690 The American Century: Literature since 1945especially modern life. The Zoo Story is basically an extended monologue by a young
New Yorker so lost and alienated that he feels any contact, however painful or
impermanent, would be a relief. “A person has to have some way of dealing with
SOMETHING,” he declares. “If not with people ... SOMETHING.” He lights on a
very ordinary man in the park as his first attempt at contact. He cannot move the
man enough, however, by simply telling him his story. So, desperate for some tangible
proof of himself and his ability to impinge on another, he starts a knife fight, impales
himself on the blade of his opponent, and dies giving thanks for the proof he believes
he has now received. “I came unto you,” the young New Yorker declares, “and you
have comforted me.” Two plays that followed this, The Death of Bessie Smith (1961)
and The American Dream (1961), give a more specifically American edge to Albee’s
explorations of human anxiety and alienation. In The Death of Bessie Smith the
suggestion is clearly that it is precisely the rage and resentment that alienation
provokes which find their issue, and the illusion of release, in racism. The American
Dream, as its title implies, takes a broader canvas. Absurdist in many of its dramatic
strategies, it combines this with a devastating analysis of national values. The typical
American family in this play – an emasculated Daddy, abrasive Mommy, and cynical
Grandma – are empty, evacuated of feeling by the American dream of success. Their
comical abuses of language reflect and express their abuse of life, their disconnection
from real human emotion. And they find their natural heir in an equally anonymous
Young Man who appears at the end of the play confessing that, since one traumatic
moment in his past, “I no longer have the capacity to feel anything.”
The success of The American Dream enabled Albee to move to Broadway. There,
in 1962, his best and most well received play was produced: Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? Set in a small New England college, it depicts the events of one night of
passionate conflict and purgation. And, unlike Albee’s earlier work, it gravitates
toward domestic realism. To be more exact, this is domestic realism edged with a
fiery poeticism. In this, as well as its portrait of characters who find everyday life
emotionally exhausting, almost unendurable, it recalls the work of Tennessee
Williams – a debt that Albee slyly acknowledges through brief allusions to A Streetcar
Named Desire. George, a history professor, and his wife Martha, bring a young
colleague and his nervous wife back from a party. They involve the younger couple
in a torrent of argument and abuse that appears to be a nightly ritual. After a
second act that Albee has called “Walpurgisnacht,” when the pain and purgation are
pushed to the limit, comes the “Exorcism” of Act Three. The imaginary son that
George and Martha have created as some kind of sustenance and defense against
the existential dread that haunts their lives, is declared dead by Martha. The couple
acknowledge their illusions and end the play facing an unknown future with a
courage that comes from admitting their fear but not turning back, not trying to
hide. To the question of who is afraid of Virginia Woolf – that is, is afraid of all the
despair and insecurity of modern life, and especially modern American life – the
answer is that George and Martha are. But so is everybody. At least, George and
Martha know they are, and know now even more fiercely than before. In that
knowledge is at least a measure of redemption.GGray_c05.indd 690ray_c 05 .indd 690 8 8/1/2011 7:31:39 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 39 PM