Blog Post #2

Throughout history, the debate on morals and 'right vs. wrong' has raged on. From the biblical standpoint, in the story of the Garden of Eden, was Eve the evil? Was it her fault that they got kicked out of the Garden? The topic of morality arises again and again throughout Neil Labute's,“The Shape of Things”, along with not so subtle hints as to its correlation with a biblical story concerning right vs wrong, as the main characters names are Adam and Evelyn.

The easy answer for who was the villain in the play is Evelyn, as she continuously manipulated everyone around her. To begin with, she was introduced as a criminal, trying to vandalize a piece of artwork in the museum, and she proceeded to not respect Adam's wishes and the museum rules and spray painted the statue anyway, after Adam asked her not to. Later, she manipulates and coerces Adam into changing everything about himself. The changes were not all bad, of course, he lost weight and gained confidence. But overall he lost his sense of self as she changed him completely. But did she stop with just manipulating Adam? No, she continued to tear apart Adam's relationships with his closest two friends, Phillip and Jenny. She even managed to blow up Phillip and Jenny's engagement. Through her actions she proved that someone will completely change, and this may have been a success to her, but in reality she also proved the depth of her narcissism, as she destroyed all the happiness and relationships of these three people when she inserted herself into their lives, just to complete her senior project.

On the other side of the spectrum, however, there is Adam. Adam obviously began with a very weak sense of self and was easy prey to Evelyn, but regardless of how one might feel about themselves, there is a general duty to one' self to be their own person, and not to change entirely for another person. Sure, a small change here and there to compromise is okay, but to change entirely is unhealthy and untrue to one's self. Adam went from overweight, biting his nails, long hair, with a couple close friends to losing 25 pounds, healthy nails, 'better' hair and no friends. Yes, most of these changes are in fact good changes but he did it all for Evelyn and thus he was not true to himself. Adam also cheated on Evelyn with his best friends fiancee, Jenny. To violate both his relationship with his best friend and his girlfriend is a very immoral thing to do, and he continued to lie about it until he was proved guilty. Later, Adam cut ties with both Phillip, who was supposed to be his best friend, and Jenny simply because Evelyn told him to. He then asked Evelyn to marry him, which did seem to be motivated out of guilt and not one hundred percent sincere.

I think that between the two, Evelyn was the most immoral because she completely picked apart Adam's life, and for a while built him up, just to tear him down until he was worse off than when he began. This act of really just simple cruelty demonstrates pretty clearly her immorality and narcissism. But wait, there's more! Tearing Adam down wasn't enough for Evelyn, she proceeded to ruin his best friends' engagement, and tore apart the friendship too.