|
Summary and Analysis of Act One
Act One Summary: "Fun and Games" Open on the home of George and Martha, a middle-aged couple in the East coast college town of New Carthage. We hear a crash in the darkness. The door opens, the lights come on, and Martha enters followed by George. Martha quotes the line "What a dump!" from a Bette Davis movie, then proceeds to nag George, demanding he figure out what movie it's from. George at first humors his wife but clearly doesn't know or care. He accuses her of braying, but when she brays, "I don't bray!" he quickly recants. Martha demands George make her a drink and then informs him they've got guests coming. Martha invited a couple they met at a faculty party that evening a thirtyish, blond man from the math department and his mousy, slim-hipped wife because her Daddy, the president of the college, said they should be nice to them. George is not happy. It's two o'clock in the morning. Martha accuses him sulking, then patronizingly acts sympathetic. When she doesn't get a reaction, she begins to sing, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to the tune of "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" insisting that George who continues to ignore her thought it was hilarious at the party. Fed up, Martha begins to rant about George being a "simp." She gets off track saying he "doesn't even have the the what?" and George calmly finishes the sentence for her "the guts." They share a moment of laughter, and the tension diffuses momentarily. The talk turns to the ice in Martha's drink which she always eats and George reminds her that she'll always be six years older than him. She demands a kiss, but he refuses, with the excuse that he'll get too excited, have to take her in the floor, and then their guests will come in. Martha, a heavy drinker, wants another drink, and George tells her she better stay on her feet and keep her clothes on when the guests arrive. The doorbell rings. Martha demands George get it but when he refuses, she just yells, "Come in!" He moves toward the door, begging her not to do "the bit about the kid." They argue about it, and just as Martha yells, "screw you" at George, Nick and Honey step inside. Martha covers with an expression of over-politeness, inviting them in. Nick wonders if maybe it's too late and they should go, but Martha pushes them to sit down. Nick attempts to comment on a painting but George mocks him by finishing his sentences with meaningless insights. Martha offers to get them drinks (brandy for Honey, bourbon for Nick), and George remarks on Martha's changing taste drinks since they were courting. Martha launches into another rendition of "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Nick when pressed says it was funny. When George remarks on Martha's demand that people who find something funny "bust a gut," Honey pipes up that she had fun at the party and compliments Martha's father, the college president. George deadpans that he's a god and remarks on how many faculty parties he's been to. Nick kills the attempted rapport by describing the poor reception he received when teaching in Kansas. Honey says she had to introduce herself to the other wives at the supermarket. Martha's insistence that "Daddy knows how to run things" prompts George to confide that there are easier things than to be married to the daughter of the president of a university to which Martha declares that for some men, it would be an opportunity. Honey tries to escape by asking the way to the restroom, and Martha offers to show her the whole house but not before scoffing at George's reminder not to shoot her mouth off about "you-know-what." Left alone, George refills Nick's drink and attempt to make small talk by asking if Nick's in the math department. He's not. When he starts playing with Nick, turning his answers around, Nick gets testy. George says he's been here ever since he married Martha "forever" and demands Nick comment on his declension: "Good. Better. Bested." Nick calls George on his little game, and George sincerely tries to calm him down, wrenching the glass out of his hand to freshen it. Nick wants to leave, assuming that George and Martha are having a fight and not wanting to get into other people's affairs, but George says it's just exercise. Besides, "musical beds is the faculty sport around here." George acts Nick's age (28) and says he's fortysomething, though he looks older. He asks his weight and says they should play handball sometime. Honey, Nick says, is 26. George turns back to the topic of Nick being in the math department, but Nick says that in fact he is in the biology department. George is "very mistrustful" of the biologists who are going to make everyone exactly the same by rearranging all the "chromozones." George, however, is in the History Department though Martha would prefer that he be the History Department, that is be the head of the History Department. He did run it for four years during the war but then everybody didn't get killed and came back to the university. Suddenly, George comments that Nick's wife is "slim-hipped," wonders what the women are doing upstairs, and asks if Nick and Honey have kids. Not yet, Nick says, but hedges that they are going to have some when George asks. When asked if he's going to be happy in New Carthage, Nick says he thinks they'll stay, though not forever. George tells him that Martha's father likes devotion from his staff. One man actually died "in the line of service" in the cafeteria line at lunch. But the old man is never going to die and according to George is two hundred years old. Suddenly George yells for Martha, who howls back. Honey reenters, and George and Martha keep shouting at each other. Honey says that Martha is changing to be comfortable and remarks she hadn't known till a minute ago that George and Martha had a son. Tomorrow's his birthday. He'll be twenty-one. George is strangely flustered and insults the absent Martha. Honey suggests to Nick that they be getting home, and a preoccupied George asks if they're keeping the babysitter up. Nick sounds like he's warning George when he reminds him that they don't have children and tells Honey they'll go in a little while. George tells Nick that Martha must be changing for him, as she hasn't changed for George in years. Martha enters looking more comfortable and most voluptuous, showing her body off and acting flirtatious. There's a seemingly friendly exchange about the men wanting to know what the women were talking about. Honey has told Martha that Nick got his masters when he was only 19. Martha doesn't think George is impressed enough, and George says he wouldn't be surprised if Nick took over the History Department. Martha notices his mistake and proclaims that George is preoccupied with the History Department and George finishes for her, because he is not the History Department and continues that he's bogged down in it, laughingly calling him swampy. George restrains his anger with some trouble and offers to get Martha something saying that he holds her hand when it's dark and takes her gin bottles out after midnight so no one sees but will not light her cigarette when she asks. Nick lights Martha's cigarette, and she coos over his football and boxing experience, as well as his body. George is amazed that Honey acts amused. George stalks off down the hall. Martha launches into a story about a boxing match she and George had about twenty years ago, a couple of years after they were married. It was wartime, and her Daddy was on a physical fitness kick. He wanted to box with George in the backyard one Sunday, and George didn't want to. So Martha put on a pair of gloves and snuck up behind George, yelled his name, and punched him much harder than she expected in the jaw, knocking him down. George advances from down the hall and pulls a shotgun on Martha. Honey sees it first, then Nick, and just as Martha looks up, he pulls the trigger. A large parasol blossoms from the barrel of the gun. Honey, who had just screamed, laughs, as do Martha and George. As Nick examines the gun, Martha demands a kiss from George, who reluctantly gives it to her, then pulls away when he places his hand on her breast accusing her of having blue games for the guests. She's angry and hurt. He gets drinks for all and shows Nick the gun and parasol. Honey, looking for attention, keeps insisting that she's never been so frightened in her life. Martha laughs when George asks is she thought he was going to kill her but he says he might, some day. Nick sets off for the bathroom. When he sets his glass down, George says that it's okay, since Martha leaves them all over the house, even in the freezer once. Amused in spite of herself, Martha insists that she didn't. Honey, who's still drinking brandy, says she never gets a hangover because she doesn't mix and doesn't drink much. When George brings up Nick's talk about the