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Joseph A. Kramm (September 30, 1907 – May 8, 1991) was an American playwright, actor, and director. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1951 for his play The Shrike, later adapted into a motion picture of the same title in 1955.
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
Joseph Kramm was born September 30, 1907, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Shrike is Kramm’s ninth play and the first to be published or produced. Kramm spent most of his time working on amateur theatricals while he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, which caused his grades to suffer. After enduring psychological intelligence tests ...
Act 1
The first act of The Shrikeopens at a city psychiatric hospital. Ann Downs arrives with her husband, Jim, who has just swallowed a number of pills in a suicide attempt. Eventually, Jim regains consciousness and admits what he has done. Dr. Kramer, the attending physician, tells Miss Hansen, one of the nurses, to order extra care for Jim during the next forty-eight hours. When Miss Hansen shows her concern that Ann won’t be able to pay for this, Ann insists that Jim get “anything that’s needed...
Act 2
Jim arrives in Ward One the next day and meets the other patients. During an interview with Jim, Dr. Bellman tells him that he has acquired a reputation for being “belligerent and nasty,” which shocks Jim. They discuss Jim’s relationship with Ann, and then Jim takes a standard psychological test, which he criticizes. When he asks when he can go home, the doctor tells him not for a while. After two men on the ward fight, one is sent to Ward Seven, where the violent patients are kept. Miss Wing...
Act 3
Two days later, Harry Downs, Jim’s brother, arrives with Ann to visit the embarrassed patient. Ann admits that she has had Jim’s phone disconnected and has the calls forwarded to her. She tells Jim that she tried to contact his psychiatrist friend but that he did not want to get involved. Harry explains to Jim that he has said and done things since he has been there to make the doctors think he should remain in the hospital. In a private conversation, Harry informs Jim that the only way he ca...
John Ankoritis
A patient at the hospital, John Ankoritis is proud of his Greek heritage and his intellect. He is friendly to Jim when Jim first comes to the hospital.
Dr. Barrow
Dr. Barrow, one of the psychiatrists at the hospital, discusses Jim’s case at length with Ann. He allows her opinions to influence his decisions on Jim’s treatment and length of stay.
Dr. Bellman
Another psychiatrist at the hospital, Dr. Bellman appears interchangeable with the other doctors in that he also tries to get Jim to conform to their notion of sanity. He tells Jim that he has acquired the reputation for being “belligerent and nasty.” He, like the others, allows Ann to manipulate Jim. In his final interview with Jim, he tries to catch Jim in a lie, but when Jim calmly and passively answers questions in a way that he knows will show his submission, he decides that Jim is ready...
Repression and Resistance
Throughout the play, Jim resists the hospital’s attempts to dictate his morality. The doctors continually test Jim in an effort to establish his mental instability, yet he often proves himself to be keenly perceptive of their practices. On one occasion, when his psychiatrist asks him general questions about history and current events, Jim provides all the correct answers and argues that the questions prove nothing except “that institutional practice and honesty are not compatible.” He adds, “...
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
1. Kramm does not closely examine Ann’s motivation for her treatment of Jim. Write a scene for the play in which Ann explains to Jim’s brother, Harry, the reasons for her behavior. 2. Read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and compare its themes to that of The Shrike. 3. Research passive-aggressive behavior. How do psychiatrists treat this type of personality? 4. Investigate state mental hospitals in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Does the play offer a realistic depiction o...
Gender Roles
In the play, the audience does not get a clear picture of Ann’s motivation for her cold manipulation of Jim’s predicament. Kramm does suggest a possible cause, though. During one of her interviews with Dr. Barrow, Ann admits that after she married Jim, she gave up her career in the theater. When Dr. Barrow asks her whether she regrets her decision, she pauses, and then responds with “a bitter smile, ’We all have our vanity, Doctor.’” In this scene, Ann suggests that her desperate desire to ho...
Point of View
The play is written in a documentary style, focusing on the daily experiences of the main character as he tries to navigate the world of a city psychiatric hospital. Jim Down’s point of view dominates the play, as he struggles to cope with the restrictive situation in which he finds himself. The audience never gains a clear look at the motivations behind the behavior of the doctors and of Ann. Kramm places the focus instead on tracing one man’s complete loss of freedom and the effect that los...
Symbolism
Kramm employs symbolism in the play to illustrate and reinforce his themes. In the opening act, he uses foreshadowing to imply Jim’s fate as one of the attendants searches for a bed for Jim. When Grosberg complains, “I don’t know where we’ll find one unless somebody dies,” he suggests that death is the only escape from the hospital. In another scene, Jim is tied to the bed after he is brought into the hospital, ostensibly to ensure that he will not try to further harm himself. Eventually, Jim...
