Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf Symbolism

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That Which Lies Between Truths: Symbols Reflect Reality and Distortion What is a truth? One can derive many kinds of definitions for this vague word and may come up with many different truths, and this is no different from how one perceives what a or many symbols can mean. However, one can make inferences or inductions to what a symbol may mean or its intent due to the symbols usage and context in a given text, and as such, one can possibly perceive academia, the games, and the baby in Edward Albee 's play Who 's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as having great symbolic relevance as they can be shown blurring the lines of reality and illusion. Academia in the context of this play has major relevance to the setting as it establishes a context of …show more content…

The baby child of George and Martha distorts reality by being presented as a truth but comes with discrepancies throughout its life time as it is mentioned but never seen. The tone in which both George and Martha present the baby makes it seem even more likely that the baby does exist although in the end it does not; George and Martha uses terms of endearment such as little bigger or SOB light heartedly but sharply reassuring. Consequently, one may first perceive that the baby does exist and the story built around it is all to likely, but it truly does not. Furthermore, going to far lengths to make detailed accounts of the baby such as being blonde eyed, and blue haired seems far fetched but would still be acceptable as the characters are blatantly drunk allowing them to get away with the perceived "George is loaded, so he could 've switched his words by accident." Oppositely, one could also see this as George being completely serious and blurs the line between the baby existing or not, blurring reality and illusion. Finally, the baby in the final act is exorcized and this causes the greatest confusion of being either an existing entity or a figurative device, a symbol. It is implied however that the baby did not truly exist contrary to all evidence preceding that George and Martha. Alternatively, until this point, one may look at this scene, in either case, the baby could be considered living, fictional, both, or neither, thusly not only blurring but distorting, and figuratively crossing the line between reality and