# Modes of Illusion in the Plays of Edward Albee

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2015/07/21/modes-of-illusion-in-the-plays-of-edward-albee/
- Published: 2015-07-21T10:40:56+00:00
- Author: admin

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**Author:** Daphne Gomez
 **Pages:** 252 **Year of Publication:** 2011 **Price:**
HB Rs 300, FB Rs 250 **ISBN:** HB 978-81-8157-925-6 (9788181579256) FB 978-81-8157-
926-3 (9788181579263)

_**About the Author**_
 Daphne Gomez was born on 25 November 1948 in Trivandrum,
Kerala. She completed her post-graduation in English and American Literature from
Madurai Kamaraj University. She taught the same at Mar Ivanios College, Trivandrum,
for twenty-four years. At present, Dr. Gomez is the principal of Lecole Chempaka,
an ICSE school founded by her family twenty-five years ago. She is married to Vernon
Gomez and has a son and daughter.

_**Teaser**_
 “The title, _Modes of Illusion in the Plays of Edward Albee_ may suggest
the repetition of a timeworn preoccupation with American writers after the passing
of the age of “innocence” and the materialisation of the illusory world of Gatsby.
Yet, illusion is America’s albatross, which can never be separated from the American
psyche because America itself was born of a ‘Dream’ that has given shape to its 
destiny. To Edward Albee (b.1928), the ‘American Dream’ becomes a personal metaphor.
Albee’s parentage is unknown and he was an adopted child, a fact that made him say:“
As an orphan you don’t have forebears. You’re the first person who lived, in a way”(
Markowitz Online). If the first part of the statement is a lament, the second manifests
the typical Albeean optimism in which lies the potential to transform a loss into
a gain. He finds his parentage in the history of his mother country and to which
therefore his destiny is umbilically bound by a quirk of fate.

Albee’s entanglement with the ‘Dream’ is not only closely related to the destiny
of the nation which gave birth to him, but by an historical inevitability to the
wider patterns of illusion as manifest in the history of nations that lived lives
of garish opulence in ancient times. They had to suffer the consequences of not 
redeeming themselves in spite of oracles, soothsayers and prophets warning them 
of impending doom, if they did not give up their fascination for illusions. Albee’s
worshippers of Dionysius, instead of celebrating the joy of life are mired in the
dregs of illusion, as they live their “sad, sad, sad” lives playing games in new
Carthage (_Who’s Afraid?_ 3.191), or pretending to be Romulus and Remus, the legendary
founders of Rome, as Sam does in _The Lady From Dubuque_ (1.14). George, a history
professor in _Who’s Afraid?_ reads from Oswald Spengler’s _Decline of the West_ (
2.174), as the midnight orgy in his house turns into a ‘Walpurgisnacht’, a Witches’
Sabbath.

Since history and philosophy are closely intertwined, in Albee’s plays there can
be seen another historical thread — the repetition of the patterns of philosophical
history. Albee establishes the connection between science and history right from
the start. If George is a professor of history in _Who’s Afraid?_ Nick is a scientist
specialising in genetics. Philosophers from the time of Plato four millenniums ago,
and Augustine, two thousand years ago, have shown the connection between science
and religion, but as scientific rationalism took over, the divinity in man was forgotten
and the basic bond between science and faith snapped. Nevertheless, science in the
twentieth century is showing the way to a reconciliation of the two opposites in“
unity consciousness” as foreseen by the ancient intuitive philosophers.”

[From Chapter 1]

_**Contents**_
 Foreword / 9 Preface / 11 The Plays / 15 Chapter 1 – The Historical
Patterns of Illusion / 17 Chapter 2 – The Death of the Dream: _The Zoo Story_ (1960)
to _The American Dream_ (1961) / 37 Chapter 3 – The Corruption Total and Complete:
_Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf_ (1962) to _All Over_ (1971) / 67 Chapter 4 – A 
Morality Tale: _Seascape_ (1975) to _The Lady from Dubuque_ (1980) / 115 Chapter
5 – Unity Consciousness: _The Man Who Had Three Arms_ (1982) to _Fragments_ (1993)/
139 Chapter 6 – Albee’s Idea of the Theatre / 168 Chapter 7 – _Finding the Sun_ /
221 Appendix: Taste of Albee / 233 Works Cited / 240