Glengarry Glen Ross Study Guide

Glengarry Glen Ross

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet

Glengarry Glen Ross is a two act play that examines the impact of capitalism and greed on people's ethics. The play is critical of common business practices. A team of three salesmen and one office manager regularly try to sell unwanted land at inflated prices. One month, their bosses introduce a contest. Whoever has the highest sales wins a car, while the others are fired. The team stoops to low levels to make sales, including stealing the list of leads from the office and selling it to a competitor.

Glengarry Glen Ross Characters

Table of Contents
  • Richard "Ricky" Roma: The most successful salesman in the office. Although Roma seems to think of himself as a latter-day cowboy and regards his ability to make a sale as a sign of his virility, he admits only to himself that it is all luck. He is ruthless, dishonest and immoral, but succeeds because he has a talent for figuring out a client's weaknesses and crafting a pitch that will exploit those weaknesses. He is a smooth talker and often speaks in grand, poetic soliloquies.
  • Shelly "The Machine" Levene: An older, once-successful salesman, who has fallen on hard times and has not closed a big deal in a long time. In Mamet's original 1983 stage version, Levene mentions his daughter as a final ploy to gain Williamson's sympathy to get better leads, although this fails. However, in the 1992 film version, Levene's discussion of his daughter also includes comments and a phone call to her doctor about her poor health, making Levene more sympathetic.
  • James Lingk: A timid, middle-aged man who becomes Roma's latest client. Lingk is easily manipulated and finds Roma highly charismatic. Upon consulting his wife, he becomes desperate to regain the money that Roma has closed on him.
  • John Williamson: The office manager. The salesmen need him because he's the one who hands out the sales leads but Williamson doesn't like how they treat him, especially Levene, who berates him for the unpromising leads Levene always seems to get.
  • George Aaronow: An aging salesman with low self-esteem who lacks confidence and hope, but not without conscience. His frustration begins to boil up when the office is robbed, and he worries about being convicted based upon Detective Baylen's interrogation. Ironically, he and Roma end up the remaining two salesmen for the firm after Shelley is found out, and gives up Moss as his co-conspirator.
  • Dave Moss: A big-mouthed salesman with big dreams and schemes. Moss resents Williamson and agency owners Mitch and Murray for putting such pressure on him and plans to strike back at them by stealing all their best sales leads and selling them to a competitor. Moss sees Aaronow as a potential accomplice, but eventually convinces Levene to work with him in selling the leads to Jerry Graff, a local competitor. During his final rant against Roma, his indignation reveals that his jealousy extends towards even his fellow salesmen, and he decides to go to Wisconsin to avoid further questioning.
  • Baylen: A police detective. He appears in the final act to investigate the office break-in and interrogate each cast member behind closed doors.
  • Mitch and Murray: The unsavoury unseen characters are the owners of the real estate agency. They have a sales "contest", which puts enormous pressure on the salesmen to produce or to lose their jobs, in which only the top two will come out with prizes.

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