Topdog/Underdog: Scene Six Summary & Analysis

As Lincoln brags to himself about his earnings and his success in returning to the streets as a hustler, the audience recognizes the same kind of cocky bravado Booth displays throughout the play. However, there’s a difference between the brothers’ arrogance. While Lincoln allows his pride to swell in private, Booth’s pride is strictly performative. In other words, he’s boasts because he wants to convince other people of his greatness. In turn, he himself might actually believe he’s worthy of praise. Lincoln, on the other hand, simply brags in this moment for the sake of enjoying the moment. Furthermore, it’s also worth noting that Lincoln conflates success with sexual prowess, believing that his sexual adventures with the three women in the bathroom is a measure of his accomplishments.

The audience senses in this moment that things are perhaps not going as well for Booth as he claims, considering that he’s been sitting in the dark all by himself and has just overheard his brother’s boasts about having had a successful day playing Three-Card Monte. It’s no surprise, then, that he would make up that Grace “got down on her knees” before him, an image that exalts his importance and makes him look like the dominant one in their relationship; he is, in other words, once again compensating for his fragile ego and competing with his brother’s success.

Booth is offended that Lincoln doesn’t care about getting kicked out of the apartment. After all, Booth seems to have fabricated the fact that Lincoln needs to leave in the first place, a lie told for the purpose of insulting his brother. As such, Lincoln’s easygoing response is a further blow to Booth’s ego, ultimately sending the message that there’s nothing he can do to faze his older brother. To make things worse, Lincoln reminds Booth that he doesn’t have any “skills,” further exacerbating Booth’s feelings of inferiority when it comes to their brotherly competitiveness.

Yet again, the tension between Lincoln and Booth segues into another topic entirely, eventually dissipating as the brothers inevitably relate to one another despite their differences. In this case, they focus on their shared personal histories, analyzing their parents’ respective departures and sharing information with one another about the situation. In doing so, they each gain a new perspective on their own past. This is perhaps the only way history can be truly altered—though elsewhere Parks suggests that the past must be acknowledged and accepted (even when it’s painful), in this moment she shows that the one mutable element of history is the lens through which a person remembers it. In this moment, the brothers stop narrowly reviewing their pasts, ultimately opening themselves up to one another and allowing their memories to merge, thereby enhancing and altering their conception of their own family history.

Unfortunately, the tender moment Lincoln and Booth share whilst sharing memories of their parents quickly turns sour when Booth starts encouraging Lincoln to examine in vivid detail the decline of his marriage. Indeed, Booth seems to have strung Lincoln down an ominous and hurtful path when he says, “And how she came over here one night looking for you.” He then launches into yet another attempt to emasculate his older brother, reminding Lincoln that he “couldnt get it up” with Cookie. Once again, then, Booth can’t help but compete with his brother, even after they’ve just shared a nice moment.

Booth is blatantly combative in this moment. Although his words may at first appear confessional because he says it was “the bad part” of him that slept with Lincoln’s wife, his message is ultimately intended to provoke his older brother. Indeed, he challenges any goodwill Lincoln might still feel toward him when he says, “It wasnt just thuh bad part of me it was all of me, man, I had her.” By saying this, he leaves little opportunity for Lincoln to practice forgiveness. Instead, he frames himself as a man driven by a need for “sexual release” who also has no problem wronging his brother, since it’s not just “the bad part” of him that made the decision to sleep with Cookie, it was “all” of him, meaning that even his rational mind—his conscience—permitted him to go behind his brother’s back. And as if this sentiment isn’t already vicious enough, he rubs Lincoln’s face in the truth by adding, “Yr damn wife. Right in that bed.”

Finally, the competition between Lincoln and Booth comes fully to the forefront of their relationship, as Lincoln gives in and starts hurling insults back at his brother by calling him a “double left-handed motherfucker.” Of course, his words do nothing but egg his little brother on, and because Booth doesn’t want to be seen as inferior, he escalates the situation by accusing Lincoln of being afraid to play cards against him. By framing the situation like this, he makes himself look like the alpha-male, the one who holds the power. In reality, the audience understands that Lincoln has the upper hand in this relationship, but Booth is eager to prove otherwise, yelling, “Ima kick yr ass,” an unsubstantiated but nevertheless provocative claim.

It’s worth noting here that, although Booth’s ability to identify the correct card in Three-Card Monte is perhaps a bit surprising given his lack of experience, he seems to be forgetting one of the key lessons Lincoln taught him about playing cards: the dealer always acts as if he doesn’t want to play. In step with this, Booth literally has to scream “Fuck that!” at Lincoln in order to convince him to throw the cards. As such, though Booth seems to be in a position of power over Lincoln, it may indeed be the other way around.

