Character Analysis (barefoot in the Park)

Character Analysis: Walker, scene from Two Rooms

Walker is a reporter in his early 30s. He has been working as a reporter for about 2 years now and he has not been published a spectacular story yet that caught people’s attention. He always wanted to become a reporter who publishes great stories and he has a desire to become famous and be admired by collegues. He has a mother who is hospitalized after a big cancer surgery and therefore, he needs money. If he can publish the story of Lainie and Michael on newspaper he will get enough money to pay for his mother’s treatment. He has been meeting with Lainie for a while and started to get in progress with writing her story. The only thing that is in between his goal is that Lainie is not willing to speak out and Ellen. In the workplace, he gets ignored by his boss here and there for not coming up with good stories for a newspaper.

The scene takes place in the room. Specifically, Walker is in Michael’s room with Lainie. Lainie and Walker are both sitting down in the dark room and looking at photographs that Michael took with his camera. The time is around 8pm.

Moment before this scene starts, Walker comes into Lainie’s room to see her and she starts with showing him several photographs Michael took in the Middle East. A few slides have been flicked and while pictures were being shown Walker is paying attention to those pictures and Lainie is describing one by one.

Walker’s primary goal is to attain Lainie’s trust so that she can believe Walker can help her to get Michael back. In order to bring Michael back, Walker wants Lainie to speak out to public and do interviews so that her story can appeal to America. Walker thinks government is irresponsible for Michael’s life and if Lainie does interview, people will care more and therefore, government can be more responsible for bringing back Michael alive. Walker tries to remind Lainie that Michael is in danger and she got to do something other than just sitting down in the dark room all day. In the scene, Michael and Lainie creates tension between them by yelling at each other about Lainie’s actual effort on saving Michael. Walker provides a clear visionary imagination of Michael getting shot with a gun by terrorists to Lainie so that she can become more aware of the desperate situation and so that she can speak out on TV or do interview. Others in this scene are Lainie, Michael, and Ellen. Walker’s obstacles are Ellen and Lainie’s fear. Ellen represents the government and she is trying to keep Lainie away from Walker telling her not to trust him. Ellen says getting newspaper involved in this situation will ruin everything and she can’t give information to Lainie if Lainie is with a newspaper reporter because source of Ellen’s information is from the government. On the other side, Walker thinks government is not responsible with Michael’s redemption and he thinks Ellen is a barrier between him and Lainie’s trust.