"Night, Mother"

  The major dramatic question of a play is a question that drives the script. Once the MDQ gets answered, the script ends.  Some argue that the question of "Will Jesse kill herself?", serves as the major dramatic question for Night, Mother.  Now, where that is a very important question that the reader constantly asks whilst reading the play, I don't believe that, "Will Jesse kill herself?", is really the MDQ.  This play forces the reader to ask a lot of questions like:  "Will Jesse explain exactly why she wants to kill herself?", "What are Jessie's true feelings toward her mother?", "What are Mother's true feelings about Jesse?";  so it is rather difficult to guess, or rather see clearly, what the MDQ really is?  However, if I were to guess, I would say that the MDQ would be, "Will Mother succeed in stopping Jesse from killing herself?".  In my own experience reading this play, I found myself getting frustrated due to the fact that it was basically a 'run-around' story.  The whole play consisted of Jessie saying she wanted to kill herself and the mother trying to stop her or distract her, her mother failing, trying a new tactic to stop Jessie, failing again and again.  It has been said that the major dramatic question of a play is "what keeps you engaged from the beginning with the tension that is created by the conflict between a desire and the resolution."  As I read, I constantly found myself questioning whether or not Mother would succeed in stopping Jesse from killing herself (which was a desire of mine to know as it was Mother's to do).  Therefore, I believe "Will Mother succeed in stopping Jesse from killing herself?", is a proper major dramatic question for this play.  The question is answered at the end of the play when Jesse does in fact kill herself, and Mother does in fact fail to stop her.