As the play goes on, we discover that Dust Commander's Derby is responsible for bringing Mare and Lucius together, and through the couple's discussion of him they think back over their many years of memories together. The motif of dust along with many of the play's lines are intentionally repeated throughout the text, in addition to this Parks does not give the audience any information on how these two characters have managed to live for so long, in this way she destabilizes any linear sense of memory and time. Parks complicates the audience's view of history, relationships, and the past; some argue that Parks's incorporation of these elements and the repetitive style of the text is reminiscent of African rituals and the way that their retelling of stories often incorporate the past in a literal manner. One of her best-known works is "Topdog/Underdog". This play marked a departure from the heightened language she usually wrote. Parks is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln and believed he left a legacy for descendants of slaves. "Topdog/Underdog" explains what that legacy is. It tells the story of two African-American brothers: Lincoln and Booth. Lincoln works at a boardwalk arcade, dressing up like Abraham Lincoln and letting the tourists shoot him with plastic guns. He got this job because he could be paid less than the white man who had the job before. Parks does not judge Lincoln in this play, but rather enjoys bringing him into the other characters' lives and seeing how they are affected. She said, "Lincoln is the closest thing we have to a mythic figure. In days of Greek drama, they had Apollo and Medea and Oedipus – these larger than life figures that walked the earth and spoke – and they turned them into plays. Shakespeare had kings and queens that he fashioned into his stories. Lincoln, to me, is one of those." Parks also believes that Lincoln "created an opening with that hole in his head." She makes the case that everything we do has to pass through everything else, like the eye of a needle. She says we have all passed through the hole in Lincoln's head on our journey to whatever lies ahead. Like many of her other plays, "Topdog/Underdog" takes her characters on a quest to find out who they are and to examine the stories and experiences that have shaped their lives. More than anything, she believes that we have an important relationship with the past. Parks decided that she wanted to give herself the task of writing 365 plays in 365 days, hence her play "365 Plays/365 Days".