chromosomes, Martha insists that Nick is in the Math Department until Honey quietly contradicts her. Martha says that biology's even better because it's right at the meat of thing which she tells Nick when he returns, launching into her rant about "swampy" George not taking over the History Department. She compliments Nick on his chromosome work, saying she loves chromosomes. George complains that they are tweaking chromosomes to make a race of test tube bread men who are superb and exactly the same. They'll all look just like Nick. The dark side is that hundreds of "sperm tubes" of the stupid, ugly, imperfect, and infirm will have to be cut, in order to have this race of glorious men a race of blond scientists at the middle weight limit. There will be a loss of liberty and diversity of course. Nick's not happy. George goes on that his field, history, will lose its unpredictability, and there will be order and constancy. He refuses, however, to "give up Berlin" because there is a saloon in West Berlin where the barstools are five feet high. He will fight Nick, with one hand on his scrotum, to the death. Martha mock laughs. Honey, drunk, doesn't why Nick never told her this. Nick is furious. When Martha salaciously asks if everyone is going to look like Nick in this new world, he says he's going to be a personal screwing machine. Honey doesn't want to hear this and pouts for a second, then giggles insanely, asking George where his son is. Very formally, George asks Martha when their son is coming home. Martha tries to brush off this topic of conversation, but George insists, reminding her that tomorrow is the "little bugger's" birthday. Martha announces that George talks disparagingly about the "little bugger" because he's not completely sure it's his own kid. Drunk, Honey is blown away by all this. George insists that at the core of his being, he's certain of his "chromosomological partnership" in the creation of this "blond-eyed, blue-haired" son. Martha's impressed and says she knows better. She's been to college like everyone else. George says she's also been a convent when she was younger. Martha says she was an atheist then and still is but George corrects by calling her a pagan. There's some relatively good-natured joking, and Martha calls George a floozie until Honey corrects that Martha's a floozie and asks for more brandy. Martha says that their son has green eyes, and they argue about that. Her own eyes are green but more like hazel George's are milky blue, and Daddy's are green. George insists that her father has tiny red eyes and white hair and is in fact a big white mouse. Martha says that George hates Daddy for his own inadequacies, George finishes. George leaves. Martha tells Nick that George hates her father. Nick tries to make light of it, but she insists she's not kidding and has no sense of humor Honey's excited when Martha says she's going to say why "the SOB" hates her father her mother died early, she grew up with Daddy and worshipped him. Daddy built the college and is the college. After Martha got back from college, Miss Muff's Academy for Ladies, where she had been married for a week, her sophomore year, in a "kind of junior Lady Chatterly arrangement," to a naked landscaper, until Miss Muff and Daddy got it annulled, she sat around for a while and acted as hostess for Daddy. Then, she got the idea she'd marry into the college, someone to be groomed to take Daddy's place. This was her idea, not Daddy's. Then George came along. George enters and hears this. Honey, who has been pretty out of it, is glad to see him back. Martha continues that George was young and intelligent and six years younger than her, George says in the History Department, and she fell for him. George plays along, calling her a romantic at heart, until Martha brings up the idea of succession. He too-patiently tries to get her to stop, especially now that she's already sprung a leak about their son, and warns her if she continues, he's going to get angry. Martha continues as George fumes at the bar. Daddy thought this grooming thing was a good idea until he watched George for a couple of years and realized George didn't have the stuff that George was a great big FLOP. George breaks a bottle against the bar and stands there, almost crying, telling Martha to stop. He drops it on the floor, as Martha calmly warns them he better not have wasted good alcohol, since he can't afford that on an Associate Professor's salary. She continues that he was no good at trustees' dinners, fundraising, and now she's stuck with this flop who's married to the president's daughter and expected to be somebody. Under her entire speech, George sings "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" But instead she's stuck with a contemplative bookworm that doesn't have the guts to make anybody proud. Honey joins in singing with George, then suddenly says she's going to be sick and runs down the hall. Nick goes after her. Martha goes after them, leaving George onstage alone at curtain. Act One Analysis: The action of this act takes place in the home of George and Martha in New Carthage, Connecticut. In his use of setting, Edward Albee critiques the very subject matter he had first attacked in his earlier one-act play American Dream. Albee wrote this play in the early 1960's, at a time when Americans were beginning to question the American dream of the postwar 1950's. George's critical references to World War Two throughout this act reveal the way the author and characters' lives have been shaped by twentieth-century American history. George, who says he was at the college helming the History Department during the war, was clearly exempt from service. Though we are given no explicit reason why he didn't serve as so many of the professors did, his lack of participation in the military is one of many reason that he and more so, Martha doubt his manhood. Another example in which manhood is even more explicitly linked to fighting is the anecdote about Martha's father, who wanted to box with George. George's recognition that his father-in-law, though old, is stronger than him, and his refusal to fight demonstrate just how deeply George has internalized his belief in the old man's power over him. George's insistence that no one from New Carthage College died during the war exposes the myth of the American dream as false and empty. The association between manhood and military service is false; according to George, non of the other New Carthage professors risked their lives in the war. Ironically, George's temporary success his temporary position as head of the history department during the war comes only as a result of his perceived weakness. Only because he was not perceived as possessing the requisite strength to prove his manhood in war did he have a chance to (temporarily) achieve the position he could not achieve through direct action. George's accomplishment of action through passivity what might psychologically be labeled passive aggression is evident from his very first interaction with Martha. At first, as she rants about Bette Davis and hounds George to recall what movie she's describing, it seems that George is simply ignoring her, out of tiredness or apathy. As her anger mounts, however, it becomes apparent that his vague responses and refusals to engage in a shouting match with her and as much a power struggle and part of a game as her louder attempts are. The title of this act is "Fun and Games." In part, this title is ironic. The games Martha and George play are not fun for them or for their guests. Yet, the interactions in this act are very much games. Something as little as Martha demanding George answer the door, light her cigarette, or kiss her became imbued with additional meaning as they're integrated into an ongoing power struggle. Only gradually does it become clear to the viewer, as well as to Honey and Nick, that these are games. As real as the emotions that George and Martha feel and express, the couple also derives a perverse pleasure from their ongoing emotional and psychological games. Albee employs a great deal of contrast in allowing his viewer/reader to understand the game-playing that characterizes George and Martha's interaction. On a character level, there is immediate contrast between Martha's "braying" aggression and George's passive display of apathy. Despite the initial appearance, this is not a simply portrayal of strength vs. weakness, as we see when the power struggle shifts later in the scene. On a larger level, there are immediate and sudden contrasts between hostility and anger and more amused game-playing. The first example of this occurs when, in the midst of their initial argument, George finishes Martha's sentence insulting him. For a moment after that, the tension seems to defuse, and George and Martha share a moment of laughter. From that moment, it is also clear that these arguments