Literary Analysis: Getting Away With Murder
             Getting Away With Murder is a mystery/comedy play written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. These authors were extremely creative in their writing. They frequently used figurative language and foreshadowing, some funny and some suspenseful. They created tension, conflicts, and doubts between the characters throughout the play. The main plot, subplots, and all of the characters have one thing in common: murder!
             In the main plot, seven psychiatric patients met for a group therapy session headed by Dr. Conrad Bering. These characters were all similar in that they had all been the cause of another person's death. The members met for their group session Saturday evening and discovered that Dr. Bering had been murdered. The murderer had to be one of the seven characters because no one else could get onto that particular floor of the building. They were the only ones with the key. Already, the mood had been set for tension, conflict and doubt; everyone accused each other of being the murderer.
             There were several subplots, which all tied into the main plot. Again, each subject involved murder. Dr. Bering had decided to write a book about the seven deadly sins of greed, gluttony, pride, sloth, lust, envy, and anger. He chose his "specimens" because each one represented one of the sins. The common link of these people was that each one of them was responsible for the death of another person because of their particular sin. The authors creatively displayed their sin in each of their names (Act 2 pages 97 & 98). The obvious ones are underlined below:
             Gregory Reed - greed - caused the deaths of six workers
             Dan Gerard - anger - responsible for the deaths of a team of police
             Pamela Prideaux - pride - killed her husband to conceal from the
             public the shame of his philandering
             Dorothea Lustig - lust - aborted three babies
             Nam-Jun Vuon...