lincoln on my own before any of that” (34). But the Abraham Lincoln costume hides the real Lincoln. The whiteface represents a forced assimilation in which Lincoln must cover his blackness in order to function legally. He occasionally wears the costume out in public, playing Lincoln for a kid on the bus or donning the coat because it’s warm, even falling asleep in it one night.

In the last scene, Lincoln has lost his job and reclaimed himself. He talks about the women who “run they hands up [his] clothes and feel the magic and imagine thuh man” (88). When Booth urges Lincoln to put on the Abraham Lincoln costume for a photo, he is trying to push Lincoln back into the nondominant position. This time, instead of full whiteface, he puts two white streaks on his face like war paint. The Lincoln costume make him seem like an underdog, but this only makes his hustle more convincing. The costume becomes a disguise, and the war paint suggests that he is ready to give his brother back some of the belittling Booth has inflicted upon him throughout the play. When Lincoln dies in the Abraham Lincoln costume, he completes the image of the assassination.