Use of Surrealistic Techniques in Edward Albee’s Plays

Submitted by: Muqaddas Javed Roll No. 13

Supervised by Sohail Ahmed Saeed Assistant Professor Department of English Literature

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY (English Literature) Session: 2010-13

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

The Islamia University of Bahawalpur

ABSTRACT

This research will trace various surrealistic techniques present in Edward Albee’s plays.

Surrealism has been a very important movement of art and literature before World War II, it has greatly influenced the modern and post-modern theories of literature. Edward Albee is the first

American playwright who has incorporated these techniques in his plays, hence revolutionizing the American theatre.

Edward Albee is best known as a dramatist belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd. This research will initially explore the surrealistic techniques evident in the absurd plays of Edward

Albee, after that it will identify the same techniques as being used in some of the other plays of

Albee that fall under the category of realism or expressionism. This study aim to examine the surrealistic themes, motifs, stylistic techniques and other stage devices that appear again and again in Albee’s work; giving it a distinctive trait.

This research will throw light on the fact that Albee’s works are not nihilistic rather he critically evaluates the modern human condition in order to break the modern materialistic myths of success. This research intends to examine Albee’s purpose of using different surrealistic techniques and their effect on the audience. In conclusion this study will try to prove that through use of surrealistic techniques Albee has experimented with different forms of playwriting. In fact these techniques extend his vision and link him with the post-modern writers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 8

Chapter 3: SURREAL PASTICHE 34

Chapter 4: SURREALISTIC REALISM 53

Chapter 5: A PURE SURREALISTIC EXPERIENCE 78 CONCLUSION 106

WORKS CITED 110

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Chapter 1

Introduction

This research aims to emphasize the use of surrealistic techniques by Edward Albee in his early plays. Edward Albee is the most influential contemporary dramatist. He has changed the nature of American drama by fusing realism and absurdism through use of surrealistic techniques in his plays. This study traces the different contemporary themes and issues that have been the key themes of Surrealists. Surrealism has been known as an anti-rational movement. Albee‟s characters also inhabit a world that defies reason. Self-deception, insanity, exaggerated and fake emotions and compulsive actions rooted in a desire to make human contact are the traits of

Albee‟s characters. The research further analyses surrealistic techniques such as automatism, elliptical expression, use of grotesque, element of surprise and fusion of opposites that are some surrealistic techniques of exposing the reality. These techniques are also being used by the post- modern writers for exploring the truth behind all the grand narratives of human progress and explaining the objective reality.

Albee is given credit to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960‟s. C. W.

E. Bigsby maintains, “If Edward Albee had not existed he would most certainly have been invented” (249). Bigsby believes that the American theatre was in a state of crises when fortunately Albee appeared with his first play The Zoo Story which was an immediate success.

Harold Bloom also calls Edward Albee “the crucial American dramatist of his generation”(01) as he stands as a link between the older dramatists such as Eugene O‟ Neil, Tennessee Williams,

Arthur Miller and the best of the younger ones like Sam Shepard and David Mamet. He has brought the French avant-garde movement to the American theatre but he has molded it to the Javed 2 current American social condition. He is grouped with writers of the Theatre of the Absurd.

Albee has pleaded the case of the new plays as early as 1962 when he wrote that

The avant-garde theatre is fun; it is free-swinging, bold,

iconoclastic and often wildly, wildly funny. If you will approach it

with childlike innocence- putting your standard responses aside . . .

if you approach it on its own terms, I think you will be in for a

liberating surprise (qtd in Amacher).

Albee‟ plays also follow the same line. They are bold, free-swinging, iconoclastic and wild, an effect that has been created by the use of different surrealistic techniques.

Albee has always been very vocal about his views regarding theatre in general, American theatre, its audience and the role of dramatist and critic. He does not believe that any art form can be “just like life”. According to him, “Reality on stage is highly selective reality, chosen to give form. Real dialogue on stage is impossible . . .” (qtd in Amacher). So he uses surrealism as a mode of presenting absolute reality as he sees it. Surrealism was a movement in the visual arts and literature between World War I and II. It flourished in Europe and deliberately defied reason.

The term was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire but its first manifesto was given by Andre‟

Breton in 1924. Breton drew upon the theories of Sigmund Freud and concluded that unconscious was the real source of all imagination. The aim of the movement was to revolutionize human experience concerning all personal, social, cultural and political aspects.

