75 pages • 2 hours read
Arthur Laurents, Stephen SondheimWest Side Story
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Gang Colors
The Sharks and the Jets, only two of the gangs that are rampant in the streets of New York City, create a visible division. Not only is there a racial distinction, but the gangs wear separate colors. At the dance, “the line between the two gangs is sharply defined by the colors they wear” (21). When Chino finds Bernardo’s gun, it is wrapped in Bernardo’s shirt, which is obvious because the shirt is in Shark colors. In the dream ballet, once Maria and Tony have broken through the violence, the gang members wear clothes that “are soft, pastel versions of what they have worn before” (88). As a symbol of belonging, the gang colors designate members as part of a family, either literal or figurative. As Riff asserts to Tony, “Without a gang, you’re an orphan. With a gang, you walk in twos, threes, fours” (14). The family is incontrovertible. It is a lifelong commitment, for better or for worse, as Riff argues when he convinces Tony that it is his duty to help the Jets in the rumble. For Bernardo and Maria, the gang equals both literal and figurative family. At the dance, Bernardo convinces Maria to leave against her will by imploring, “Please. We are family, Maria. Go” (27).
Maria’s Dress
When Maria and Anita first appear, Anita is altering Maria’s communion dress so she can wear it to the dance. The communion dress represents a rite of passage in the Catholic church in which an older child, often on the cusp of teen-hood, takes his or her first communion. Refashioning the communion dress as a party dress marks Maria’s transition from childhood to young adulthood. Maria begs Anita to make the neckline lower, arguing, “Anita, it is now to be a dress for dancing, no longer for kneeling in front of analtar” (18). Anita quips, “With those boys you can start in dancing and end up kneeling” (18), implying that Maria may be ready for the act of dancing, but is still too young and innocent to think about sex or sexual acts. Maria hate the color, pleading with Anita to dye it red. When Anita refuses, Maria complains, “White is for babies. I will be the only one there in white” (19). The white dress has multiple significations. First, white represents innocence, as Maria recognizes when she pushes Anita to change the color. A white dress is also bridal. As quickly as Maria transitions from an innocent girl to a young woman who falls in love, her communion dress literally becomes her bridal gown, even if the wedding she stages with Tony is not real. Anita contrasts Maria’s dress in a “slightly flashy ‘American’ dress” (17) just as she contrasts Maria as a character. Where Maria is naïve, Anita is knowing. Anita is sexually experienced. She is in love and engaged to Bernardo. Remaking the communion dress for Maria is a sisterly act. Anita is both conceding that Maria is no longer a child, and protecting her from aspects of the world that she feels Maria is not ready to learn about.
Weapons
Through most of the play, the gangs discuss a wide variety of weapons that are not visible. In the altercations that are staged, such as the one at the beginning of the first act, the Jets and the Sharks use their fists. As Riff discusses weaponry for the rumble with the Jets, there is a clearly leveled hierarchy in potential weapons. Found weapons are on the lowest rung – they are things that might make their way into any fight. When Tony proposes that the two gangs fight “plain skin” (56), Baby John asks, “Not even garbage?” (56) At the next level are switchblades. Riff claims, “I wanna hold it like we always held it: with skin! But if they say switchblades, I’ll get a switchblade” (7). This is why the image of the switchblades at the rumble is so powerful. While bottles and chains gleaned from the trash can certainly exert damage, a switchblade is a much more efficient weapon. At the rumble, Bernardo and Riff, “at the same instant, each bring forth a gleaming knife” (76). The knife suggests a desire to kill rather than injure. The introduction of the knives is the reason that both Riff and Bernardo die.
The highest tier of the weaponry hierarchy is the gun. A gun kills much more easily than a knife. A gun also depersonalizes killing. It doesn’t require engaging in close bodily contact, as a person can be shot from a distance. When Chino acquires Bernardo’s gun, he is officially hunting for Tony to end his life. The fact that Bernardo owned a gun, kept hidden and in reserve, suggests that Bernardo already saw killing as a potential necessary outcome of the gang wars. The gun seems to change Chino. Firing at Tony from the darkness, taking him without warning or defense, brings him back to reality. Maria takes the gun from him as if he is a disobedient child. When she waves the gun at the others, Maria asks, “How many can I kill, Chino? How many–and still have one bullet left for me?” (120). Maria identifies the gun as an instrument that contains as many potential deaths as it contains bullets. It is not a tool of revenge, but a means of ending a person.
Territory
As Action claims, “A gang that don’t own the street is nuthin’!” (4) The Sharks and the Jets fight, ostensibly, over turf. Riff motivates the Jets to take part in the rumble, declaring, “We fought hard for this territory and it’s ours” (6). Riff continues, “I say this turf is small, but it’s all we got” (7). The fight at the beginning of the play occurs because the Sharks move in on the Jets’ “territory” and the Jets fight back. But Lieutenant Schrank asserts, “I got a hot surprise for you: you hoodlums don’t own the streets” (3). The term “territory” implies ownership, but ironically, the gangs are battling (and eventually dying) for the rights to access public land. The control of a territory amounts to deciding who is allowed to share space with the dominant gang. For a group of teens whose immigrant families most likely do not own land, claiming territory is a false exercise that allows them to pretend to have a homestead. In actuality, the police or the owners of the property can eject them from their turf at any moment. Schrank demonstrates this when he orders the Sharks to leave, demanding, “Clear out, Spics. Sure; it’s a free country and I ain’t got the right. But it’s a country with laws: and I can find the right. I got the badge, you got the skin” (58). Bewildered, Doc asks the Jets, “Fighting over a little piece of the street is so important?” (50) Action replies, “To us it is” (50). The gangs have mythicized territory as representative of honor and control, when in actuality, Schrank is correct. They do not own the streets.
