“For Nixon, American superiority rested on the ideal of the suburban home, complete with modern appliances and distinct gender roles for family members. He proclaimed that the “model” home, with a male breadwinner and a full-time female homemaker, adorned with a wide array of consumer goods, represented the essence of American freedom.”
“In secure postwar homes with plenty of children, American women and men might be able to ward off their nightmares and live out their dreams. The family seemed to be the one place where people could control their destinies and perhaps even shape the future.”
Key Quotes from Elaine Tyler May’s, Homeward Bound
Edward Albee’s play, The American Dream, premiered in 1961 in the midst of the Cold War and sixteen years after the end of WWII. In this play, Albee critiques the notion of the American Dream through setting, characters, and dialogue.
The setting of the play is the opposite of what was said to be the American Dream. Firstly, it is an apartment, not a house, and it is sparsely furnished, with no modern appliances shown, such as a dishwasher. The characters are even unable to find the other rooms later on in the play, demonstrating that the apartment is inferior to the house. In the play, Grandma even corrects Mommy that it is an apartment when Mommy describes it as a house. Thus, the apartment can be described more so as a place of living, unlike the home, which though is a place of living, is also safe and comforting, occupied by a family. The fact that the apartment lacks a child further makes it an assault to the postwar ideology because not only is the apartment not a house, it also does not hold a child, which means it is incomplete and not representative of the American Dream. Thus, when Albee introduces the character of the Young Man, the apartment becomes metaphorically more complete because Mommy and Daddy now have a child.
The names of the characters are a commentary on the American Dream because except for the character of Mrs. Barker, the rest of the characters are not given names and instead called Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, and Young Man. Since part of the postwar ideology of the time was that the home was supposed to be safe and comforting, with a mother and father assuming their respective gender roles and then producing successful offspring, Albee’s use of giving these characters their titles and not names is telling of how the American nuclear family “should” be arranged. The fact that Mrs. Barker is given a name shows that she is not a part of the family.
The character of the Young Man embodies the notion of the American Dream through his appearance and his youth. When the Young Man arrives, Grandma is very taken with him, praising his looks, to which the Young Man agrees, saying, “…almost insultingly good-looking in a typically American way”. Grandma even calls him the American Dream. However, despite this, Albee has the Young Man describe himself as drained of emotions, such as pity and affection. He says that he is incomplete and feels nothing. This is very telling of Albee’s thoughts on the American Dream, because though on the outside the Young Man represents the perfect and the ideal, on the inside he is not. He has lost his personality, which is suggestive that Albee thinks the American Dream neutralizes everyone, turning them into empty shells that are doing what they think they should be doing and not necessarily what they want to be doing. They are now devoid of what makes them an individual and unique. Albee successfully undermines the postwar ideology by having the Young Man be American Dream worthy on the outside but lacking substance on the inside.
Albee utilizes dialogue throughout the play to demonstrate his critique, but specifically, Grandma’s short commentary at the end of the play is very telling of how Albee feels. In this part, Grandma says how this is a comedy, which right up front demonstrates how Albee does not take the American Dream seriously, finding it comical and perhaps even unrealistic. He is therefore undermining this ideology by calling the play a comedy. Another key line in Grandma’s commentary is when she says “…while everybody’s happy…while everybody’s got what he wants…or everybody’s got what he thinks he wants”. This is reminiscent of a passage from the chapter, “Containment at Home: Cold War, Warm Hearth,” from Elaine Tyler May’s book, Homeward Bound, in which the marriages of two couples of the postwar time are discussed. In this passage, both married couples admit that the postwar ideology of the family and home have not quite lived up to their expectations, but they would not change anything because they have a home and children, rating their life as a happy one. This ties back to Grandma’s line in the play because through it, Albee is suggesting that people at the time think they have what they want because they are expected to have these things – a nice home and children – and they are told by society that these things will make them happy, but they are in fact not. Thus, Albee succeeds in undermining the postwar ideology of the American Dream by demonstrating its falsehood.
October 20, 2018
Works Cited
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound. New York, Basic Books, 1999.
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