Reading Response to Hatcher's "Three Viewings"

Perhaps the best way to first approach Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings is by finding a thread that ties the three separate (but intertwined) stories together. Obviously the three extended monologues in the play each take place at the same funeral home, but there exists a singular theme between them that gives the play a cohesive whole.

First, though, I will focus on some of the surface similarities or those that are most obvious. Emil, the director of the funeral parlor, acts as the undertaker for Nettie James (Mac’s grandmother) and Ed Carpolotti (Virginia’s husband) and is thus indirectly connected to the two women who deliver the subsequent monologues after his own. Emil is perhaps the most obvious connecting thread between the monologues simply because he is so intimately involved with the preparations of the bodies of the deceased loved ones.

 However, on a much deeper level, a common theme throughout the three monologues is that of recognizing love only after it has been lost. For Emil, what first started as an obsessive infatuation with a frequent funeral-goer named Tessie turned into a legitimate longing for her once she passed away. Once Emil was tasked with the incredibly intimate task of preparing the body for cremation, he found that her pacemaker was still ticking. So, Emil holds onto the device as a way of holding on to her memory. For Mac, attending her grandmother’s funeral leads her to the realization of how much she misses her husband and children after accidentally killing them while she attempted to commit suicide by car exhaust inhalation. For Virginia, the loss of her husband enables her to reflect on their long marriage and realize just how much he loved her all these years. As unfortunate as it is, for each of the characters, death acts as an agent to help the characters recognize and cherish the love in their own lives.