Sweet Bird of Youth: Act Two, Scene Two Summary & Analysis

When Boss Finley snaps the box shut on Miss Lucy’s fingers, he tries to reassert his dominance. This is because he feels she has taken away some of his power by publicly suggesting that he is too old to proficiently make love. Once again, then, he demonstrates his crippling insecurity. By acting in anger, he reinforces the notion that such insecurities drive him toward “violent action.” His behavior also demonstrates how obsessive he is about controlling his public image. Boss Finley uses rage to escape feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness.

Williams uses the heckler to represent the feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness that Boss Finley can never fully shake. Although Boss projects an outward appearance of power and control, there’s always something threatening his authority (at least according to him). The heckler is then a manifestation of the insecurities that he tries so hard to escape or deny.

The fact that Miss Lucy—Boss Finley’s longtime mistress—wants to help the heckler sabotage his event suggests that the kind of hateful revenge Boss propagates only makes his life even harder. Having heard that she wrote something bad about him in the hotel bathroom, Boss snapped her fingers shut in a jewelry box and mocks her. In turn, she is now retaliating in her own way. As such, Williams suggests that escaping one’s own feelings of insecurity by expressing rage is an ineffective way of dealing with hardship, one that only invites more retaliation and anger.

During this conversation, Aunt Nonnie references the fact that Chance’s obsession with becoming a famous actor is nothing but a “wild dream.” Although she is one of the few people in St. Cloud who advocates for him, even she is unable to deny that he’s coasting on his fading good looks, which she knows won’t ultimately get him very far. Nonetheless, he decides to ignore her concern, instead using drugs and alcohol to deny the fact that a life of chasing fame has “changed” him for the worse.

Chance makes his tendency to delude himself overwhelmingly apparent by claiming that his acting troupe won “second place” in the national contest, when in reality they placed fourth. He wants to think of himself as someone who has always been close to greatness—in fact, he wants this so badly that he actively manipulates his own memory so that he can maintain this narrative about himself. After all, if he continues to believe that he’s always been close to achieving something fantastic, his chances of actually becoming famous will seem more realistic. Unfortunately, though, he isn’t quite as talented as he likes to believe, as evidenced by the fact that he forgot most of his lines at this national contest. Of course, this only endeared him to Nonnie and Heavenly, a testament to just how easy it used to be for him to charm people.

In this moment, the audience sees the extent to which Chance’s obsession with Heavenly is intertwined with his obsession with becoming famous. This is made evident by the fact that his memory of making love to her for the first time also encompasses his promise to himself that he’d never place “second” in a contest ever again. Of course, he once again deludes himself, since he didn’t even place second in the national contest, but this doesn’t matter to him because he’s too preoccupied with the idea of gaining success and Heavenly’s love at the same time. As such, it becomes clear that his motivations regarding his relationship with Heavenly perhaps have more to do with his stubborn desire to succeed than with actual love; his desire to win her over is an obsession, not an actual romantic impulse.

When Aunt Nonnie says that Heavenly’s youth has “faded,” she goes along with the prevailing opinion in St. Cloud that the young woman’s operation has ruined her beauty and youth. This doesn’t stop Chance, though, since he is obsessed both with the idea of succeeding and with the idea of winning over Heavenly. As such, nothing anyone says will dissuade him from carrying out his plan to become famous in the Princess’s rigged contest. However, it’s rather obvious that he should probably heed Nonnie’s advice to leave, considering the fact that no one in St. Cloud seems to advocate for him. Even his old friends refuse to treat him like they used to, a sure sign that no one will help him stand up to Boss Finley when it comes down to it.

Although the people of St. Cloud are weary of Chance, this doesn’t seem to have stopped them from talking about him in his absence. In fact, he has clearly become a hot topic of conversation, though one gets the sense that his fellow townspeople enjoy speculating about his demise. This is made clear when Miss Lucy admits that she no longer finds him as attractive as she used to, almost taking delight in the fact that his hair is thinning. This attitude is most likely derived from the fact that Chance has always been someone who easily cruised through life, coasting on his good looks and never having to work as hard as anyone else in order to get by. Now that his looks have started to fade, though, he’s left with very little—something that tickles people who may have always felt that he unfairly benefited from something as superficial as exterior beauty.

