As is often the case, the piece of art which affected me most strongly was the one which made me the most angry. I couldn’t stop my desire to scream at, or even hit, Tobin, the protagonist of “The Metal Children.” Between his complete apathy towards the reaction his book caused and his lack of concern for Veera’s future when he slept with her, I had no time to feel anything but anger and contempt. When I took a step back and viewed the play in a non emotional manner, I realized that my strong reaction was a sign that the author was extremely skilled. There is no better way to get a person interested in story than with emotions.
In light of my new respect for the author, I decided to look at the deeper implications of the novel. Rapp was obviously talking about censorship. The novel made me consider two questions in particular: When, if ever, is it justified? How much responsibility does an author have to ensure that his work is not misinterpreted? These are difficult questions. In the case of “The Metal Children” the author by no means intended to encourage teens to get pregnant, in fact he claims to have no message at all. I don’t see how it could then be his fault that the novel was interpreted in that way. However, I still wasn’t sure what I felt was the school district’s responsibility in “protecting” the students. It seemed obvious to the school board that the novel was dangerous to students, and clearly there was a correlation between girls reading the novel and getting pregnant. Was this the author’s fault, or does it have more to do with preexisting factors, such as Veera’s broken home?
I often find that I get a clearer and more well rounded perspective on an issue when I discuss it with others. In order to make such a discussion happen, I shared the play with my father and gave a brief synopsis of the work to my brother and a friend. This immediately brought up the topic of censorship, which I believe was Rapp’s intention. After discussing the various questions I mentioned earlier, we came to the conclusion that students would have to already be in unstable mental states with weak role models in order to be influenced to act as irresponsibly as the girls in “The Metal Children” did. It is not the author’s job to peruse his work to ensure that it is impossible to misunderstand, it is the job of parents, teachers, and other authority figures to make sure that a misunderstanding won’t lead to life changing mistakes. Therefore, the problem was not with the novel, as the school thought, but with other, more important, factors influencing the young girls.
In the process of coming to these conclusions, we discussed a broad range of topics relating to censorship in general. Censorship of art, press, and free speech as well as government disclosure came up in the conversation. Though most of those topics were not touched upon in “The Metal Children” it was a still a catalyst for discussing them. This is why I feel that Rapp worked so well as a social critic with his play. As a social critic, an artist cannot hope to make a clear point. He can, however, hope to create conversation on important, hard to discuss topics. Rapp clearly succeeded greatly in this role.
