Glengarry Glen Ross Men and Masculinity Quotes

If a man is good at his job, he's a good man. This is a theme we keep coming back to in the play. A man's deeds and actions are irrelevant, and the only thing that makes him a man is his ability to make things happen in business.

Okay, so Roma is good at his job and he's a good man, but he's not as much of a man as Levene because Levene has been doing it longer. Manhood gets tied into age here, and it makes for an interesting conflict. You have a guy on the tail end of his career watching a younger man rise up the ranks. Levene isn't willing to let go of the man he was though, and he wears his past like a badge of honor.

Ouch—low blow. The world of Glengarry Glen Ross is a world where college boy is a big time insult. Levene never respects Williamson as a man because he didn't earn his manhood out on the streets, and instead just picked up some tricks from books and school. That's not what a man does—a man works.

You can have a bad month and still be a good man because you've proved yourself before—Aaronow has hit a wall, but he's a true salesman. He still goes out and tries to make it happen day after day, and even good men hit a streak of bad luck. However, if your bad luck goes on for too long, it's safe to say that your status as a man will diminish in these guys's eyes after a while.

See? Levene is a good man who hit a bad streak of luck, but breaking that bad luck isn't anything. A man sticks with it and pulls himself out of the rut. That's what men do. Hearing this line, you might think that Levene saw this coming all along, but if you remember Act 1, you'll recall that Levene comes off as a pretty desperate dude then. He plays this sale off like it's no surprise, but just a day earlier he seemed like a guy who thought he might never make a sale again.

You know what, Moss? Roma does get to the rule this place. He's top man on the board, so he's the best man around. Well, that's kind of how it seems in Mamet land, at least.

That's it. Point blank. A man is his job. Levene thinks Williamson fails at his job, so therefore Williamson fails as a man.

Only a man can run an office, and Williamson isn't a man. The hits just keep on coming for that guy. Levene (and the other salesmen) don't look at Williamson as a proper man. His education is all from school, he's never gone out and hit the pavement—in other words, he has no street smarts, and as far as they're concerned, he's never done real work. This makes him, in their eyes, less than they are. Even though he dictates who gets which leads, they don't acknowledge or accept any authority that he might have.

When all else fails, call out a man for not treating you like his equal. The cops really put a dent into Aaronow and Moss, and as we see here, the experience emasculates them. When they come out from the back office, they don't feel like the men they believe themselves to be.

Poor little Williamson—no one thinks he's a man, and he's not worthy of working with actual men because he can't do his job like he should. The beauty of this Roma quip is that it sums up how these guys view manhood, but it also shows how deluded they can be. This sparks the argument that leads to Levene incriminating himself and Williamson beating Levene once and for all. The college boy—the company man—is at least man enough to end Levene's career, though, so maybe they should have cut him slack. Things might have turned out differently.