123 School Work

Characters and contrasts in Edward Albees Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf

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  Characters and contrasts in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
  
  Edward Albee is one of the most important American playwrights of the 20th century and the one most closely identified with the theatre of the absurd. Having a brief look at his most famous plays, it can be easily proved that they are all strongly characterized. Apart from the features of the absurd the main characteristics of his dramas are the constant confrontations between the main characters and the frequent use of the satire.
  His most popular and well-known play is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with which he achieved both popular and critical success. This success can be due to the fact that this drama is "a portrait of a defunct liberalism and a bankrupt but threatening scientism" .
  The plot of the play takes place in New Carthago, in a small and puritan New England college, which determines all the characters' life with its being so mysterious throughout the whole drama.
  The main characters of the play are a middle-aged couple, George and Martha. As being their family name 'Washington' and their first names the same as the ones of the first president and his wife of the United States,
  
  Albee's intention could be to make the reader think that the couple represent something really American. George, the husband is a professor of History, Martha, the wife is the daughter of the president of the college. They seem to be completely different from each other George is a sober-minded and well-educated man while Martha is always rather spontaneous and sometimes quite vulgar...