A Heideggerean Interpretation Of The Death Motif In Albee’s Works

Generally recognized as America’s most brilliant living dramatist, Edward Albeeachieved remarkable accomplishments throughout his life. Being a prolific writer, he hascreated abundant excellent plays. Within most of these plays, one theme is inevitably tobe noticed: the pervasive death motif. The purpose of this paper is to prove that Albee’sintention of portraying these death images is not out of pessimistic outlook, but to guidean authentic life through a genuine understanding about death.With the disguise of somber and depressed atmosphere, Albee is manifesting hismeditation on life and death in his plays. For him, death is not just the end of life that canbe ignored until it comes. Instead, it is always present throughout one’s life, and keepsinfluencing people’s life style. Such kind of understanding of death echoes the deathphilosophy of Martin Heidegger, the giant of modern philosophy.So Heidegger’s relevant thoughts on death are utilized to better conceptualize andfurther analyze the recurring death motifs in Albee’s plays. Major death related playssuch as The Zoo Story, Tiny Alice, All Over, Seascape and Three Tall Women aredetailedly analyzed and interpreted within a systematic framework. Firstly, in order topoint out the conjoining parts of Albee and Heidegger’s thinking about death, the thesisgives a brief introduction about the theory of being-toward-death and the death motifcontained in Albee’s plays. On this basis, the main body of the paper, chapter III, chapterIV, and chapter V gives an exquisite analysis about the characters in different phrases ontheir way to death. There are some numb “Das Man” who are living their routine lifewithout thinking about their death. There are people who are at the cross road towardunderstanding death, they are in the mood of “anxiety” and “fear”. For those charactersthat are disclosed to understanding, it is their choice to be falling as an inauthentic Daseinor to become an authentic Dasein and step on the way of being-toward-death. While inorder to live authentically, love and sincere communication is essential for them. By suchanalysis, Albee’s affirmative attitude toward life and death is revealed. What he means todo is to lead people to the real freedom and authentic life through death.