Over the
past several months, I have worked on the crew of the production of JB in our school. Being one of the
leaders in stage crew, I was given a script to follow cues and to learn about
the play. JB is a tragedy, based off
of the Book of Job in the Old Testament. In the play, it was modernized, based
in the 1950s, when it was written. It follows a man named JB and his family.
JB, a very faithful and good man, is challenged by Satan, or Nickles in the
play. Mr. Zuss, the equivalent of God, allows Nickles to take away JB’s
blessings. Slowly, JB’s children die and he loses his job, his money, and his
health. This fear and depression and, ultimately the survival of JB’s faith,
can be seen through the cover of the script itself.
The cover consists of mainly
brown tones. However, there is a large white patch in the center showcasing the
title and the author. This contrast of light and dark is highly symbolic of the
two main conflicting forces in the play itself. God, often represented in
lighter colors (and wearing white in the play), fought with Satan, who is
traditionally represented with darkness (and wore black in the play). The
overpowering brown also has a symbolic element. Although God won in the end,
Satan became controlling of the situation, even taking over a person’s life,
much like how the brown is taking over the entire front cover.
In addition, the brown could
represent impurity, whereas the white is pure and clean. This is not only
literally, due to a bomb in the play, but figuratively. Satan’s, or Nickles’s, motivations
were to reveal the impurities of JB’s faithfulness to God. Though this never occurred,
it does not mute the dirtiness of Nickles’s actions, or even of JB wife’s
reaction to the situation. Ultimately, she agreed with her husband and stayed
faithful, but during the play she comes to curse God as she is dealing with her
children’s deaths.
Simply by using contrasting
colors on the cover of the script of JB,
Archibald MacLeish explored the depth behind his play.
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