are a common part of George and Martha's interaction. This is not to say that Albee lessens the emotional important of George and Martha's conflict by exploring it through the metaphor of the game. This is clearly a brutal, deadly-serious game. The juxtaposition of the real war with Martha's father's attempts to train the remaining faculty to box to punch the Germans should they invade, Martha jokes demonstrates that what are considered "only" games can have just as serious consequences as conventional warfare. The warfare metaphor is continued in George's refusal to surrender Berlin demonstrates the character and authors' understanding of the very real meaning of symbols in the world. Though the city of West Berlin itself was very small in comparison to the rest of Europe, it was at the time a symbolic location during the Cold War. The American government believed that were they to surrender Berlin to the Communists, other nations belief in American power would unravel and chaos would ensue. Thus, while Berlin was in many ways a symbol of Western resistance to Communist power, the destruction of such a symbol was believed to have had destructive real-life consequences. From his reference, it is clear that George understands the power of a symbol. This realization foreshadows a significant act George will make in the third and final act of the play. One symbolic act George undertakes in this part of the play is the "killing" of Martha with the Japanese gun. It is significant that he "shoots" her with a Japanese gun. Given his inability to protect her and the country during World War Two, he now symbolically destroys her with an instrument of the war. However, it is an interesting contrast and juxtaposition to the violent subtext that a parasol an instrument of protection rather than destruction shoots out. Thus, it may be inferred that despite his animosity towards her and attempts to destroy his wife, George has a simultaneous and oft-thwarted urge to protect her. From their initial shared laughter to Martha's continued demands for kisses, the dialectic of love/hate becomes clear in this play. Albee demonstrates that love and hate are dialectical two sides of the same coin. Hating each other does not preclude George and Martha from simultaneously loving and needing each other. Martha's story of falling for young George can be taken seriously, and there are complicated motives behind her demand for a kiss. Albee wrote in the school of the Theatre of the Absurd, whose earlier writers included Beckett and Genet. One of the characteristics of absurdist drama is the characters' recognition of the absurdity of existence. They did not ask to live and they will die without wishing it. Thus alienated from their surroundings, they seek comfort in illusion. Characters' recognition of this illusion and struggle to survive the absurdity of existence characterizes Theatre of the Absurd. Clearly, Martha and George and to a lesser extent, Nick and Honey are characters who thrive on illusions. To deprive them of these illusions is tantamount to a violent act. George and Martha's entire existence is based on illusion. Martha married George not because of who he was but because of who she imagined he and by extension, she could become. She married the illusion of George-who-would-be-university-president. George too bought into that illusion, and the realization that it is untrue, that George is in fact a flop, has wrought significant damage on their lives. One of the biggest illusions in this play is hinted at from early on in this act, when George begs Martha not to do the bit about the kid. Though this is not confirmed with certainty until the third act, their veiled arguments about the kid here foreshadow the revelation that "the kid" is not real. He does not exist but rather is a shared and private illusion. George and Martha's battle about who can talk about the kid and their later talk of his parentage makes clear that this is a shared creation and illusion. George's underlying fear seems to be that by sharing their illusion with outsiders would threaten to expose it as illusion and destroy the comfort it brings. To a lesser but no less true degree, Nick and Honey are also creatures of illusion. Certainly, their little social niceties pretending not to notice George and Martha's arguments, laughing at things they don't find funny, changing the subject of conversation are meant to preserve an illusion of civility and present the image of a happy couple. While for Nick, the tete-a-tete with George destroys the illusion to a great degree, Honey's increasing drunkenness and her offstage talk with Martha only increase her susceptibility to illusion. Seeming only to exist in the moment, she takes at face value what she hears, eager, for example, to hear Martha's story of how she came to marry George. As well as appearing as a parody of the stereotypical young society wife, Honey functions as a Greek chorus in this play. Her increasingly intoxication functions to make her reactions more honest and immediate. She is also a childlike figure, the most guileless character in the play, and therefore susceptible to the illusions woven by the other characters. Classical mythology also gets referenced in the setting of the play New Carthage. Classical Carthage was the home of the mythical tragic lovers Dido and Aeneas, who provide an unexpected counterpoint to George and Martha. Later, Carthage was destroyed. Here, New Carthage is the site of the destruction of the American dream. The New England setting of the play is also significant in Albee's commentary on the American dream. Simply the word "New" in New Carthage is a suggestion of hope and a second chance. We learn in this act that George is Martha's second husband, her second chance at a happy marriage. As a younger counterpoint to George and Martha, Nick and Honey are also a more hopeful attempt at fixing the mistakes of the past. The symbolism inherent in George and Nick's chosen departments is obvious. George already obsolete, meaningless and powerless is "bogged" in the history department. He is already a relic of the past. Nick, in contrast, embodies the future in his youth and his position in the biology department. George's description of a genetically-altered race of supermen that look just like Nick emphasizes Nick's very embodiment of the scientist-as-wave-of-the-future. Some critics have even suggested that Nick's name recalls that of Nikita Khruschchev, who had recently risen to become Premier of the Soviet Union at the time of the play's writing. Thus, "Nick" succeeds in destroying illusions like Berlin and the American dream. George's description of the "dark side" of chromosomal research is significant. He says that the ugly, the imperfect, and the stupid would be, in effect, sterilized, and he threatens to fight against Nick and this future while holding onto his scrotum. Thus, it is clear that George perceives Nick's position in the biology department not only as a threat to the world at large but more so as a threat to unman him. Interestingly, George and Martha's imaginary son embodies the "perfect" appearance of this equally imagined race of future men. The boy's physical perfection blond hair, blue eyes foreshadows the fact that he is an illusion. Nick functions as a parallel to the imaginary son not only in appearance but in George's reference to him. At one time, he accidentally refers to Nick, who is 28, as being 21 years old the same age as Martha has said their son will turn tomorrow. Indeed, throughout this play, George and Martha at times function as albeit dysfunctional parental figures to Nick and Honey, shaping and molding them, though not necessarily in positive ways. George and Martha themselves embody the failure of the American Dream. Their first names, of course, evoke the country's first president and first-lady. This George has failed to be president like his namesake. Unlike Washington, who could not tell a lie, George thrives on illusion. And this Martha, far from being the respectable image presented by Martha Washington, is a floozie who flirts with other women's husbands in front of them. The title of this play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, comes from a joking, intellectual take on the nursery rhyme, evidently told as a joke at the faculty party attended by the foursome. At first, it seems like only nonsense but gradually becomes an emotional anthem, as when George chants it, fearful of Martha's revelations about his failure. Not only does the rhyme recall "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from the nursery rhyme and thus remark on the interior fear of all the characters but it references Virginia Woolf, a writer who wrote about modern people's alienation from each other and ultimately killed herself. Edward Albee has said he saw the sentence scribbled on the wall of Greenwich Village bar.
