The American Dream and what it means for you and me.

Yes, I realize that that isn’t strictly speaking “proper grammar” but its how I speak, and that’s how I want my blog to sound. Like you are talking to me. Anyway, let’s get on to it. First of all, I would just like to add a little disclaimer; I don’t actually know what I’m doing. I mean, the general idea is there, but firms grasp on it, well, I just don’t have that. So here goes.

Albee’s American Dream warns that the current generation of upper class has gutted the heart and soul of what it means to be American, and replaced our collective dream with a shallow materialism, longing to acquire power and wealth, but there is hope for change.

In the American Dream, Albee writes the young man as the American dream; we can tell that he is saying something about the new dream replacing the old dream, which in this case is grandma, right away. From the start, we can see that the new American dream is shallow, and cannot feel anything. The only thing that the dream wants is money, a symbol of material goods.

We know that the dream is empty when the young man mentions how he was before his twin was killed. He felt love, and could care for others, but now that his sibling is gone, he has no hope for recovering what he has lost. On the surface level, this seems like an extreme twist, and something that doesn’t happen, well, ever. But once you dig deeper and realize that mommy and daddy killed the brother, it becomes clear. By having Mommy and Daddy kill the ‘bumble’, Albee is showing them shaping the dream, cutting out the eyes so that the young man cannot see love, cutting off its penis so that the young man cannot physically love someone, the list continues.

We know that Grandma is the American dream from other writers, It is collectively agreed apon by scholars, and can be easily determined by the text. If you think about Grandma and the young man, and the relationship between the two, there isn’t a relationship in the rest of the play similar to it. For example, in the end, when everyone thinks that grandma has left, the young man can see her on stage, and tries to bring a glass for her, but she has to tell him that she is hiding. Other examples are more subtle, and harder to pick out.

The hardest part of the text is who is shaping the dream. In the story, we know that its mommy and daddy, but who are mommy and daddy supposed to represent? There have been many debates as to who mommy and daddy truly represent, many believed that they could be America as a whole, or just middle and upper class, but after reading the text up close, we know that they are purely upper class. The signs are quite easy to pick out, but at first can be a bit hard to notice. In the begging of the play, mommy comments on grandma reading her reading club books, at first, we think that this is alright, but then we look at the time period that the play was set in. Reading club meant something totally different. Reading club books were only purchased by the wealthy, because they were expensive, and once they were paid for, it was uncommon to touch them.

This leaves out the lower class because they were not able to pay for expensive luxuries like books that were never going to be read. The middle class was also ruled out due to time period. The family lives in an apartment in a city, this may sound like they are strapped for money, but in the nineteen sixties, having an apartment in the city was a sign of major wealth. Only the richest could afford apartments like that.

Albee can be considered many different things, but a negative man he is not. Albee leaves grandma on the stage for a reason. We grow to love the old woman, and are sad to see her go, even more so when we realized that we are left with the young man, strangely devoid of any emotion or love. But when grandma comes back, we feel better and are happy to see her. Albee is trying to show us something here. Because our society is going through a change of dream, it’s easy to get caught up on shiny new things, but the values that we keep close to us are more important. Just because we may not like the appearance of the old dream that does not mean that the values are important.

In The American Dream, Edward Albee tries to convey something to us, a warning. A warning that our trust in the upper class will ruin us and our values will slowly be corrupted. Albee warns against consumerism, telling us to stick to older values, ones that are not rooted in shallow desire or selfish needs.