Swan is set in a small town in Nebraska, present day. Dora, a divorced and widowed nurse, is awakened one night when a swan flies into her window. Dora takes the bird in, becoming passionate about nursing him back to health, and soon realizes that this swan is turning into a man whom she consequently names Bill. Bill is, indeed, becoming man-like, but he still has bird-like tendencies and behaviors. Dora is presently in a relationship with a man named Kevin, a milkman nonetheless, who quickly becomes troubled by this new bird/man in Dora's life. Kevin, who is already married, becomes so annoyed by Bill's presence, in fact, that he insists that he and Dora go to talk to a marriage therapist.
Dora is a character who has not been lucky in love -- to say the least. One marriage ended in divorce, another marriage ended when her husband killed himself, and another ended when her husband left her. There...
There is something that she cannot trust in Kevin (e.g., his promises to leave his wife and his constant rescheduling of therapist's appointments though it was his idea in the first place) and Bill seems to be the antithesis to Kevin. Though he is not quite perfect either (after all, he is/was a bird).
Despite Dora's unluckiness in love and marriage, she still believes in both love and marriage. Dora tells Bill at a certain point in the play that she doesn't believe that people were meant to be alone and that she doesn't believe that she is meant for loneliness. She insists that it is when she is alone that bad things happen to her (could one of those things be a bird-man creature flying into her window?). Dora tells a story of a…
