far gone

This play opens very differently than any other Shakespeare I've read. There is no set-up in the beginning in terms of characters, situations etc. The play starts, not within the plot of the play, but inside a character's unknown interior. We as the reader can't figure out why the first character to speak is so down. It isn't that the answer is hidden from the reader by our writer, something which is done quite frequently in order to draw the reader into the story. We don't know why there is so much sorrow behind our boy's eyes because he himself doesn't know. We get nothing from those supporting him. If anything they worsen the situation by admitting to their own extreme but generalized reactions to simple, everyday experiences. This just adds to the confusion and heavy mystery that surrounds the very start of this play. There is no answer within the first act. Antonio, the character in question, seems to see this sadness as part of his destiny (lines 77-79), but whether he knows it or not, he might not be too committed to this idea.
The play's atmosphere is made stranger by how normal the play itself becomes. When I say "normal" I am referring to the play's action. One moment we are feeling an intense dicussion about intense fear and the tiny things which trigger them (giving the idea that these fears are inescapable by these men, turning us on to the darker stuff within the human mind), and the next the characters are talking money and the plot begins to creep. It almost feels like the play's beginning is pushed aside and left alone, all very quickly. Here is something about the character himself, how he can swallow his intense emotions and go on. However, there is still the idea that all that sandess has to be leading somewhere.
By this point the question is very obvious: what is this character looking for? He lives for his business and doesn't recognize love (or lack of) as a reason for his own sorrow. Still, his friends can take one look at his face and see that he is extremely sad and beaten-down.This is a character who doesnt know what he wants, which I see as something of a rarity within a Shakespeare play. Reason is held out of reach and then simply put away as the play continues. This character, who is without a doubt the focus of at least the play's first section, is kept in the dark. He is simply carrying on, living life as he has known it to be, without questioning. The idea that he is accepting this way of living just adds to the pain. In order for this play to have any guts there must be a point where Antonio finds that there is something more in life than money to hold onto. Living life for the work you do isn't living at all. Of course there's still a good chance since there is a lot more to go. Will there be some kind of moral hanging at the end of this one?