The American Dream by Edward Albee
**Overview of "The American Dream" by Edward Albee**
"The American Dream" is an absurdist play by Edward Albee that delves into the theme of disillusionment with American ideals through its portrayal of a dysfunctional family. Set in a sparse living room, the play features Mommy and Daddy, who are anxiously awaiting visitors while grappling with their frustrations about life and their relationships. Their conversations reveal a sense of dissatisfaction and confusion, as they complain about trivial matters and demonstrate a lack of emotional depth. The arrival of Grandma, who offers sharp commentary and a more grounded perspective, contrasts with Mommy and Daddy’s superficiality.
As the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that the couple is entangled in a dark narrative involving an adopted child, representing their failed aspirations and the hollowness of their pursuit of the American Dream. When a Young Man arrives, embodying an idealized version of youth and success, the family's desperation to find fulfillment becomes more pronounced. The play ultimately critiques the emptiness of societal expectations and the elusive nature of happiness, leaving the audience to reflect on the disparity between the dream and the reality of American life. Albee's work challenges traditional narrative structures and character development, showcasing the absurdity of human existence and the complexity of identity in a seemingly nameless society.
The American Dream by Edward Albee
First published: 1961
First produced: 1961, at the York Playhouse, New York City
Type of plot: Absurdist
Time of work: The late twentieth century
Locale: United States
Principal Characters:
Mommy Daddy Grandma Mrs. Barker Young Man
The Play
The American Dream is a play in one scene, set in a living room with two armchairs, a sofa, and a door leading to the outside. Mommy and Daddy are seated, awaiting the arrival of visitors. Daddy complains about the apartment, about how hard it is to get anything fixed, and he remembers how easy it was to move in, when all that was required was his money for the rent and a security deposit. He feels taken advantage of and somehow fooled. Similarly, Mommy is vexed about a hat she has bought. It seemed like a perfectly lovely beige hat until she ran into the chairman of her women’s club, who praised her wheat-colored hat. Irritated to think she had been duped into buying the wrong-colored hat, Mommy returned to the store (excusing her mistake by blaming its artificial light) and complained until they gave her what she takes to be a beige-colored hat. “I would imagine it was the same hat they tried to sell you before,” Daddy observes. Mommy agrees, but somehow she still feels she has gotten satisfaction from the incident.
The expected arrival of visitors has something to do with Mommy’s and Daddy’s feelings about Grandma. She is getting old and feeble. However, when Grandma enters she seems sharp-minded, if somewhat mysterious about the boxes she has packed and dropped around Daddy’s armchair. She has a rather sarcastic tongue and a down-to-earth quality that appears to be missing in Mommy’s and Daddy’s speeches. Grandma is aware that she is aging and that Mommy and Daddy want to get rid of her.
What Mommy and Daddy seem most interested in is preserving their sense of comfort and convenience. They turn querulous and impatient when the visitors do not arrive on time. Grandma assumes they are waiting for the “van people” who will take her away. When the doorbell rings, Mommy and Daddy go through a hurried dialogue, with Daddy doubting whether or not he has done the right thing. Mommy assures him he has and puts particular emphasis on how “masculine and decisive” his behavior has been.
Making a big point about opening the door, Daddy welcomes Mrs. Barker into the room. Neither he nor Mommy seems to know her name, although they assume she represents the visitors who were supposed to arrive. As in previous discussions, much of what Mommy and Daddy have to say contradicts their earlier statements—in this case Daddy mentions that he knew the visitors would be late, even though he has just spent considerable time complaining that they are not on time. When Mrs. Barker joins Mommy and Daddy in referring to herself in the plural, saying “we’re here,” Grandma replies “I don’t see them.” As usual, it is Grandma who insists on interpreting the reality of what she sees rather than reacting to a situation as she would like it to be.
There is an odd moment when Mrs. Barker introduces herself as the chairman of Mommy’s women’s club. Taken aback, Mommy at first is doubtful, then she blames her inability to recognize Mrs. Barker on the “artificial light.” When Mommy compliments Mrs. Barker on her hat, saying it is just like the one she bought yesterday, Mrs. Barker replies, “No, not really; this hat is cream.” Mommy tries to object, but Mrs. Barker stops her by referring to her position of authority.
Mommy asks Mrs. Barker to get comfortable by taking off her dress, which she proceeds to do, even though it makes Daddy blush and giggle; he becomes “sticky wet.” Mrs. Barker speaks vaguely about her many activities and at one point ponders whether she has come to pick up Grandma’s boxes. The conversation between Mrs. Barker, Mommy, and Daddy, is frequently interrupted by Grandma’s acerbic comments about old and middle-aged people. Much of her anger is directed toward her daughter.