Summary and Analysis of Act Two
Act Two Summary: "Walpurgisnacht": At open, George is onstage by himself. Nick enters, apologizing for Honey, who gets sick easily. Martha meanwhile is the kitchen making coffee. Nick says he tries not to get involved in other people's affairs because it gets embarrassing. George mocks Nick's reserved disgust and faked sympathy, and Nick disdainfully tells him that he and Martha shouldn't subject other people to them going at it like a pair of animals. When George tells him that he's smug and self-righteous, Nick threatens him by saying he's never hit an older man. George changes the subject by asking if Honey throws up a lot. Nick says that once she starts, she'll go on for hours. George gets him another drink, and Nick explains that he married her because she was pregnant. Only it turned out to be a hysterical pregnancy "she blew up, and then she went down." George shares a story of his own. When he was sixteen, in prep school, a bunch of his friends and him got to New York on the first day of vacation. This was during Prohibition, and they went to a gin mill owned by one kid's gangster father. One boy, who was fifteen, had completely accidentally killed his mother years before with a shotgun. When it came his time to order, he asked for "bergin and water." Soon, everybody in the joint was laughing and ordering bergin and every time the laughter subsided, someone would order bergin, and the laughter would start again. They drank free that night, bought champagne by the gangster father, and though they all had hangovers the next day, George says that this was the grandest day of his youth. Nick asks what happened to the boy who shot his mother. George says that the next summer, on a country road, with his learner's permit, he swerved to avoid a porcupine and crashed into a tree, killing his father, who was in the passenger's seat. When they told the boy this at the hospital, he began to laugh and didn't stop until they jammed an needle into his arm. When he recovered from his injuries, thirty years ago, they put him into an asylum and has not uttered one sound since. After a long silence, George yells for Martha, with no response. George turns the talk back to Honey, saying that Martha doesn't have hysterical pregnancies Martha doesn't have pregnancies at all. Nick asks if they have any other kids, other than they're son, and George makes an odd comment about the boy being a "comfort, a bean bag," which Nick doesn't understand. He goes on about the boy behind the apple of their eyes and tells Nick he's being testy. They argue about that for a moment, and George says he's going to set Nick straight about what Martha said just as Martha yells "hey" from the kitchen. She sticks her head in to say they're having coffee and to exchange a quick series of insults in French with George. She tells George to clean up the mess he made, and after she leaves, George says that for years, he has been trying to clean up the mess he made. When George tells Nick that things are easier for him, marrying a woman because she was all blown up, Nick says that there were other reasons. George correctly guesses that she has money too. They simultaneously begin to reminisce about how they met their wives, and George lets Nick go first. They grew up together met when they were eight and six and used to play doctor. Their eventual marriage was taken for granted by their families. There wasn't any particular passion between them, even at the beginning of their marriage. George refills their drinks, and talk turns to how much people drink in the US. George asks about Honey's money, explaining he's fascinated by the pragmatism of the "wave-of-the-future boys" like Nick. Nick explains that his father-in-law was called by God when he was six and started preaching and became pretty famous and rich by the time he died. He spent "God's money" on hospitals and churches, but he saved his own. George shares that Martha has money because her father's second wife (not her mother) was "an old lady with warts who was very rich" a witch who married a white mouse with tiny red eyes and went up immediately in a puff of smoke, leaving the money to the college, the town, Martha's father, and Martha. Nick laughs, saying his father-in-law was a mouse too, a churchmouse. When he says that Martha never mentioned a stepmother, George says that maybe it isn't true. He tells Nick that he's been drawing these stories out of him because he represents a threat to his livelihood. Nick laughs, not really believing him, as George says they've decided he'll take over the history department first, before he takes over the whole game. Playing along, Nick says that what he does is find weak spots and shore them up until he becomes an inevitability. That plan includes "plow[ing] a few pertinent wives." George compares Martha and the faculty wives to the puntas of South American who hiss at passing men like a gaggle of geese. Nick guesses that Martha's the biggest goose in the gaggle and he just better get her off in the corner and mount her like dog. George continues to play along and Nick suspects he may be serious. George offers him some fatherly advice. He says he disgusts him but has tried to make contact. Nick mocks him, but George continues explaining that you build a civilization and make art and music and reach the saddest of points, when all the music sounds the Dies Irae. The justice, after all the years, is a big "up yours." Martha leads a weakly smiling Honey in and demands that George apologize for making the lady throw up. George denies this and tells Martha that she makes him sick. Honey stops them, claiming that she gets sick occasionally all by herself for no reason. She claims that before she got married she developed what the doctors thought was appendicitis, but it turned out to be a false alarm. Martha claims that George used to make their son sick every time he came into the room. George says the real reason the boy got sick is that he couldn't stand Martha fiddling with him all the time. Martha says he ran away twice in one month, six times in one year, which George explains happened because Martha used to corner him. George says that it their son used to tell him "Mama's always coming at me," and it was very embarrassing. Nick stops him short by asking why he's talking about it if it was so embarrassing. Honey asks for a little brandy, despite Nick's objections, insisting that she likes it. When Martha notes that George used to drink "bergin," George tells her to shut up, but Nick has already noticed. Martha wants to know if George started in on his story of how he would have amounted for something if it hadn't been for Daddy if he told Nick about how he tried to publish a book and Daddy wouldn't let him. Nick eggs her on by asking about the book. George begs her to stop and says he's got to find a new way to fight her. Honey interrupts all this by saying she would love some dancing, saying she dances like the wind over and over. Martha and George bicker about who's going to dance with who, and Honey starts dancing by herself, singing along to Beethoven's 7th Symphony. George turns the music off when Martha calls him a son of a bitch. Honey's mad at Nick and wants to be left alone. George asks her if she wants to dance with him, and she says that if she can't do her interpretive dance, she won't dance. Martha and Nick dance together, on either side of where George and Honey sit, undulating like their bodies are pressed together. Despite George's objections, as she dances toward and away from Nick, Martha tells him how George turned something funny in his past into a novel, but Daddy read it and was shocked by what he read. It was all about a boy who killed his mother and father. Daddy told him if he published this crap, he'd be out on his ass. George continues to scream at her to stop. Honey's just amused by the idea of violence. Martha continues imitating Daddy's rant, at which Nick laughs, until George declares, "The game is over!" Martha won't stop, saying the boy pretends this is all an accident, and the clincher is that this isn't a novel at all. She continues, despite George's objections, and he grabs her by the throat to stop her. While Honey applauds the violence, Nick tears George off of Martha. George, humiliated, drags himself away. Martha softly calls him a murderer, and Nick stops her. George regains his composure and nervously announces that the game of "Humiliate the Host" is over. What will the do next? "Hump the Hostess?" Honey, completely drunk and oblivious, calls for that. Deciding that Martha wants to save that for