The setting of a play is always an important part. It always reflects certain information that the author wants to express indirectly. Dutchman, a play written by Amiri Baraka, starts in a subway and ends in a subway. The story of the two main characters, a black young man named Clay and a white lady named Lula, happens inside a subway. This background implies a continuing discomfort in America about racism and conflict between whites and the uprising social status of blacks.
             In the past, black people were not respected as a normal human being because they were slaves. Even though they were released from slavery system, society still treated them as the lowest class among all citizens. However, some black people wanted to climb up. They wanted to live like white people. They started to dress like white people, pretending they were white. In the beginning of the play, Clay is wearing a three-button suit and reading a magazine, "... those narrow-shoulder clothes come from a tradition you ought to feel oppressed by. A three-button suit," (1, 18). He is an example of black people acting white. Lula, on the other hand, acts like the voice of whites. In scene two, she says, "... jackets buttoning up to your chin, so full of white man's words. Christ. God. Get up and scream at these people. Like scream meaningless shit in these hopeless faces" (2, 31). This quote shows that white people do not like black people, especially those pretending whites. These two characters represent one of the problems of racism, conflict between whites and the uprising social status of blacks.
             A subway is a transportation that is continuously moving along its cyclic routine. Baraka sets the subway as the background of the story to imply the conflict keeps repeating throughout the American history. He uses the coach of the subway to represent modern society. It is also a symbol of continuous movements in a cyclic pattern. This cycl...