The Foreigner, by Larry Shue, is a comedy about a shy young man, Charlie, who is taken to a fishing lodge in Georgia by his friend, Froggy, in an attempt to take Charlie’s mind off of some relationship upheaval with his wife, who had recently fallen ill, back home. Unfortunately, Charlie is terrified of the prospect of having to talk to the other people at the lodge, so his friend tells the lodge owner that Charlie is a foreigner, and cannot speak English, in an attempt to diminish attempted conversation from the others at the lodge. Froggy then goes away on military duty for a few days, while Charlie is left at the lodge giving everyone around him the impression that he does not speak their language. Charlie begins to witness conversations take place as if he were invisible, and becomes privy to lots of private information and scheme setups.
A portion of the play’s story line revolves around Ellard, Catherine’s mildly disabled younger brother who cannot have the lodge’s inheritance money unless he proves he is “smart.” As Catherine’s secretly manipulative fiance, David, tells his friend, Owen (who is also one of the villains in the story) about Ellard, “Theoretically, he’s supposed to receive half of the family money. But, only if Catherine should decide he’s intelligent enough,” to which Owen sneers, “Well, that don’t seem too likely, does it?” (1.1, 23). Since Charlie takes it upon himself to give Ellard’s family the impression that he is intelligent in an attempt to destroy David and Owen’s evil scheme to inherit the money, the question still lingers if Ellard really is smart enough to inherit the money without Catherine’s assistance. In act II, when the family realizes they are in danger, Catherine asks Ellard to help them think of something. “I just gave you a hundred thousand dollars for bein’ smart. You’re the highest-paid mind we got here, now. Think of sump’m” (2.1, 61). However, it is Charlie who comes up with a plan to defeat the villains, and Ellard assists him.
It stands to reason that Ellard will still receive his half of the inheritance money, as Catherine had come to understand the dangers and twisted thinking which David and Owen had posed to both herself and everyone else at the lodge by the end of the show. However, I believe that playwright Larry Shue was trying to point out the importance of human qualities such as bravery, honesty, and humbleness – all of which Ellard consistently possessed – over the ability to solve a math problem.
Works Cited
Shue, Larry. The Foreigner. Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1998. https:// www.davis.k12.ut.us/cms/lib09/ut01001306/centricity/ domain/7474/ the%20foreigner.pdf
Heather And Casey 