later, he calls instead for a game of "Get the Guests." Nick tries to get away but George calls for silence. His second novel, about which Martha knows nothing, is an allegory about a nice young couple from the middle west. He's blond and thirty and she's a mousy type who likes brandy. Nick objects, but Honey says she likes to hear stories. George continues about Mousie's father, the holy man, who died and all sorts of money fell out when they pried him apart. Honey, genuinely puzzled, thinks this story is familiar. They settled in a town like New Carthage, and Blondie was in disguise, with a baggage ticket that had H.I. written on it for historical inevitability. Part of his baggage was the little mouse. Honey begins to recognize the story and grows scared. Martha begins to tell George to stop. George flashes back to how the couple got married when Mousie got all puffed up, and they got married, and then the puff went away. Honey is horrified that Nick told them, and Nick tries to apologize. She runs out of the room to be sick again. Nick tells George he's going to regret this and says he'll be just what George says he is. He leaves, to look after Honey. Martha compliments George on the most life he's shown in a long time. He says she brings out the best in him. She calls him bastard and says this is pigmy hunting and he makes her sick. He mockingly says he did it all for her and her taste for carnage. It's perfectly okay for her to sit there and tear him apart all night, and he can't stand it. She says he can stand it, and he married her for it. She's getting tired of whipping him after twenty-three years, and it's not what she's wanted. He calls her sick. She gets angry, screaming she'll show him who's sick and more calmly, says that before she's through with him, he'll wish he'd died in that automobile accident. He says she'll wish she never mentioned their son. He's numbed enough now to be able to take her when they're alone, bringing everything down to a reflex so that he doesn't really hear her. But she's begun not only moving her dirty underthings into public but also moving all the way into her own fantasy world. He says he's worried about her mind and thinks he'll have her committed. Martha tells him their whole arrangement has snapped. You think you can go on forever, making excuses to yourself, like saying that tomorrow you might be dead, but suddenly it breaks. She says she's not a monster. There was a second back there when she could have gotten through to him, but now she's not even going to try. George says that once a month, they get good, misunderstood Martha, and he believes in it because he's a sucker. But now he doesn't want to believe in her, and there is no moment anymore when they could come together. Martha says it went snap tonight when she watched him at Daddy's party and realized he wasn't there. She says she doesn't give a damn anymore and is going to make the biggest explosion he ever heard. He threatens that he'll beat her at her own game. They agree total war. Nick returns and tells George and Martha that Honey is resting on the bathroom floor. She likes the floor because the tiles are cool. George goes to get some ice, leaving Martha and Nick alone. As he walks away, George says that he wouldn't be surprised by anything Martha does. He makes some remark about Honey's being slim-hipped as the reason she and Nick don't have any kids. Nick remains preoccupied with that as Martha blows kisses at him. As he lights her cigarette, she slips his hand between his thighs, moving her hand up and down his leg, and asking for a kiss. Nick's a little hesitant and nervous, but Martha says that Daddy had a party for them to get to know each other and to consider it an experiment. They kiss, and what begins as a joke grows serious. George enters and sees them intertwined sees Nick put his hand on Martha's breast under her dress. Martha begins to slow him down, and George backs up, singing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" before he returns. They separate, and he reenters with the ice bucket, complimenting Martha's radiance with false enthusiasm and making another round of drinks George says that he passed the bathroom on his way back, and Honey is "rolled up like a fetus," sucking her thumb. He moves his chair away from them and says he's going to read a book. This infuriates Martha, who exclaims that they have company and he can't read at four o'clock in the morning. With George's back to them, Martha moves closer to Nick, suggesting they amuse themselves. George, without looking, tells her to entertain her guests. Martha and Nick kiss, and she announces she was necking with one of her guests. She lurches into George's line of vision, bumping into the doorbell chimes, and is angry and suspicious when he simply says "Good for you" and telling her to go back to her necking. George says he doesn't know what the younger generation is coming to and agrees when Nick suggests he couldn't care. When he says that Nick's going to throw Martha over his shoulder, Nick calls him disgusting. George observes that Nick is going to hump his wife and he's disgusting? Martha kisses Nick and sends him, still glaring at George, into the kitchen. Martha demands George who continues reading to listen to her, near tears, or she'll take Nick upstairs. When George finally turns and says "so what," she tells him he asked for it and she'll make him regret the day he came to this college and married her. She leaves. George sits still and begins to read from the book about the decline of the west, then hurls it furiously at the chimes. Honey enters, still sick and half-asleep, saying the bells woke her up and frightened her. George continues to talk to himself, saying he's going to get Martha. Honey continues talking about her dream, in which she was lying somewhere, and the cold wind slipped the blanket off, and she didn't want someone there, and was naked. She begins crying, "I don't want any children." George compassionately says he should have known and asks if Nick knows. He asks how she makes her "secret little murders" so Nick doesn't find out pills? Honey says she feels sick and demands her husband and a drink. Offstage, Martha laughs and dishes crash. George tells Honey that they're in the kitchen, making a sort of dry run for the future. Honey's miserable and insists she doesn't understand. George announces that when people realize they can't abide the present, they either live in the past, as he has done, or they set about to alter the future. Honey ignores his demands to know if she doesn't want any children to ask who rang the doorbell. George has a revelation. He decides that it was someone with a message about their son, and the message is their son is dead. Honey is sick, and says no. George continues, fully realizing his idea. His son is dead, and he hasn't told Martha. He repeats it, pushing Honey to tears. He says he'll tell Martha in good time. Honey, again, says she's going to be sick, then after they hear Martha laugh, that she's going to die. George tells her to go right ahead. Very amused with himself now, he practices, telling Martha that their son is dead. Act Two Analysis: One of Albee's major themes the blurring of illusion and reality takes center stage in this act. Such a concern is characteristic of the Theatre of the Absurd. In his plays, Albee rejected the formlessness of 1960's spontaneous artistic "happenings" and simultaneously eschewed the constrictions of earlier naturalistic playwrights, like Eugene O'Neill. One of Albee's most immediate predecessors is Tennessee Williams, who in plays like A Streetcar Named Desire combined naturalistic dialogue with absurdist or lyrical situations. Albee explores the relationship between illusion and reality in the contrast between his play's form and content. George and Martha's dialogue, at first glance, seems to be a naturalistic representation of a modern-day couple's arguments. Meaningless topics and repetition imitate the sound of real conversation. But there is more to Albee's repetitious dialogue than surface realism. In addition, this repetition emphasizes the circularity of George and Martha's plight. Despite the amount of arguing and repeating they do, George and Martha rarely if ever seem to reach an understanding. That is, there argument is more about the process of arguing rather than any conclusion or agreement achieved by argument. For that reason, it is possible to view Albee's portrayal of modern marriage as decidedly existential. The specifics of George and Martha's history or relationship. What we do know about the characters' histories