The alternate title for Fool for Love could be Desertion in the Desert, since both characters have bushels of abandonment issues. First, we learn early on that Eddie has been the abandoner quite a few times, leaving May in a lurch while he goes gallivanting off with some lady called the Countess. As a result of his frequent departures/adultery, May's super tweaky about being left—so when Eddie shows up in her motel room, she's so scrambled she toggles back and forth between just wanting him out of her hair and being terrified that he'll leave again.
Of course, the fact that their father abandoned them both is at the heart of these issues. The Old Man totally modeled that behavior of skipping out for Eddie, so it's no wonder Eddie imitated it. In a pretty twisted play about people who have a lot of issues, abandonment is at the top of the list of problems at work.
Questions About Abandonment
- Eddie implies that May's version of his indiscretions/adultery/abandonment is exaggerated. Do you think it is? Why or why not, and how do you know?
- What do you think is at the heart of the Old Man/Eddie's tendency to abandon their partners for other partners? Is this presented as a "boys will be boys" kind of situation—i.e., understandable? Is it evil? Is it crummy, but just kind of the way things are?
- Why do you think Eddie takes off at the end of the book, even though he's spent the entire play trying to get May to want him to stay? And more importantly, where does he go? With the Countess? Somewhere else entirely?
Chew on This
Both Eddie and May are in total denial—May can't come to terms with the fact that she and Eddie have an incestuous relationship, and Eddie lies about having abandoned her over and over again. May is not lying about his behavior; he's just unable to face up to it.
Eddie clearly runs back off to the Countess at the end of the play, unable to break out of the cycle of adultery and remorse that he and May (and the Countess) have gotten into. The power of that cycle is the point of the whole play.