American Dream Summary/Analysis

American Dream Close Reading Reflection

                The American Dream by Edward Albee is a one-scene play from 1960 about the materialism in American society which Albee felt was so dangerous at the time he wrote it. The play is seen as a part of the Theater of the Absurd, which I understand to be a movement in theater in which language is devalued and nothing really happens, leaving the viewer confused. In this play, there is definitely a plot and certain messages which Albee tries to send, so it doesn't really fit that well into the pigeonhole that many literary critics have put it in.

                As a brief summary of important details, the characters are Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Mrs. Barker, and the Young Man. Grandma is the only really normal character, and seems to represent the "old' American dream. Mommy and Daddy have switched gender roles and act ridiculously much of the time, and Mrs. Barker has power struggles with Mommy inside Mommy's own home. The Young Man is called the "American Dream" by Grandma, and, as he said, "I let people love me... I am incomplete... I can feel nothing." It all takes place inside Mommy and Daddy's apartment, where Grandma also lives. I think an important detail I may forget is that Mommy and Grandma come from "pioneer stock" and used to be poor. A summary of the plot: Mommy and Daddy argue, Grandma gets in on the arguing, Mrs. Barker arrives and also argues, and then Mommy and Daddy leave to try to destroy Grandma's TV. Grandma then reveals the horrible story of a baby Mommy and Daddy adopted being mutilated. The Young Man arrives soon after, and he is the twin of that baby who experienced the mutilation on an emotional level as opposed to a physical one. Grandma moves out (possibly symbolic for dying?) and the Young Man (pretending to be the "van man") becomes a part of the family.

                As this is a play, there isn't a narrative voice, although at the very end Grandma does speak directly to the reader. The author's style is very foreign to me, but I got used to it after the first read. The way he switched tones quickly and made things happen in ways that weren't logical made it hard to pick out important details. The symbolism, however, was often clear, and I think it was fairly easy to identify the symbolism in Grandma and the Young Man when she called him the American Dream. For the imagery, when he elaborated on how the baby was torn apart by its adopted parents it really added a lot of detail and made it seem more real, causing me to experience more emotion while reading it. While I read the play, the repetition really stood out to me the most. There was a ton of it, and it showed me what details were important since I could tell something was important if it was repeated a lot.

                

One-sentence theme statement:  To me, the most obvious messages that the book sent were mostly about materialism and society's values changing.

                The materialism piece has been emphasized so heavily in all the readings we have done, and there is a ton of evidence for it in the text. The treatment of Grandma and the adopted baby like objects are two very good examples, as well as the beginning of the play where they talk about hats and their color, and shopping. After discussing it with a few classmates, I feel the idea that Mrs. Barker represents corporations is probably correct, and seems to me to be the most likely meaning that Albee had for her. This also ties into the hypothesis that the materialism is a theme in the book.

                The changing of society's values also seemed very clear to me, especially because of the contrast between Grandma and the Young Man. With the Young Man tied to the American Dream, and that being the title of the play, Albee placed much emphasis on the fact that the Young Man represents the new American Dream. If at the end Grandma has truly died, that really supports this analysis as well, because the old American Dream would have been replaced with the new one.

quotes: 

                "everybody's got what he's wants... or everybody's got what he thinks he wants." -Grandma

In this quote, the last line of the entire play, Grandma reveals that she doesn't believe that everybody actually has what they want, but they mistakenly think they do. I think this is a condemnation of the materialism and the "new" American Dream which the play has criticized.

                "old people don't go anywhere; they're either taken places, or put places." -Mrs. Barker

This quote shows how Grandma is treated not like a person, but like an object to be moved around without consideration of her desires. It is consistent with the view that Mrs. Barker represents corporations or business of some sort, as many businesses are involved with "taking" or "putting" old people in places they may not want to be.