"Smooth Voyages" In An Age Of Conformity

Since the 1960 s,political upheavals led by subaltern groups on issues like feminism,race,class and homosexuality have surged in Western countries.Following the burgeoning of cultural studies in the 1960 s,the issue of identity has obtained increasing attention in the academic community.At the same time,the United States was also undergoing a series of political movements led by marginal social groups.Traditional American culture centering on the white nuclear family faced challenges.It was at this transitional period of time that Edward Albee debuted on American theater and created two representative works Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(“Who’s” for short)and The Zoo Story(“Zoo” for short,later expanded into At Home at the Zoo).In the play,by focusing on the middle-class domestic scenes,Edward Albee revealed the materialistic values of American society and individuals’ anxieties and sense of crises over their identities at that time.Based on related conceptions of identity in various fields of studies,as well as on the particular histories in the 1950 s and 1960 s,the thesis attempts to probe into the identity crisis in the two important plays by Edward Albee.The characters’ identity crises would be examined in three aspects — family,gender and self,followed by a discussion of its social implications and possible reasons for the crises.Chapter One provides a basic introduction to Edward Albee’s writing career,the status quo of studies on his plays,associated definitions of identity and overall structure of the thesis.Chapter Two explains the transitional historical period during which the two plays were written and correlative textual details in the two plays.Meanwhile,the chapter will also pay attention to the descriptions about the previous generation and their potential influences on the protagonists.Chapter Three examines the identity crises of couples in these two plays and their social implications.The first is the absence of the “son” in the family.As a key component of family culture,“son” is not only a symbol of the patriarchal society,but also a way for wives and husbands to establish their identities.The fact that the two couples in the play are childless alludes to the lack of masculinity and femininity of the characters,which,to a certain degree,also metaphorizes the sterility of the American dream.In addition,the strength of the women in both plays contrasts with the effemination of the men.Characters’ frustration in career was also analyzed to reflect their crises of self-identities.Chapter Four investigates the unexpected endings of the two plays.In Who’s,George and Martha force each other to face reality and their selves by “killing” their imaginary son.Similarly,in Zoo,Jerry realizes Peter’s redemption through selfsacrifice,leading Peter to the possibility of reconstructing his identities.Through the textual analysis,the thesis reveals the identity crises of the characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and At Home at the Zoo in terms of family,gender and self.At the same time,with a reference to the historical background of the texts,the thesis analyzes the deeper social reasons for the identity crises of the characters,which might hopefully contribute to the studies of Albee’s two plays,and the exploration of the identity issues in Albee’s plays in general.