The Surrealists wanted to free people from false rationality and restrictive cultural structures.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica surrealism is a means of joining dream and fantasy to everyday reality to form “an absolute reality, a surreality” (Surrealism). The surrealists saw a Javed 3 deep crisis in Western culture and tried to revise the then current values. This was performed by involving unconventional techniques such as automatism and juxtaposition of opposites. Albee has been concerned about the American condition. He believes that the present day world made no sense “because the moral, religious, political and social structures man has erected to

„illusion‟ himself have collapsed” (qtd in Amacher). So he uses surrealistic techniques in his plays in an attempt to make sense or at least free his readers from the false illusions which hinder him from comprehending reality.

Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines Surrealism as an attempt to reach beyond the limits of the real. Accordingly, Surrealists break down the boundaries that separate rationality from irrationality. They explore dreams, hallucinations, and sexual desires by creating bizarre imaginative effects. Oxford Companion to French Literature define surrealism as the exploration of the subconscious, a state in which there is fusion of dream and reality, a point in the mind where pairs of opposites (e.g. life and death. The real and the imaginary, the past and the future) cease to be perceived as contradictory. Columbia Encyclopedia states that surrealism is a movement dedicated to expression of imagination, free of conscious control of reason and convention. It maintains that the surrealist writers were interested in the association and implication of words rather than their literal meanings. Hence from all these definitions it can be perceived that the surrealistic techniques involve harnessing of opposites. The boundaries that divide conscious from unconscious, sane from bizarre, real from imaginary, rational from irrational and even past from future disappear. The characters of the surrealistic plays give a free hand to their imagination, as a result their subconscious controls and direct their desires and actions. Albee‟s plays abound with such characters. Jerry of The Zoo Story, Grandma of The Javed 4

Sandbox and The American Dream, George and Martha of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and

Julian of Tiny Alice are few such characters.

Antonin Artaud, an early surrealist started the Theatre of Cruelty, in which feelings and emotions were not expressed through language but through allegory, mythological or archetypal vision. He felt that rational discourse was based on falsehood and illusion. Surrealism officially died down by the end of World War II but many postmodern literary movements were directly influenced by it. Many themes and techniques which are identified as Postmodern are similar to

Surrealism. The concept of simulacra and hyperreality as discussed by the French philosopher

Jean Baudrilled in his work Simulacra et Simulation and magical realism are extensions of surrealism. As they also delight in puzzles and breaking down of barriers. The playwrights grouped under the Theatre of Absurd by Martin Esslin use many of the themes and techniques used by the Surrealists and Edward Albee is one of them. He uses surrealistic techniques in most of his plays to present the absurd condition of modern civilization in general and American dream in particular. Surrealism is anti-rational and anti-realist. Albee‟s plays do not present a rational world. The characters and situations are bizarre. Truth and illusion, sanity and insanity, revelation and self-deception overlap while the barriers between the conscious and unconscious mind dissolve. Dialogues appear non-sensical and actions stem out of hallucinations, hidden compulsive emotions or forced dream like situations. Most of the characters are living in private hells and inflicting anguish on those around them. Thus Edward Albee‟s plays present an interesting study in the use of surrealism.

Nightmarish atmosphere is a characteristic technique used by surrealist. The world presented in surrealist art seems more unreal than real, it has a nightmarish quality. Albee‟s plays also present a similar world. Jerry and Peter, Mommy and Daddy, George and Martha, Julian and Javed 5

Miss Alice all live in unreal worlds where anything is possible. The atmosphere of Death of

Bessie Smith and Tiny Alice is like a bad dream that never ends. Seascape reminds one of science fiction, where a human couple meets fish like creatures who have come from under the sea. Even the plays where everything seems normal like in The Delicate Balance and Who is Sylvia the nightmare lurks in a corner and threaten to destroy harmony.

Bringing together of opposites is a characteristic feature of surrealistic writers. They fuse illusion into reality and sanity into insanity. The world of Tiny Alice is real as well as unreal. In the play it is difficult to decide which world is real and which is replica. In Who’s Afraid of

Virginia Woolf again so many things remain uncertain like the story of George about the boy who kills his parents and mystery of Honey‟s pregnancies. Even the son who seems real turns out to be an illusion. Many of Albee‟s characters that appear sane and normal by the end of the play turn out as freaks or loonies. Jerry is a schizophrenic, Martha is paranoid, Julian has hallucinations and Mark is a sodomist. The element of sudden surprise that breaks the grand narrative and forces the reader to accept truth with all its unpleasantness is also device used by

Albee. Jerry surprises everyone by impaling himself on the knife that Peter is holding. In this way he exposes modern man‟s estranged and isolated condition and his desperate desire to make contact.

