THIS EPIGRAPH IS LIFT from Harry Elam's article "'Only in America': Contemporary American Theater and the Power of Performance", where many questions arose as to how to what extent is theater a place where American identity can be deconstructed and to what extent is it a possible site for questioning assumptions and moving beyond the mainstream. I begin with this quote in my attempt to approach Mamet as a playwright who questions the safeguards of the norm and society and calls for a critical evaluation of the fundamental assumptions of American society through his plays. In the 1970s, certain events contributed decisively to a new configuration of the United States as a whole. America was coming to terms with the cultural and political consequences of the presidency of Richard Nixon, the Watergate scandal, and the Vietnam War. Furthermore, America was experiencing the effects of a market economy governed by capitalism that helped shape the nation: a greater division between social classes and a growing number of dispossessed and powerless people. In this sense, the American dream was corrupted because success was required but was not accessible to all levels of society. My particular focus on the decadence of the American dream and capitalism is significant for the purposes of this article, in that the plays of David Mamet that will be analyzed are reflective of American society and many of the concerns that they manifest are the direct result of the socio-political and economic atmosphere of the time. It is at this point that we must approach Mamet's plays, and in this context, the plays want to show how the American dream has failed. Therefore, he tries to convey his personal vision...... middle of paper ...... deals not with what was said but with what was not revealed through the words, c That is to say, Mamet's dialogue emphasizes not only what is spoken in the dialogue, but what remains unsaid. It is in this minimalist approach that its economy of efficient consumption and effective articulation produces its reminder: the unsaid. One of the most powerful and moving examples is found in the play Edmond: “EDMOND: […] it is more comfortable to accept a law than to question it and live your life. All of us. All of us. We have expelled life from ourselves. And we live in fog. We live in a dream. Our life is a school and we are dead.[…]EDMOND: I have been living in the fog for thirty-four years. I have to live most of life. Here we go. Here we go. I wasted it. Because I didn't know it. And you know what the answer is? Live. (Pause)” (Edmond: 67; emphasis in the original).