The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

"Great Theatre" is undoubtedly the expression of the heart and mind of the people. Playwrights and actors are interpreters of the thought and feeling of their time.

Last night I saw a play that I feel sure would have meant little twenty years ago. It is written by a young man, acted by a new group of young actors and actresses, fresh and original in both writing and acting. Crude in a way because the thoughts hit you like hammer blows, but it was a great performance. "Bury The Dead" will long be remembered by anyone who sees it and its strength lies, I think, in the fact that it is the expression of the thought and feeling of thousands upon thousands of people today. The men killed in the war, but who will not stay buried, speak the growing feeling among the people, that the waste of youth in wars is senseless. That exhaltation of the General's, the pleading of their women all in vain, the dead must come back to savor the things that seemed good to them in life and to make others realize that it was senseless to live, begging for food and turning up your coat collar to keep out the wind.

I venture to say there are two great waves of thought and feeling sweeping over us today—One is the desire for peace—the other is the determination that life shall be made more worth living for the masses.

It is a glorious cool day and I spent an hour this morning at my grandson's school watching the rehearsal for their final program. He met me at the door, escorted me up and showed me everything with great pride and I must say that these youngsters, ranging from four to eight, have really done some very good work.

E.R.



About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 21, 1936

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on June 9, 2017.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated May 20, 1936, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 20 May 1936, AERP, FDRL