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This is exactly what Mamet is picturing in his play: the lost opportunities for proper and functional human connections. As Greenbaum puts it, Glengarry Glen Ross faithfully captures the “sad ethos of American capitalism.” The capitalist discourse and its inherent demand for “cut-throat competition, duplicity, and stratification” enhance “the predatory nature of masculinity” (42). Mamet’s salesmen represent masculinity gone wrong. The dynamics of dominance and success, the exercise of power, and the hierarchies of control lead to a dysfunctional network of male connections and interactions. Here there is no longer a male-female binary that shapes the human connections; it is rather a new duality of male-lower male that structures these connections. Connell and Messerschmidt believe that “the idea of a hierarchy of masculinities grew directly out of homosexual men’s experience with violence and prejudice from straight men” (831). The constant struggle for success and dominance in Mamet’s play, however, moves beyond the actual sexual orientations and preferences of the salesmen and becomes a more practical kind of concept, attributing to the lesser successful men the very invectives originally used for the homosexual men, and thus belittling and humiliating them. This could be the ultimate blow to a man’s ego in such a society. And, this, definitely is a situation to avoid, no matter what the price is.
Glengarry Glen Ross could be, as Mamet himself puts it, “a gang comedy about men, work, and unbridled competition” (qtd. in Kane 256). But Mamet purposefully moves beyond this and captures the essence of a flawed and defective system which is an ineluctable byproduct of the contemporary capitalist discourse. He peoples his world with men who are unable to connect and interact efficiently and methodically since male bonding and male friendship as imperative constituents of a healthy life system are unattainable. Mamet’s play, through “creating a safe aesthetic distance” allows us “to explore the flashpoints of discomfort” (Holmberg 1). The salesmen in Mamet’s play are angry, bitter, lonely, abusive, and manipulative. Verbal violence is their means of survival and strength. As Holmberg claims, since it is a quite difficult task for men to acknowledge their need for male friendship, “they concoct pretexts to stay in touch: doing business, fixing cars, shooting hoops” (2). As the contemporary capitalist society does not allow for such constructive alliances to form, these kinds of rituals of male bonding and brotherhood cannot thrive. The unfeeling, pitiless world of business allows Mamet to explore the turbulent dynamics of male friendship and rivalry and the interplay of absolute selfishness and loyalty and the eventual consequences. With the dominant and over-arching capitalism as the main infrastructure of modern life, the traditional patriarchy is dismantled. Men are no longer the incontestable rulers of both the private and public spheres. Uprooted and displaced, they find themselves thrust into a world of harsh, unfair, and exigent competition where the rule is that the success of one equates to the failure of the others. The language of comradery and friendship cannot function anymore and the discourse of competition is the dominant discourse.
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