Mazatlan

Mazatlan is the Pacific-coast city from which the Wingfield family’s absent father sends his last known message: a postcard bearing only “Hello — Goodbye!” and no return address. In the play’s opening account, the place turns a distant travel destination into the final, unresolved sign of a father who has left home and remains beyond the family’s reach.

The Postcard from Mazatlan

The father, Mr. Wingfield, had worked for a telephone company before giving up his job and leaving town. Tom presents him as a man drawn to long distances; the postcard from Mazatlan is the family’s last word from him. Its message offers no explanation, practical information, or address—only a greeting immediately canceled by a farewell. The absence of an address makes the card a communication without a path back: it confirms that the father has traveled to the Pacific coast of Mexico while preserving the distance he created.

A Place in the Family’s Memory

Mazatlan enters the play through Tom’s narration, not through a scene set there. It belongs to the family’s remembered history and is attached to the large photograph of the father over the mantel, the absent fifth character whose image remains in the apartment. The city is therefore less a developed setting than the farthest named point in the father’s departure: the postcard places him somewhere specific, but does not make him accessible.

Dramatic Significance

The postcard’s two-word farewell establishes the pattern of departure that shadows the Wingfields. The father’s escape is recalled through a compact, sharply divided message, while his family continues to live with the photograph and the worn phonograph records he left behind. Mazatlan consequently signifies both the fact of his journey and the silence that follows it. In a play presented as memory, the place survives as a name on a card: vivid enough to locate the father’s last known communication, but unable to bridge the distance between him and his family.