for example, whether or not George is the boy in the story who accidentally killed both his parents is never presented decisively as truth or illusion. The subject of their arguments doesn't matter. It's not important if George and Martha argue about ice cubes or Bette Davis movies. What matters is how they conduct their argument, how they interact with each other how they choose to exist in this situation in which they've found themselves trapped. The extended metaphor of emotional confrontation as a "game" continues into this act. Within this metaphor, George is the symbolic ringmaster, announcing that Humiliate the Host is over, and that it's time for Get the Guests or Hump the Hostess. While this seemingly blasé attitude towards their personal lives shocks Nick, George and Martha's understanding of "the game" ultimately does not undercut the emotional significance of their battles. If anything, calling these emotional clashes a game serves to make the possibility of emotional destruction more random and uncertain. George says that Martha continually changes the rules on him, and as soon as he learns them, he plays along. Whereas George functions as ringmaster in announcing the end of Humiliate the Host, he does not normally occupy the position of power in the game. Martha, it is oft implied, defines the game and its rules as she goes along. She is the one in the marriage with the power. The metaphor of the game, therefore, functions to illuminate the ongoing power struggle between George and Martha. The incidents in which George takes control of the game announcing that Humiliate the Host is over, for example are significant as his attempts to subvert Martha's power over him. Even in those cases, however, it is clear that George must struggle to gain power in a system whose discourse has been defined by Martha. She has already defined the games. George can only resist by choosing one of her games over another. That is why he chooses a "game" called Hump the Hostess only partially resisting Martha's hegemony, changing the way in which he is humiliated while not eradicating the act of humiliation itself. The extended metaphor of the "game" gradually transforms itself in this act into a new metaphor "war." Whereas a game suggests casual disregard for another's feelings, a war suggests complete and intentional destruction. The individual games, like Hump the Hostess, in the three-ring circus become battles in the war. Because war is declared by two opposing parties on each other, it is possible to read all of George and Martha's actions whether or not they occur in the other's presence as intended to inflict destructive power over the other. Martha's flirtation with and seduction of Nick, therefore, is not about a sexual desire for Nick, per se. As her frustration with George's willful ignorance of this act (when he places his chair so that his back is to Nick and Martha on the couch) and her insistence that he know exactly what she plans to do demonstrate, Martha's sexual encounter with Nick is deliberate strategy in her war against George. The juxtaposition of George's books with Martha's actions emphasizes this war metaphor. He reads aloud from The Decline of the West by Spengler, deliberately ignoring the chaos around him. That chaos, of course, is characteristic of Albee's statement about the American Dream. George and Martha's cozy little college town of New Carthage is a microcosm for the West, threatened and destroyed by conformity (as represented by Nick as biologist) and totalitarianism (as represented by Nick as Nikita Khrushchev). George's joke, when telling his story to Nick, about attending prep school "during the Punic Wars," the wars during which the real Carthage was sacked, further emphasizes this metaphor in which the chaos in George and Martha's marriage represents the decline of the West. This presentation of ponderous and sincerely meant statements in the context of jokes occurs throughout this play. The Theatre of the Absurd is resolutely not frivolous comedy. Rather, Albee's play finds deep and true meaning in the small and absurd details of life. In those ways, it echoes and alludes to Jung's The Undiscovered Self. Nick's name has a polysemous function in this play. Not only does it echo Nikita Khruschchev in Albee's social commentary, it also has religious implications. That is, Nick's name recalls "Old Nick," a moniker for the devil. It is interesting to consider the implications of Nick's name in the light of the title of the second act. "Walpurgisnacht" is a religious allusion to the Satanic black Sabbath, in which witches enact an orgy. Ultimately, however, the metaphor of Nick as Satan is not as sustainable as another reading Martha as Satan. George pointedly refers to her as the devil or Satan twice in this act alone. She is the central focus of the worshippers (George and Nick) in this act. George as the "Host" referring both to his role as master of ceremonies and to the manifestation of the Body of Christ in the Catholic tradition performs an exorcism beginning in this act. Further religious imagery comes in the references to George and Martha's imagined son as a "lamb," making him a Christ figure. Sound imagery is very important in this play. The central sound granted multiple meanings in this act is the bells doorbell chimes into which Martha twice crashes. The chimes also echo the Catholic Mass, in which chimes signal the transformation of the host and wine into body and blood and mark the progress of the service. The chimes here signal an important moment of progress or movement in this Black Mass. The chimes function as a catalyst for George's realization of what he must do "kill" the "son" perform an exorcism of his and Martha's shared illusions and thus move forward rather than around in circles. Indeed, for the most part, George and Martha (and Honey and Nick) move in circles. George and Martha, in this act, reference moments when they might have connected, when they might have understood each other, but those moments are always already past and wasted. Again, using humor to underscore his deeper point, Albee employs cultural clichés about a lack of communication to express a belief about the impossibility of human connection. Albee readily admits he has become a caricaturist. George and Martha are unable to connect because they are unable to listen to each other or themselves. In this play, especially in this act, that connection is portrayed through the medium of language. As is clear from their verbal shorthand "the bit about the kid" left unexplained to the audience or Nick and Honey, George and Martha are able to connect the most on the lexigraphical level. Their games are for the most part verbal. Words have power Martha is clearly hurt to be called a monster, for example but language remains a closed system in which Martha and George communicate. The power of Martha and George's verbal connection to bind each other together is no more apparent than in Honey and Nick's bafflement in reaction to it. To a great degree, Honey and Nick function as surrogates for the audience. George and Martha's all-out, unabashed war on each other is as shocking to this young couple as it is to the audience. They too must gradually learn to rules of the game and the meaning of the verbal shorthand. Nick's professed embarrassment at hearing George offer up Martha in Hump the Hostess is the audience's discomfort too. Albee's simultaneous portrayal of Honey and Nick as empty, conformist characters is also a statement on his audience as members of contemporary American society. In response to those who criticized the Theatre of Absurd as lacking the noble intentions of earlier American drama, Albee replied that the "public will get what it deserves and no more." What the 1960's public evidently deserved was a blurring and redefining of the lines between illusion and reality. George and Martha are sustained by an illusion their imaginary son that takes on the power of reality. Much of the "facts" of this act are never proved or disproved. While we know from something Martha says, that there is some truth to George's autobiographical novel reality that becomes illusion it is unclear just how much. George himself tells Nick straight-out that none of what he says may be true. In the end, the Theatre of the Absurd justifies itself through its blurring of reality and illusion. Something can be illusion, like Martha and George's son, and still have a very real emotional impact. Theatre, which by definition is illusion, seeks and when successful achieves that same emotional impact upon its audience.