The stylistic devices that have been used by the Surrealists are automatic writing, elliptical expression, rejection of conventional punctuation, innovation in vocabulary and imagery that present surreal and its ambience. Traditionally critics discuss Albee‟s plays as belonging to the theatre of the absurd or under natural realism. Some of his plays have been called surreal but not much work has been done on the surreal element present in almost all of his plays. The purpose of this research is to fill that gap and maintain that surreal techniques have Javed 6 been used by Albee throughout his works. This influence is most prominent in his early plays but continues as special techniques that Albee uses in almost all of his plays.

This research deals with literary research thus the methodology used is qualitative and analytical. Reasoning and comparative approaches are applied for examining different surrealistic techniques present in Albee‟s plays. The purpose of the research is to analyze different works of Albee and trace the usage of surrealistic techniques through some of his most popular works.

Chapter 1 deals with Albee‟s two one-act plays; The Sandbox and The American Dream.

In literary circles Albee has been grouped with writers who wrote under the theatre of the

Absurd. The Sandbox and The American Dream are considered examples of the theatre of the

Absurd. Chapter 1 explores the surrealistic techniques used by Albee in these plays. It also develops a link that can be seen between the theatre of the absurd and surrealism. For this purpose, it provides a discussion on different themes of these plays which can be considered as major concern of surrealistic writers as well as the writers of the theatre of the absurd. It further analyses the characters of these plays as human figures converted into automatons as well as their symbolic significance. It further examines some of the stylistic devices used in the play to project the ambience present in modern man‟s existence.

Chapter 2 traces surrealistic techniques in two of Albee‟s plays which have been labeled as realistic plays. It deals with The Zoo Story, Albee‟s first play to be played in theatre and

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Albee‟s most popular and anthologized play. Both of these plays portray man‟s real condition as a social being, the isolation and alienation that is experienced by individuals and their attempt at making contact by either forming or breaking Javed 7 illusions. This chapter highlights the various surrealistic techniques that have been used by Albee in his attempt to break the grand narratives of civilization and show the traumas and nightmares hidden behind all complacent facades. It specifically psychoanalyses the characters and their motifs as well as explores the link that is present between the themes of surrealism and realism.

Chapter 3 presents Tiny Alice as a pure surrealistic experiment. Tiny Alice is one of

Albee‟s most criticized and controversial plays. Many readers fail to follow the links present in the play. However, it can be appreciated if it is read as a surrealistic play with deep psychological insight into the psyche of a character in search of truth. This play has a metaphysical element and embodies some of the concepts of Antonin Artaud concerning new theatre and superbly presents them on stage. Tiny Alice provides an interesting study of symbolism and juxtaposition of real versus fake. The play also uses the concept of Wayang or the shadow, a technique used by Indonesian Balinese theatre and later by the surrealists.

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Conclusion

Surrealism is a movement that has not survived the Second World War but its techniques are identifiable in works of writers who are classed as modern or post-modern. Surrealistic techniques have been used by writers who are grouped under the Theatre of the Absurd. In theatre, achievements of Surrealism (as defined in Breton‟s first manifesto) are not as remarkable as those seen in the fields of painting and poetry. Still Surrealism has exerted immense influence on the modern and post-modern dramatists. Martin Esslin has acknowledged the fact that the

Theatre of the Absurd represents trends that have been apparent in Surrealism. He further writes that “Surrealism believed in the great positive, healing force of the subconscious mind” (378) and modern drama is based on workings of the subconscious mind. It would not be incorrect to say that even the latest trend of magical realism can trace its roots to surrealism.

Edward Albee is a modern American playwright. He has greatly influenced the American theatre as his plays have been experimental. He has always believed in stage as being a plastic medium. He has used many surrealistic techniques in his plays to expose the reality of the

American scene. Surrealism advocates an art that is “more real than realty, expressing essences rather than appearances” (Esslin 362). Its purpose has been to shock the spectators out of their complacency. Albee‟s conception of Drama is similar. His plays are a critique of the modern sterile society. They have been much criticized because they aim to cut deep into the psyche of his audience.