By this point, Lincoln has Booth raring to play Three-Card Monte while he himself retains a certain skeptical reluctance, acting as if he’s unsure about actually playing the game with his brother, whom he makes out to be unprecedentedly talented at besting the dealer. Because Lincoln has already explained that the dealer never acts like he wants to play, the audience begins to grasp that he’s most likely conning Booth by imbuing in him an unfounded sense of confidence. Quite significantly, Lincoln never mentions money—he points out that they are “missing the essential elements” that make Three-Card Monte feel “real,” but he only lists external factors like traffic sounds, allowing Booth to be the one to bring up the fact that they haven’t put any money on the line. This technique draws Booth even further into the idea that he’s the one calling the shots, ultimately giving him the notion that he has more power than he actually does.

The more involved Booth becomes in playing Three-Card Monte, the clearer it is that Lincoln is manipulating him. At every turn, he manages to manufacture the game so that it’s Booth making the official decision; it’s Booth’s idea to play in the first place, it’s Booth’s idea that Lincoln should put money down, and—finally—it’s Booth’s idea that he should bet his own inheritance. In this way, Parks demonstrates that an act of deception works best when a mark can be convinced into conning himself. Blinded by confidence, Booth thinks he’s acting independently when in reality he’s falling perfectly into the scheme Lincoln has laid out to dupe him.

When Lincoln says, “I dont want to play,” he practically makes a direct reference to the lessons he gave Booth earlier in the play, when he said, “Thats thuh Dealers attitude. He acts like he dont wanna play.” Despite how strictly Lincoln adheres to this principle, Booth still fails to recognize that he’s being played. This is because he’s obsessed with beating Lincoln “for real,” a notion that aligns with the fact that Booth has been waging a competition against his brother for the entire play. Now, it seems, he’s anxious to finally act out this competition so that he can prove his own worthiness as an opponent by besting his brother. Lincoln, for his part, picks up on this dynamic and pauses to consider the messy nature of their relationship, asking, “You think we’re really brothers?” He asks this partly because Booth’s eagerness to overtake him is so blatantly malicious, but also partly because he recognizes his own twisted desire to cheat his little brother.

When Lincoln finally beats Booth, he condescendingly reminds his little brother that “Throwing cards aint thuh whole world.” This is an interesting statement because it functions on two levels. In one sense, this is a patronizing remark because it makes light of a situation in which Booth has lost not only all the money he owns, but the only thing left of his mother. In another sense, though, Lincoln’s suggestion that Booth focus on something other than Three-Card Monte carries with it a certain protective attitude. By forcing his brother to admit he’s bad at playing cards, Lincoln discourages Booth from entering the life of a hustler, thereby keeping him away from a lifestyle he Lincoln knows to be dangerous. In this way, Lincoln’s deception of Booth can be understood as both malicious and beneficent, an action that arises as much from love and brotherly care as it does from greed.

The fact that Booth has never opened the nylon stocking his mother gave him suggests that he puts his faith in family members even when they might not deserve it. Indeed, he knows his mother was unfaithful to his father and to the family as a whole, and yet he’s never questioned whether or not she told him the truth about his inheritance. Likewise, he competes with Lincoln but never actually stops to think that Lincoln might con him out of his money. This is ironic, since he himself has wronged his brother by sleeping with Cookie, and yet he seems to believe that family members never do anything bad to each other. In this way, Parks portrays Booth as ignorant, a man too wrapped up in his own deceptions of his loved ones to realize that he too can be the target of similar deceptions.

Any doubts the audience may have had about Lincoln’s motives are put to rest in this scene when he explains to Booth that nobody can ever truly win against the dealer in Three-Card Monte. By convincing Booth that he had the ability to “pick right,” Lincoln manipulated his little brother into believing that he was in control when, in truth, Lincoln was leading him along the entire time. As such, Booth is encouraged to act as the agent of his own deception.

Although Booth has lost to his brother, he tries to assert himself as the dominant man in their relationship. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, he shouts, “Who thuh man now?”, as if Lincoln has underestimated him—and indeed he has, at least regarding Booth’s violent predilections. In this moment, then, Booth forces his way into a position of power, playing upon his violent temperament in order to dominate Lincoln. Of course, this is yet another overcompensation for the fact that he’s not, in fact, worthy of such power, and his attempt to intimidate his brother only further exposes his petulant nature and deep insecurity.

That Booth continues to talk himself up even after killing Lincoln demonstrates once again his desire to emerge victorious in their brotherly competition. It’s clear in this moment that he’s constantly measuring himself up to Lincoln, a dynamic he clearly detests, as evidenced by his assertion that he’s going to make a name for himself that has “nothing to do with” his brother. Of course, this bombastic monologue does nothing to actually give Booth a sense of power, and he seems to realize this when he suddenly collapses over his brother’s body, wailing out because he realizes that, though he has killed his main competitor, he has also killed the only person with whom he had a close relationship. In this way, Parks shows that Booth’s obsession with being an alpha-male and besting his brother is a futile preoccupation that only leads to sorrow and hardship.