Summary and Analysis of Act Three
Act Three Summary: "The Exorcism" At open, Martha enters. The stage is empty and she talks to herself, wondering where everyone is. To amuse herself, she creates a conversation between herself and George, in which he says he'd do anything for her. She says Hump the Hostess and laughs at that, saying "fat chance." Martha goes on to create a conversation between herself and her father, in which she says that he has red eyes because he cries all the time. She says she and George cry all the time too, then freeze their tears to make ice to put in their drinks. Throughout the entire speech, she periodically yells to ask where everybody is. She concludes by imitating the ice cubes, "CLINK!CLINK!CLINK!CLINK!" Nick enters. He thinks everyone's gone crazy and repeats that assertion several times. Honey is lying on the floor of the bathroom, peeling the label off a liquor bottle. In response to him calling her crazy, Martha tells him he's a "flop." In fact, they're all flops, while Martha calls herself the Earth Mother. She says that she disgusts herself with her would-be infidelities, waiting for a bunch of impotent lunk-heads with her dress up over her head. George is the only man in her life who has ever made her happy. Nick can't believe it and thinks she's kidding. But Martha says that George keeps learning the game as quickly as she can change the rules and makes her happy. She concludes "George and Martha: sad, sad, sad," repeating that line over and over again. Nick remains confused. Martha says that Nick doesn't see anything. When he gets snappish, she calls him a gelding and imitates a gattling gun. Just then, the doorbell chimes. Martha yells at Nick to answer it telling him he can be the houseboy now. Nick gives in and opens the door. George stands there, his face covered by an enormous bouquet of snapdragons, and says, "Flores para los muertos." He pretends to mistake Nick for his "sonny-Jim," but Martha tells him that's the houseboy. Nick tries to get away, but Martha and George join together in mocking him as houseboy. When George says he picked the flowers by moonlight, it spurs an argument with Martha, who says that there is no moon she saw it go down from the bedroom. George says that the moon came back up just like it did one time when he was sailing past Majorca. Martha says that's lie. Nick says he doesn't know when they're lying or not. Martha and George argue about whether he's been to Majorca, where he says his parents took him as a college graduation present. When Nick asks if this was after he killed them, Martha and George pause, then say maybe, maybe not. George begins tormenting Nick, calling him houseboy, and Nick pleads with Martha to tell George he's not a houseboy. When Martha tells George he doesn't know the difference between truth and illusion, he says that they must carry on as if they did. Nick is grateful to Martha when she does. George, in contrast, starts dancing around, through the snap dragons at Martha and saying "snap" each time, asking Nick if he is a houseboy and saying he disgusts him. When Martha asks George if truth and illusion doesn't matter to him at all, George announces he has one more game to play bringing up baby. He orders Nick to sit and calls for "SOWWIEE" for Honey until Nick goes to get her himself. Near tears, Martha pleads with George for no more games, tenderly moving to touch him. He grabs her by the hair and tells her she can't just go on and stop when she has enough blood in her mouth. He's going to make her performance look like an Easter pageant. He wants an equal battle and he wants her mad. She gets mad, and he says they're going to play this one to the death. Martha says she's ready, as Nick and Honey enter. Honey is pretending to be a bunny. As George starts the game, saying she doesn't remember anything and saying "Hello, Dear," to Nick until he embarrasssedly says hello to her. When George begins to recap the games of the evening, Honey adds "peel the label" to the list. George says they all peel labels and when you get down to the bone, there's something still inside, and you've got to get at the marrow. The marrow is particularly resilient in the young like their son. Martha doesn't want to talk about him. George starts describing him, saying he's a nice kid in spite of his home life what with Martha's drinking, trying to break into the bathroom to wash him when he's sixteen, and all. Martha, near tears, takes over the description. George prompts and echoes her as she goes. Her story is an idyllic recitation. He was born on a September night. It was an easy birth after it had been accepted. He was a healthy child with black hair that later turned blond as the sun. She had wanted a child. And they raised him with teddy bears and transparent floating goldfish. He was a restless child, who kept arrows with rubber tips under his bed "for fear." On Saturdays, he ate banana boats. His eyes were deep green. He loved the son, and was a beautiful boy. George begins to chant the Requiem mass for the dead as Martha continues speaking. She talks about how he broke his arm when he saw his first cow. He grew and walked between them, a hand out to each of them, to protect himself and them. She concludes "So beautiful. So wise." Suddenly, Honey cries out in tears that she wants a child. Martha ignores the interruption and continues, saying that this perfection couldn't last long with George around. George tried to pull him down with him, but Martha fought him. When George interjects, asking how he tried, Martha suddenly insists that their son is fine and is away at college. George tells Martha she just can't stop a story like that. Martha, he says, has a problem with liquor and a father who couldn't give a damn whether she lives or dies. Her son didn't want to be used as a weapon against his father and fought her every inch of the way, unable to tolerate her braying. Martha calls this lies and says he couldn't stand his father being a failure. She says that he only writes her letters. George claims he writes him letters at his office. Martha says the son spends his summers away because he can't stand the "shadow of the man" his father has become. George says he stays away because there is no room for him with the liquor bottles. As Martha continues to insist that she has raised her son to be good against all odds in her marriage, George again begins to chant the Requiem and then Kyrie Eleison. Honey grows hysterical and screams for them to stop it. Knowing what is coming, she begins weeping as George tells Martha he has some news for her about "sonny-Jim." While she and Nick were out of the room, he and Honey were sitting there and the doorbell rang. It was Western Union with a telegram. Some telegrams you have to deliver; some you can't phone. Honey keeps telling George to stop. Finally George tells Martha that their son isn't coming home for his birthday he can't. Martha objects, but George continues, slowly telling her that their son is dead. He was killed late in the afternoon, driving on a country road with a learner's permit in his pocket, when he swerved to avoid a porcupine and drove straight into a tree. Martha screams that George cannot do that. She tells him he can't decide for himself. She won't let him decide these things. George coolly continues, saying they'll have to go around noon to identify the body. She leaps at him, but he holds her back as she says that she won't let him do this. She begins moaning "no" and sinks to the floor, insisting he is not dead. George insists he is. Nick tries to comfort her by telling her it wasn't George's decision, but Martha screams that George can't kill him can't have him die. She demands to see the telegram, but George says, with a straight face, that he ate it. Martha spits in his face. Honey agrees that he ate it. She watched him. Martha tells George he's not going to get away with this, but George tells her she knows the rules. Nick begins to realize what's going on. As Martha insists he is their child, George insists he has killed him. Nick furiously announces that he thinks he understands. Martha, no just sad, repeats that George doesn't have the right, but George tenderly tells her that he does have the right. They never spoke of it, but he could kill him any time he wanted. Martha asks why, and George tells her that he broke their rule and mentioned him to someone else. Martha demands who, and a crying Honey says me. Martha screams that she forgets. Sometimes when it's night and everyone is talking, she forgets, but George didn't have to kill him. George simply repeats in Latin the last lines of the funeral service, to which Honey gives the appropriate responses. After a long silence, George says that it will be dawn soon, and the party's