Albee‟s characters are citizens of the modern world but they are living an insipid and vacuous life. They try to create meaning for themselves through myths and clichéd behavioral pattern that are exposed by the end of the play. His characters are mostly prototypes or symbols Javed 107 representing human conscious. Some of them are haunted and tormented by private nightmares while others live in a dream world of illusions. They are in quest of unattainable objectives which they themselves are not clear about. For a moment they have an insight about their own as well as human plight in general but then they revert back to normal. Like Beckett and Ionesco,

Albee‟s characters also form paradoxical pairs such as Jerry and Peter, Mommy and Daddy,

George and Martha, The Cardinal and The Lawyer and Julian and Miss Alice. This surrealistic technique results in loss of individuality and treatment of characters as objects. It also presents their sense of loss and abandonment and their desire for human contact. His characters are victims of self-deception, insanity, exaggerated emotions and compulsive behavior. They suffer as well as inflict pain on all those who surround them.

Albee‟s plays have a nightmarish atmosphere. There is a sense of waiting and suppressed aggression. His plays have no clear-cut plots, the end is directly opposite to the expectations of the audience. His plays exhibit element of grotesque in form of narrative and images. They abound in sexual innuendos and bizarre phantasmagoric situations. In most of his plays Albee uses the technique of reversion or inversion of situation for exposition. The relationship between the characters and their surrounding is always hostile. Colors and background is used to create special effects such as in The Death of Bessie Smith clothes of different colors are used as backdrops which also represent the emotional mood of the scene. Albee‟s stage is not cluttered mostly there is a lack of props, that is deliberate on part of the author, because dialogues and actions are more important. Sometimes he uses untraditional stage props that are either symbols or representative of the theme. Sandbox, Peter‟s bench, model of the mansion, Grandma‟s boxes are a few such examples. Music is also very important in Albee‟s plays. Some of his one act plays have been likened to musical compositions with their high and low notes. A musician is Javed 108 among the characters present on the stage in The Sandbox while the title of the play Who’s

Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is taken from a song sung in the play. Albee uses drastic effects to shock his spectators; such as Jerry being impaled on a knife, Grandma half buried in a children‟s sandbox and Julian crucified before model of the mansion; all create strong visual effects. He has even tried to introduce the technique of close-up on the stage through use of spot light and intense dialogues.

His plays question the very nature of language as a mean s of communication. He uses many stylistic devices that have been used by renowned Surrealists. Sometimes his dialogues appear as a piece of automatic writing or nonsense writing. Albee rejects the conventional punctuations. Mostly dialogues are in form of elliptical expressions or euphemism. Silence is important and sometimes more expressive than language. Word games, puns, anagrams, broken sentences and allusions to earlier texts are the surrealistic techniques present in Albee‟s plays. He uses grotesque and absurd images that further heighten the surrealistic effect.

Albee‟s most favorite themes are man‟s alienation from his fellow men, the inertia and vacuum that is a trait of modern man‟s life and meaninglessness and ambience of human existence. In his plays there is a constant overlapping of Truth and illusion, conscious and unconscious and even life and death. Some critics have branded him as a nihilist and existentialist. However this is not the case. Albee‟s vision is apocalyptical and prophetic. For him need to make contact is very important and redeeming feature of modern man. His plays end on a positive note. The result is a forward movement, though sometimes it is not very clear. He is a demonic social critic who wants to destroy complacency and self-satisfaction of Americans in particular and modern man in general. His plays especially reveal the truth behind the American

Dream. Separateness, childlessness, commodification, artificial in place of real, indecent sexual Javed 109 behavior, blood and excessive use of liquor are some of the motifs that appear repeatedly in his plays.

The purpose of this research has been to identify as well as elucidate surrealistic techniques that have been used in Edward Albee‟s plays. The object of this study has been to explore and sift Edward Albee‟s plays and shed light on those aspects of his plays that have not been highlighted previously. His name is linked with Surrealism but the close affinity has not been reconnoitered. The aim of this study is to present Albee as an experimenter and innovator where American Drama is concerned. He is a pot-modern playwright who shows strong influence of Surrealism. Use of surrealistic techniques can be perceived in majority of his works and also works of other post-modern writers.