The essential difference is that critics like Camus have presented their arguments in a highly formal discourse with logical and precise views which prove their thesis within the framework of traditional forms. These are some of the reasons which prompt the critic to classify them under the heading "Theater of the Absurd" - a title which comes not from a dictionary definition of the world "absurd," but rather from Martin Esslin's book The Theatre of the Absurd, in which he maintains that these dramatists write from a "sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition." But other writers such as Kafka, Camus, and Sartre have argued from the same philosophical position. In these seemingly queer and fantastic plays, the external world is often depicted as menacing, devouring, and unknown the settings and situations often make us vaguely uncomfortable - the world itself seems incoherent and frightening and strange, but at the same time, hauntingly poetic and familiar. By their use of a number of puzzling devices, these playwrights have gradually accustomed audiences to a new kind of relationship between theme and presentation.
In viewing the plays that comprise this movement, we must forsake the theater of coherently developed situations, we must forsake characterizations that are rooted in the logic of motivation and reaction, we must forget (sometimes) settings that bear an intrinsic, realistic or obvious relationship in the drama as a whole, we must forget the use of language as a tool of logical communication, and we must forget cause and effect relationships found in traditional drama. The early plays of Edward Albee and Harold Pinter fit into this classification, but they have also written plays that move far away from the Theater of the Absurd. The playwrights most often connected with the movement are Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov. Each of the main playwrights of the movement seemed to have developed independently of the other. To begin, even though the movement known as the Theater of the Absurd was not a consciously conceived movement, and it has never had any clear cut philosophical doctrines, no organized attempt to win converts, and no meetings, it has characteristics which set it apart from other experiments in drama. In addition to a knowledge of Albee's own early plays, an understanding of the entire movement of the Theater of the Absurd and the relationship of Albee's early plays to that movement will, in part, illuminate aspects of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
#THE SANDBOX BY EDWARD ALBEE PLOT SUMMARY FULL#
Consequently, in its simplest terms, Albee's early short dramas are essential studies to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? his first full length drama. Also, his early plays - The Zoo Story, The American Dream, and Sand Box - which will be discussed later, do belong rather directly with the Absurdist movement and they employ most of the themes, motifs, ideas, and techniques found in the plays of "The Theater of the Absurd." Furthermore, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? also utilizes many of the techniques and ideas of his earlier plays - for example, the lost or non-existent child is a constant factor in many of Albee's plays of all periods. Even though Albee's Who's Afraid of' Virginia Woolf would not be strictly classified as belonging to the movement known as "The Theater of the Absurd," there are, however, a great many elements of this play which are closely aligned with or which grew out of the dramas which are classified as being a part of "The Theater of the Absurd." Furthermore, the movement emerged on the literary scene just prior to and during the beginning of Albee's formative, creative years.
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