3 Connections to Finnegans Wake

The most obvious connection that The Skin of Our Teeth has to Finnegans Wake is the ending, or the lack of an ending, to the play. “This is where you came in. We have to go on for ages and ages yet.”

Second, I noticed the irrelevancy of time. Going from an ice age, to a bingo parlor, to a great flood, the characters play out the same roles and scenarios that they would in any other historical or modern setting, which is the point of the oddity of the setting in the first place. Seeing this contemporary-type family in a situation that makes absolutely no sense is certainly a red flag that there is something you should be understanding. And I think in this instance, it is the notion that what is happening, has happened before, and will happen again; That we are all just actors in a play.

In Finnegans, this timelessness is mirrored in the cyclical nature of the narrative. There are days and there are nights, dreams and awakenings, dark and light, that all revolve until the day is the night, and the dream is the reality, and it is all repeating again, and again. The dreaming and awakening that is Finnegans Wake, for me, immediately connected to the actors in the play going in and out of character, like how Sabina stops the play to talk to the audience, or explain a scene. Or how the director breaks for a scene rehearsal. It’s as if they are awakening the audience from the dream of the play.