Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1985

Thesis Director

Richard E. Rogers

Abstract

The plays of Edward Albee are frequently examinations of characters who are unable to love or to be loved. A central and recurring conflict which runs through many of Albee's plays is the conflict which stems from the lack of success which the characters often experience as they strive to find love. The uncertainty and ambiguity which surround the abstraction called "love" leave the characters with feelings of unhappiness, frustration, fear, self-hatred, and despondency. Though the individuals in Albee's plays are aware that love is the ingredient which is missing from their lives, none knows how to go about alleviating such a emotional deficiency. The result is a collection of characters who desperately want love, but who are, nevertheless, totally unequipped to attain it.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate and examine the pervasiveness of "failed love" and to explore it as a theme in the drama of Edward Albee. Utilizing examples from five representative Albee works--The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance, All Over, and Seascape--as well as previous criticism on Albee's drama, I will analyze the "failed love" theme. A framework for examining the phenomenon of "love" is provided by the inclusion of insights and observations on the topic from Dr. Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving (1956). Though other critics have alluded to the significance of the "failed love" theme in Albee's plays, few have delved deeply into the area and none has provided a working definition of "love" or criteria to differentiate love from other similar (but inferior) phenomena. The goal of the present study is to give greater insight into the forces at work in Albee's powerful drama by showing the major role that love and its routine failure play in the development of the theme and plot of each play.

This examination will focus chiefly on four specific areas in which Albee's characters routinely fail in their quests for love. After briefly discussing the philosophies of Albee and Fromm on the subject of Man's alienation and his need for love, I will provide an overview of the prevalence of the problem of alienation in twentieth-century Western culture. Each of the remaining sections will deal with one of the obstacles to the achievement of love which regularly surface in the plays of Edward Albee. Specifically, those obstacles include: chronic passivity, personal immaturity, a lack of love during childhood, and an inability to love oneself.

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