A Woman’s Place
Women’s struggle for equal rights in the Western world gained slow momentum during the middle decades of the twentieth century. During World War II, women were encouraged to enter the workplace where they enjoyed a measure of independence and responsibility. After the war, they were expected (and required) to give up their jobs to the returning male troops. Hundreds of thousands of women were laid off and expected to resume their place in the home. Training began at an early age to ensure tha...
Social Realism
In the late nineteenth century, playwrights turned away from what they considered the artificiality of melodrama to a focus on the commonplace in the context of everyday contemporary life. Their work, along with much of the experimental fiction written during that period, adopts the tenets of realism, a new literary movement that took a serious look at believable characters and their sometimes problematic interactions with society. To accomplish this goal, realistic drama focuses on the commo...
COMPARE & CONTRAST
1. 1950s: The Cold War induces anxiety among Americans, who fear both annihilation by Russians and the spread of communism at home. The fear that communism will spread to the United States leads to suspicion and paranoia, heightened by the indictment of ex-government official Alger Hiss (1950) and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1951) for passing defense secrets to the Russians.Today: The Cold War ended after communism was overthrown in the former Soviet Union, yet suspicion and paranoia are stil...
When The Shrike opened on Broadway on January 15, 1952, it received praise from the public and critics alike. Most reviews focused on the compelling nature of the drama as well as the outstanding staging and performances, most notably, that of José Ferrer as Jim. Newsweek praised its “racking tension and suspense” while Time noted its “scary blend ...
Wendy Perkins
Perkins is an instructor of twentieth-century literature and film. In this essay, Perkins examines the theme of repression and conformity in Kramm’s play. Published in 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith’s book The Affluent Society chronicles the political, cultural, and social transformations that occurred in America in the 1950s, characterizing the period as a time of unprecedented affluence. Galbraith notes that in this “age of plenty” Americans enjoyed a higher standard of livingas the American...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. The Bell Jar(1963), written by Sylvia Plath, focuses on a young woman’s mental breakdown in New York City in the early 1950s. The novel is based on Plath’s own experiences with depression and suicide attempts. 2. In Girl, Interrupted(1993), Susanna Kaysen chronicles the author’s harrowing experiences in a mental hospital in 1967. Kaysen challenges notions of sanity and insanity, concluding that the definitions of each are culturally determined. 3. In the short story “The Short Happy Life o...
Josh Ozersky
Ozersky is a critic, essayist, and cultural historian. In this essay, Ozersky describes some of the ways in which Kramm’s play expresses the politics and fears of the early 1950s, when it was written. Joseph Kramm’s The Shrike is a powerful play, even nearly fifty years after it was written. It tells a familiar story: an unhappy man is institutionalized when he attempts suicide, and finds himself a prisoner of his doctors’ notion of who is “sane.” While this remains a compelling scenario even...
Atkinson, Brooks, Review of The Shrike, in New York Times,Vol. 20, January 16, 1952, p. 2. Brown, John Mason, “The Amazing Mr. Ferrer,” in Saturday Review,Vol. 35, February 9, 1952, pp. 22-23. Hewes, Henry, “Drama Notes,” in Saturday Review,Vol. 35, May 17, 1952, p. 28. McLaughlin, Richard, Review of The Shrike, in Theatre Arts,Vol. 36, July 1952, ...
Review of The Shrike, in America,Vol. 90, December 12, 1953, p. 306. Review of The Shrike, in Commonweal,Vol. 55, February 1, 1952, p. 422. Review of The Shrike, in New Republic,Vol. 126, February 4, 1952, p. 23.
The Shrike is a play written by American dramatist Joseph Kramm. The play won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The 1952Pulitzer Prize Winnerin Drama. For the original American play, performed in New York, which shall best represent in marked fashion the educational value and power of the stage, preferably dealing with American life, Five hundred dollars ($500).
Interview with Joseph Kramm, author of "The Shrike" the psychiatric play with a hospital background that is one of the season's few successes. Six years ago Kramm toured a city hospital for...
The Shrike is a play written by Joseph Kramm, originally published in 1952. The play tells the story of Jim Downs, a successful businessman who is admitted to a mental institution by his wife,...
KRAMM, JOSEPH (1907–1991), U.S. playwright. Beginning his career as an actor on Broadway and in London, Kramm turned to writing and directing. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Shrike (1952), a drama about an unhappy marriage, and also wrote Giants, Son of Giants (1962).
