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From what I have observed of the play so far, I believe William Saroyan has included the themes of Hope, Love, Loneliness, and Innocence in “Hello Out There”. In the play stars The Young Man, Emily (also known as The Voice, The Girl, and Katey), The Man (Husband), The Woman (Prostitute/Wife), and The Second and Third Man. This play was written by William Saroyan and is actually quite short being only 20 pages long, but it sure packs a punch.

The play starts is cruel, dark, yet had a very important meaning. It is also symbolic and cyclical. The themes of Hope, Love, Loneliness, and Innocence all share common bonds with each other. They all have to do with life and all the characters have a part with each theme. Saroyan has made this play very down to Earth and the themes can all be shared and felt with the audience and readers as well.

    The play closes with Emily taking the Young Man’s position in the cell and saying “hello out there”, just as he had done in the beginning of the play, thus coming back to where the Young Man started which was alone, innocent, but knowledgeable, and with no hope. These are some of the themes that will be explained soon. The play is also very symbolic and dark from what Saroyan states, also because he wrote it drunk one night in a hotel room.

The theme of Hope is very simple actually. The Young Man has no hope for the future ahead and believes in bad luck and other superstitions until he meets The Girl. Emily on the hand is the exact opposite. She has hopes and dreams of getting out of that town and moving on to newer and better things. She feels this hope getting even stronger when she meets the Young Man.

The second theme I stumbled upon was of Love. The love I found in this play is not the sort of regular love you find in others, but the kind that pulls you out and helps you out in time of desperate need. Without this spontaneous and sudden miraculous love between The Girl and The Young Man, they would have lost a very valuable experience in life and both would have not felt the importance and yet cruel behavior of it which leads to my next theme, Loneliness.

Loneliness comes forth in this play after The Young Man gets brutally murdered and taken by The Husband, The Wife, and his goons. The Girl finally begins to feel the pain and emotions The Young Man was dealing with all this time when he was howling into the world “Hello out there!” She also now begins to feel that same pain when all her hopes and dreams die off with The Young Man and now she ends up in his place with the circle ending by coming back to where it started in the first place.

The final most important theme I believe was Innocence. All the characters in this play had no knowledge of the world around them and just lived their own little lives every day never wanting change. The Woman changed all of this with her false accusations to The Young Man. This caused a chain reaction which opened up The Young Man’s, The Girl’s, and even The Husband’s eyes to new possibilities. The Husband was afraid to believe in the new knowledge he had gained about his wife from the conversation he had with The Young Man, but The Girl found this gain of knowledge and loss and innocence an opportunity of freedom to leave that place she had called home for such a long time.

The play has a universal meaning because both The Young Man and Emily are outcasts, and in a time of need they are drawn together. But before their relationship is seen to take course, it is abruptly and sadly ended. The question of whether Emily can get away from her small town life is left unanswered. The play is also very cyclical since it ends where it started only with a new character this time instead of The Young Man it being Emily.

The play to me was very appealing. I felt a sense of what each and every character was going through. I believe that we all have our bad luck and lonely times, but then with the help of others we triumph over them and gain knowledge and experience of our adventures. We later on look back and learn from these experiences to protect us and our loved ones, but we don’t always get a chance to get a free ride through most of these experiences. That is why it is best to learn from others mistakes as well. Saroyan’s play in short was very symbolic and in my opinion is an excellent piece of work.