American Dream In Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf

The total collapse of “The American Dream” in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Edward Albee, an American playwright is known to have brought Absurdist Theater on American stage. He interrogated the notion of American dream in his plays to demonstrate its flaws and further questions its core ideas which is to pursuit a life of happiness. “American dream (is) that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement”. In this play he penetrates behind the mask of the dream and exposes the pain born out of sterility, unrealized dreams and unfulfilled ambitions. It is the forceful nature of the dream that enhances people to create illusions and false

Pills? PILLS? You got a secret supply of pills? Or what? Apple jelly? WILL POWER?” having contraceptive pills is what honey is actually doing.Nick’s hesitant, evasive responses to George’s inquiries about his and Honey’s family plans indicate that he does not realize what Honey is doing, and that he thinks she may be unable to have children, but perhaps fears he is the one who is sterile.

It is George who acts here as a basis for new foundation of American family in modern society he tells honey "And you, you simpering bitch…you don’t want children” (178).George’s harsh attack reveals his frustration that he cannot directly alter the future of the new generation by raising children of his own because he is sterile, whereas Honey only chooses to be sterile. George knows that Nick is, in theory, agreeable to having children, “But you are going to have kids…anyway. In spite of history” (40), so it is Honey who must be converted in order to establish a more promising American society, which George succeeds in doing during the last game of the evening, “Bringing Up Baby.”