Eventually it is Grandma who reveals to Mrs. Barker why she has come. It seems that many years ago Mommy and Daddy adopted what Grandma calls a “bumble of joy,” a malapropism that Mrs. Barker tries to correct but which Grandma insists on using—perhaps because Mommy and Daddy, in her view, have bumbled things. Grandma never says in so many words that Mommy and Daddy have adopted a baby, but that is the upshot of her story, which she relates in the manner of a dark fairy tale. The child, it seems, has disappointed the adoptive parents and they have punished it by hacking away at its limbs and even its sexual parts when the child shows an interest in masturbation.
The point of Grandma’s remarks is that Mommy and Daddy have never been satisfied and now seek yet another adoption. When a Young Man arrives, who looks handsome and athletic but who also appears to be rather stupid, with little moral or emotional depth, Grandma dubs him the American Dream. The Young Man refers to the fact that he has had an identical twin—the implication being that it must have been his brother that Mommy and Daddy adopted earlier.
At the end of the play Mommy welcomes the Young Man as someone who seems very familiar but whom she cannot quite identify. The play ends with Grandma speaking, making the only overt comment on the play itself, indicating to the audience in an oblique way what the drama of the American Dream has been about:
Well, I guess that just about wraps it up. I mean, for better or worse, this is a comedy, and I don’t think we’d better go any further. No, definitely not. So, let’s leave things as they are right now . . . while everybody’s happy . . . while everybody’s got what he wants . . . or everybody’s got what he thinks he wants. Good night, dears.
Dramatic Devices
As Albee’s title suggests, his play is about an idea, a way of conceiving the United States that is also an American illusion—an American way of evading reality. Realistic drama depends on several devices: detailed stage sets, carefully chosen names for characters who have credible psychological histories and who are well placed within their society. Albee eschews all these devices. Only one character, Mrs. Barker, is actually given a name, and it is telling that Daddy has trouble remembering it even when she repeats it several times. The society Albee creates onstage has no distinctiveness, no identity; it is literally a society without a name or a single character of its own. Everyone in the play is a type: a Mommy, a Daddy, a Grandma, a Young Man, and so on.
Another device of realistic drama is logic. Characters are expected to make sense, and what they say is taken up and developed by other characters. In Albee’s play, the opposite is true. Mommy is not even sure Daddy can follow what she is saying, and she insists that he repeat her remarks to see whether he has understood her. In The American Dream characters are illogical and irrational, contradictory and fractious because they do not know their own minds. In fact, it is doubtful whether they have minds, for they seem incapable of following a train of thought, of coming to any conclusion about the things they talk about. However, given the triviality and discontinuity of their world, their behavior is understandable: It is the only way they are capable of responding to stimuli.
Another characteristic of the realistic play that is usually taken for granted is spatial relationships. The characters know where they are in relation to their surroundings. Here, when Daddy leaves the living room to go into Grandma’s room, he is heard complaining that he cannot find it. How can a character not find a room? In an absurdist drama, this unlikely event is a function of the character’s own sense of displacement. He cannot even locate himself; he cannot find a self to express or a society in which he can function as an individual.
Critical Context
The American Dream, along with The Zoo Story (pr. 1959) and The Death of Bessie Smith (pr., pb. 1960), marked Edward Albee’s emergence as an important new playwright in the 1960’s. His first plays were considered so savage that they were not immediately performed in New York but in Berlin. While Albee was hailed by many theater critics as a brilliant satirist of the American scene, others were put off by his attacks on the sterility and banality of American life. The critical and commercial acceptance of his works grew and his list of awards—including four Pulitzer Prizes, and several New York Drama Critics Circle and Tony awards—attests his prominence in the American theatrical scene.
The American Dream is characteristic of Albee’s early work, which alternates between highly realistic and profoundly absurdist styles. It should be read in tandem with The Sandbox (pr., pb. 1960), a short play in which Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, and the Young Man all appear. In this short, self-referential work, Grandma comments on her status in the play, on her difficulty in playing the role as assigned to her not only by Mommy and Daddy but also by the playwright. In effect, Albee creates a character who talks back both to him and to the audience, thus raising questions about what is “artificial” and what is “real” in drama. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (pr., pb. 1962), the masterpiece of Albee’s early period, he combines his gifts for absurdist and realistic drama in the same play, making his main characters, George and Martha, stand for aspects of the American Dream in complex ways that his earlier and much shorter play by that name does not reveal.
Sources for Further Study
Blum, David. “What’s It All About, Albee?” New York Magazine, November, 1993, 70-78.
Bryer, Jackson R., ed. The Playwright’s Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Dramatists. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Cohn, Ruby. Edward Albee. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969.
Hayman, Ronald. Edward Albee. New York: Ungar, 1973.
Kolin, Philip C., and J. Madison Davis, eds. Critical Essays on Edward Albee. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986.
McCarthy, Gerry. Edward Albee. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
Paolucci, Anne. From Tension to Tonic: The Plays of Edward Albee. 1972. Rev. ed. Wilmington, Del.: Griffon House Press, 2000.
Wasserman, Julian N., ed. Edward Albee: An Interview and Essays. Houston: University of St. Thomas Press, 1983.