The Landscape of the Invisibles in Lynn Nottage’s Sweat

Abstract

The rapid growth in technological industries and international trade deals has affected the working-class community in the United States. They have to face unemployment and poverty because machines replaced workers in their work, causing the downsize of the numbers of the workers. The current paper examines how Lunn Nottage explores the de-industrial landscape of Reading town in Pennsylvania to display the impact of the economic crisis on the working-class community. Sweat unveils the dire conditions of work in the factory where those workers used to work and their suffering after losing their jobs. The employers and the government marginalized those workers as being invisible. The playwright set the play between 2000-2008 to present the economic and financial transformations, which consequently have motivated racial hostilities among the different ethnic groups of workers. The paper’s aim is to reveal the impact of poverty and unemployment on raising the evil inside human nature. The significance of the study lies in showing who is to be blamed for racial and hostile actions among various ethnic groups and the reasons for them. The playwright sheds light on the moral decline caused by the economic crisis when human beings feel they are invisible.