At this point, the play begins to engage ideas about racism in a more prominent way, as Williams makes it clear that St. Cloud is currently undergoing a period of bigoted hysteria. This is made evident by the fact that a group of white men have horrifically injured a black man who didn’t even commit a crime. These men wanted to send a message about integration, one that warned black men from engaging in sexual activity with white women. As such, Boss Finley’s obsession with “pure white blood” manifests itself in the community at large, and the audience begins to understand that his political agenda does little more than promote hate and violence.

Throughout Sweet Bird of Youth, Chance is not a particularly sympathetic protagonist. After all, he seemingly only ever thinks about himself. In this moment, though, he expresses a genuine hope that Heavenly won’t actually stand next to Boss Finley and endorse hateful, racist ideals. Chance clearly disagrees with Boss’s violent bigotry, thereby humanizing himself somewhat. Indeed, he understands how terrible this act of “random emasculation” is, perhaps because he himself has experienced the “sex-envy” that he believes drives such violence. However, it’s worth noting that, although he believes “sex-envy” drove the castration, this opinion overlooks a whole slew of racial considerations that most likely were also factors, and in associating himself with the victim Chance even gives himself a backhanded compliment—that other people hate him because they are jealous. Even in his attempt to empathize, then, Chance isn’t quite able to step outside of his own limited perspective.

Chance takes great pleasure in telling his old friends about his impending success. It’s worth noting that his make-believe movie—the one that will supposedly make him and Heavenly famous—is called Youth; this isn’t surprising, considering that what he wants most is to turn back time so that he can regain his perfect looks. Even though his hair is thinning and his face is “ravaged” now, he still believes he can trick his former friends into thinking that he’s young enough to star in a film about youth itself. Of course, they know exactly how old he is, but this doesn’t stop him from trying to loop them into his fantasy. What’s more, when his friends lose interest, Chance turns on them and mocks their accomplishments, once again acting as if his good looks should automatically entitle him to a better life than his peers. Even though it’s clear that someone like Scotty has ended up with a better life, Chance is unwilling to admits his shortcomings, instead doing anything he can to continue denying the fact that he is a failure.

Knowing what it feels like to fail, the Princess recognizes what Chance is unwilling to admit: that he hasn’t succeeded in impressing anyone but himself. Despite the fact that he has been driving around St. Cloud in an expensive Cadillac, nobody believes that he has actually become famous or wealthy. In fact, Scotty even manages to guess that the car doesn’t belong to Chance at all. Nonetheless, Chance continues on with a “stiff-necked pride,” one that keeps him from accepting that none of his plans to become famous will work and that he is merely an unsuccessful man who can no longer benefit from youthful beauty.

The Princess is quite similar to Chance. The primary difference between the two of them is that she has actually enjoyed fame and success, but now she finds herself wallowing in the same kind of self-pity as Chance, since her career has ended and left her with nothing but faded beauty. Unlike Chance, though, she’s willing to admit this. Although she wants to escape the embarrassment she suffered at her comeback premiere, she no longer wants to fully deny reality. In turn, she suddenly finds herself capable of thinking about someone other than herself. For her entire life, she has been focused on herself—her career, her youth, her beauty. Now, though, she discovers that she’s capable of empathy. Of course, it’s worth noting that this form of empathy is in its own way a bit self-centered, since the main reason she begins to care so much for Chance is because he reminds her of herself. Nonetheless, this is perhaps the first time she has ever paused to truly think about another person.

