Exorcism In Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf

Postmodern Individuals have struggled to answer the most fundamental questions: what is the meaning of their lives? Why do they exist? And how can they find their fulfillment? In their quest to find purpose, and satisfaction, they consume and become empty and lost even more. Under these conditions of consumerism and absurdity, human relationships get broken. American playwright Edward Albee explores such absurdity and meaninglessness in his play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?By depicting one night of George and Martha’s life as well as their guests Nick and Honey, Albee discusses the illusion of love and marriage and the declineof human values.When preformed in 1962, his first full-length play secures his place in “the first rank of contemporary

It indicates that both escape their absurd reality into a realm of illusions. At the end of the play, George decides to abandon their illusion and kill this imaginary child. Martha asks him: “did you have to?” and he tells her that “it was time” (Albee III. 127-128) to find another way to cope with their meaningless life. Such abandonment of their imaginary child is implied in the title of the last act “Exorcism”. The absurdity of the postmodern world, as their unhappy relationships, drives all of the characters to escape their reality. Albee describes, this act of escaping as “a refuge we take when the unreality of the world weighs too heavy on our tiny heads” (III. 100). However, they differ in their ways of escaping, as in George’s words: “When people can’t abide things as they are, when they can’t abide the present, they do one of two things...either they...either they turn to a contemplation of the past, as I have done, or they set about to...alter the future”(II. 95). Honey, for example, denies any inconvenient memories and refuses to face them: “I’ve decided I don’t remember any thing” (III.

In the postmodern world, according to Bauman, human relationships are affected by the uncertainty, unsafety, and insecurity;in the individual’s level as well as the social and economical levels (161). The two relationships in the play;the one between George and Martha, and between Nick and Honey, are damaged by such conditions. The four of them aretrapped in empty, dissatisfying, and unhappy marriages. In Act I, George says to Nick: “Martha and I are having… nothing. Martha and I are merely… exercising” (Albee I. 17). This nothingness shapes all of relationships in the play, where there is an undeniable gap between them. Martha confesses to George: “I can’t even see you… I haven’t been able to see you for years” (I. 8), as he tells her: “I don’t really hear you, which is the only way to manage it” (II.