An Attempt To Breakthrough Dilemma—A Research On Edward Albee’s Works

Edward Albee is one representative of the absurd theatre of America. His works began in late 1950 s, and has continued ever since. Creative using of language and showing the absurdity of daily life are important features of his work. Domestic analyzing of Edward Albee focus on the theme of "criticism of America Dream", "exposing the hypocrisy", "criticism of materialism". Compared with the former research, this thesis thinks that Albee’s drama theme has been exploring the dilemma of human existence, and challenging it in the form of drama. Along this clue, through the analysis of his works, to show what kind of dilemma that Albee represented, how it comes, and how to breakthrough. The first chapter: "the reality dilemma", through text analysis, summarizes three main dilemmas-- "violent", "ambiguous", and "misunderstanding". The concept of the "reality of violence” including the language violence, the violent action, and the ideal violence, showed in three aspects: violent reality from the dramatic language, action figures and the way of thinking. The reality of ambiguous is a kind of special living feeling, which is bound to rules of communication in modern society and the existence status of man. The reality of misunderstanding is talking about the intimate relationship. The second chapter " causes of those dilemmas " contained in the works, which are " history of violence ", “false ideas”, and " confusing memories”. The history of violence leads to escaping of life. False values make people fall into absurdity. And memory confuse people to tell the reality. It is for these reasons that life and people’s outlook on life changes. These two aspects are interacted. The third chapter "breakthrough", is the way to solve the dilemma presented by Albee: the return of desire, the return of dignity, and the return of the soul. Return of desire is the nature return of female identity. Return of dignity is for male to regain the control of force. And return to the soul is a trial to overcome all faulty values. But all ultimately failed. Because the solution from the beginning of the design is not perfect or feasible.