Pulitzer Prize winning author and playwrite, Wendy Wasserstein was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 18th, 1950. Raised on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Wasserstein began her interest and passion for writing plays during her early college years. Most of Wasserstein's works discuss the "struggle between falling for convention and finding personal satisfaction"(Wilson). Wasserstein's The Man in the Case, published in 1986, is a play that provides us, the reader with a unique view in to the struggling life of the working class. This struggle is demonstrated by their desire to improve their social class. Karl Marx defined the term social class as "the focus on how one class controls and directs the process of production while other classes are the direct producers and the providers of services to the dominant class" (Encyclopedia Britanica, Version 2003). Byelinkov, our main character, is a hard working school teacher, which sets him squarely in the ranks of the middle class. While being a part of the working class is a great accomplishment in itself, Byelinkov is enraptured with the idea that he deserves the life of the upper class, since of course, he is working for it. Yet the social strafication always seems to be a barriar, holding him back from the greatness he feels is within him. "Social stratification refers to the division of a society into layers (or strata) whose occupants have unequal access to social opportunities and rewards. People in the top strata enjoy privileges that are not available to other members of society; people in the bottom strata endure penalties that other members of society escape. In a stratified society, inequality is part of the social structure and passes from one generation to the next" (The Arithmetic of Inequality, http://tm.wc.ask.com/r't=c&s=a&id=30780&sv=za5cb0dbf&uid=0B507575D5166F0F3&sid=13AD09E7A9EF22E04&p=%2flinks&o=0&u=http://www.delmar.edu/socsci/rlong/intro/class.htm). T...