This is a significant moment in Sweet Bird of Youth, as it is the only encounter Chance and Heavenly have with one another. Despite the fact that Chance talks about Heavenly throughout the entire play, Williams only provides the audience with this fleeting moment, in which the two characters don’t even speak or touch. Rather than embracing, they simply stare at each other, suggesting that their love is perhaps not as enduring or strong as Chance often makes it sound. Of course, it’s impossible to say with total confidence what the true nature of their relationship is, since Williams doesn’t provide any insight into their romantic dynamic other than the things that Chance says. Because of this, the emphasis of the play centers on Chance’s obsession rather than on the actual specifics of their love story.

Again, Chance takes issue with Boss Finley’s message of hate, which the old man advances by using his political platform to endorse racist ideas about purity and corruption. However, when he contrasts himself to Boss Finley, Chance makes the grandiose claim that he was “born here to make love.” Although this is true in the sense that Chance has worked as a gigolo the notion that he brings genuine emotional love to the world is debatable, considering how self-centered and obsessed with becoming famous he is.

Williams gives the audience another look into Chance and Heavenly’s relationship. This insight only confirms what has already been established: Chance has lived the fast life of a man who swings through town once and a while to see his supposed lover. Although the fact that he kept returning to Heavenly might suggest some kind of genuine love, his multiple absences don’t quite align with the kind of romantic relationship normally considered genuine or enduring. Williams suggests that Chance is most interested in the idea of his relationship with Heavenly, meaning that he has never been willing to actually put in the time to cultivate a true romantic connection.

For the first time in the play, the nature of Heavenly’s operation becomes clearer. After sleeping with Chance—who was also at that time sleeping with another woman—she contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Because of this, she had to get an operation that left her sterile. What’s most upsetting about this story to Tom Junior (and in general) is that Chance knew he had an STD, but did nothing to inform Heavenly, instead letting her contract the disease herself. Once again, Chance proves his inability to consider others, focusing solely on his own desires. Indeed, what he’s most interested in is finding “pleasure in love,” and this has nothing to do with building an actual romantic and caring relationship with Heavenly. Living with this kind of mentality, Chance doesn’t think twice about wronging Heavenly without even staying to help her through the hardship he has caused.

The Princess’s acknowledgement of The Lament is worth considering, since she associates the place itself—the Royal Palms Hotel—with the song’s lonely strains of “exile.” In this moment, she seems to realize that she can’t simply run away from her troubles. Although she has been trying to escape the embarrassment of her comeback by moving constantly, she realizes that she’ll never be able to fully leave behind her worries. After all, her demons are chiefly emotional, meaning that they will follow her wherever she goes, even if she visits “the isle of Cyprus” or “Monte Carlo” or any other paradise.

In this scene, the heckler correctly assesses the fact that Boss Finley has conflated the idea of Heavenly’s purity with a racist notion regarding integration. Indeed, Boss Finley wants to use Heavenly—dressed in the “stainless white of a virgin”—to show his followers what he believes they stand to lose if they allow blacks and whites to fully integrate. Though the heckler is an antagonistic figure for publicly shaming Heavenly for her sexuality, he also seems to be one of the few characters to see through Finley’s posturing to the hateful bigotry beneath.

If the “silence of God” is a “long and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of,” it’s unlikely that God would break that silence to talk to Boss Finley, of all people. After all, Boss Finley is a man primarily concerned with advancing a racist political agenda, one that he hopes to use to win his campaign. Nonetheless, he claims that God ordered him to protect white “blood” from “pollution,” once again drawing upon his obsession with purity and corruption.  

In this final moment of Act Two, Sweet Bird of Nothing descends into chaos. Not only does the heckler receive a serious beating, but the entire ballroom breaks into a fight and Heavenly passes out, unable to handle it all. By showcasing this hectic atmosphere, Williams suggests that the kind of hate propagated by people like Boss Finley only leads to mayhem and discord. Although Boss is a politician—and thus should act for the greater good of his community—he only sows turmoil within St. Cloud. Words like “pure” make his ideas sound almost wholesome, but what he actually forces onto the townspeople is anger, hate, and violence.