American Buffalo

“Well, Bob, I’m sorry, but this isn’t good enough. If you want to do business…if we got a business deal, it isn’t good enough. I want you to remember this.”

Donny speaks these lines to Bobby in the play’s opening. Though he seems stern, he is trying to coach Bobby into becoming a shrewder man of business. One of the play’s ironies is that the “business” to which Donny refers in fact involves scouting a target for a proposed theft.

“Don’t be sorry. I’m not mad at you”

Donny betrays his soft spot for Bobby. These brief lines are important as they contribute to Donny’s characterization. Mamet paints Donny as a well-intentioned mentor rather than a stern taskmaster who is out for personal gain alone. As such, Mamet invites the audience to empathize with Donny from the play’s outset.

“You take him and you put him down in some strange town with just a nickel in his pocket, and by nightfall he’ll have the town by the balls. This is not talk, Bob, this is action.”

Here, Donny speaks to his protégé about the importance of being assertive. The irony of these lines lies in the fact that Donny is perhaps the play’s least assertive character. A secondary irony is that Fletcher never appears onstage to demonstrate his mettle, and ends up in a hospital with a broken jaw.