over. Nick quietly asks if they could have any. George and Martha agree that "we" couldn't. Nick takes Honey's hand, and they get up to leave. Before he goes, Nick says, "I'd like to" but George cuts him off, saying good night. Nick and Honey exit. The final section is very quiet. George picks up glasses and asks Martha if she wants anything. She doesn't. He asks if she's tired. She is. After a long silence, she asks if he had to. He pauses and says yes. She asks again, and he says yes and adds that it was time. After a pause, Martha says she's cold. George says it's late. After a long silence, he says it will be better. She says she doesn't know. He says that it will be maybe. She's not sure and asks "justus?" He says yes. She asks if maybe they could -- and he says no. She says, "Yes. No." He asks if she's all right. She says, "Yes. No." He puts his hand on her shoulder, and she leans her head back. He sings very softly, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" "I amGeorgeIam," Martha says. George nods slowly. The play ends with this tableau in silence. Act Three Analysis: Albee explore the theme of circularity in this final act. He employs the device of contrast not to demonstrate how much things have changed between the beginning and end of the play but to show, despite appearances, how little things have changed. Both the opening and closing scenes of the play feature Martha and George alone on stage. Both scenes feature one of them singing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" But whereas the first scene is fast-paced and loud, full of dialogue and frenetic energy, the final scene is quiet and contemplative. George and Martha speak in short sentences and monosyllables. Whereas Martha considered the song a "scream" and considered it a humorous means with which to rile George in the first scene, in the final scene George sings the song as a sort of lullaby to comfort her. Despite the contrast in energy, however, how much has really changed? Martha and George's marriage is still miserable. They still desire illusion and eschew reality. Albee has said that "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" means "Who is afraid to live without illusions?" At the end, after George sings it, Martha simply says, "I am." Those are the final words of the play. Albee's ultimate message is that we must live without illusions, however much comfort they give us. When Martha begins to suggest the possibility of creating another imaginary child, George says no before she can even finish the sentence. According to Albee, the song "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wool?" came from words he saw scrawled on the wall of Greenwich Village restaurant's bathroom. But the reference to Virginia Woolf, the famous writer, is meaningful in terms of the literary illusions it suggests. For one thing, Woolf went mad and committed suicide. Her self-destruction can be seen as a commentary on George and Martha's self-destruction. Also, as a fiction writer, Woolf created beautiful and elaborate, but ultimately illusory, stories just as Martha and George have created a perfect, but imaginary, son. In this act, as in the rest of the play, Albee continues to explore the problematic relationship between illusion and reality. When Martha tells Nick that George is the only man who has ever been able to make her happy, Nick things she's kidding. In response to his disbelief, Martha says, "You always trade in appearances?" Nick, like most of the audience, believes that what he sees and is told is the truth; only in the last minutes of the play, does Nick come to the shocking realization that much of what he has been told is not in fact true. Later, Martha and George both admit that they cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality but it's important to act as if they do. This is the very danger Albee's play functions as a warning against. Martha's inability to distinguish between illusion and reality is responsible for George's decision to "kill" their son. In her tearful pleas to him after he announces the boy's death, Martha explains that sometimes when it gets late, it's hard for her to keep him a secret. George, more than Martha, sees the danger this blurring causes, and his perspective allows him to make the decision to end the game. Along with Nick, the audience is forced to recognize in this act just how tenuous George's and Martha's grasp of and Albee's presentation of illusion and reality has been. When George, in the midst of another argument, asserts that his parents took him to Majorca as a college graduation present, Nick coolly asks if this occurred after he killed them. His shock and betrayal at this assertion and at the revelation that the child is imaginary reveals his assumptions with regard to appearances and reality. Honey, who has functioned throughout the play as a Greek chorus, makes some surprisingly apt remarks here. Her drunken insistence that the group play "peel the label" leads George to make a significant remark about how it is important to go below the surface, below the bone, right to the marrow. Killing the son is going to the marrow for George. Though not consciously, Honey is more deeply attuned to the emotional truth of the situation than appearances-trading Nick. When she responds appropriately to George's recitation of the Requiem for the dead, she subconsciously recognizes that the death of this child, even though imaginary, is a painful and final experience for George. Albee makes numerous literary allusions throughout the play but here he focuses in particular on Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. When talking to herself at the beginning of the scene, she references "The Poker Game," the painting based on the scene in which fragile Blanche comes in on her animalistic brother-in-law Stanley's poker game. Secondly, when he comes in with the snapdragons, George quotes a line of dialogue from Williams' play "Flores para los muertos," flowers for the dead. In Streetcar, that line foreshadows Blanche's imminent spiritual and emotional (though not physical death). While George's use of the line foreshadows his announcement of "sonny-Jim's" death, it also proceeds the spiritual decimation of his and Martha's marriage. Another literary allusion in this play is to Hamlet. When George enters with the flowers, Martha exclaims, "Pansies! Rosemary! Violence! My wedding bouquet!" This line echoes Ophelia's mad speech in Hamlet in which she offers the other characters imaginary flowers, telling them their meanings ("Rosemary is for remembrance"). Here, Martha, in another example of the linguistic cleverness of her dialogue with George, substitutes "violence" for "violets," characterizing her marriage. Additionally, this literary allusion offers more foreshadowing of death. Ophelia gives her speech before drowning herself. Though mentioned elsewhere in the play, Biblical allusions take on a central meaning in this act. Albee entitles this act, "The Exorcism," referring to George's exorcism of the destructive power of their illusory son on their marriage. From the chimes in the previous act to more explicit references here, George and Martha's son becomes a Christ figure sacrificed for the good of their marriage in a Christian allegory. George chants Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy) and the Requiem (Catholic funeral service) during Martha's monologue about their son. Martha herself calls the boy a "poor lamb," and Jesus is also known as the "Lamb of God" for his sacrificial death. Ultimately, the son is a profoundly ambivalent symbol in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Though he is the source of many arguments between George and Martha, who argue over everything from his eye color to the letters he writes home from college to which of them has ruined his life more, he is also a force that brings them together. Martha's final monologue about his life presents a perfect, idealized child. She describes the boy who "walked evenly between usa hand out to each of us." From this monologue, we finally see what appearances have no previously shown. We see the importance of this son, even though imaginary, to George and Martha. Clearly, he has been created of a means of binding George and Martha together. Their dialogue and Martha's emphasis on "we" when Nick asks if they've never been able to have children shows us how much their individual son bonded George and Martha together. George's decision to kill him, therefore, is an incredibly meaningful and significant one. Though he was imaginary, his impact on their emotions and the future of their relationship is clear from their reactions to the boy's "death."
ClassicNote on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
|
