The Play
The American Dream is a play in one scene, set in a living room with two armchairs, a sofa, and a door leading to the outside. Mommy and Daddy are seated, awaiting the arrival of visitors. Daddy complains about the apartment, about how hard it is to get anything fixed, and he remembers how easy it was to move in, when all that was required was his money for the rent and a security deposit. He feels taken advantage of and somehow fooled. Similarly, Mommy is vexed about a hat she has bought. It seemed like a perfectly lovely beige hat until she ran into the chairman of her women’s club, who praised her wheat-colored hat. Irritated to think she had been duped into buying the wrong-colored hat, Mommy returned to the store (excusing her mistake by blaming its artificial light) and complained until they gave her what she takes to be a beige-colored hat. “I would imagine it was the same hat they tried to sell you before,” Daddy observes. Mommy agrees, but somehow she still feels she has gotten satisfaction from the incident.
The expected arrival of visitors has something to do with Mommy’s and Daddy’s feelings about Grandma. She is getting old and feeble. However, when Grandma enters she seems sharp-minded, if somewhat mysterious about the boxes she has packed and dropped around Daddy’s armchair. She has a rather sarcastic tongue and a down-to-earth quality that appears to be missing in Mommy’s and Daddy’s speeches. Grandma is aware that she is aging and that Mommy and Daddy want to get rid of her.
What Mommy and Daddy seem most interested in is preserving their sense of comfort and convenience. They turn querulous and impatient when the visitors do not arrive on time. Grandma assumes they are waiting for the “van people” who will take her away. When the doorbell rings, Mommy and Daddy go through a hurried dialogue, with Daddy doubting whether or not he has done the right thing. Mommy assures him he has and puts particular emphasis on how “masculine and decisive” his behavior has been.
Making a big point about opening the door, Daddy welcomes Mrs. Barker into the room. Neither he nor Mommy seems to know her name, although they assume she represents the visitors who were supposed to arrive. As in previous discussions, much of what Mommy and Daddy have to say contradicts their earlier statements—in this case Daddy mentions that he knew the visitors would be late, even though he has just spent considerable time complaining that they are not on time. When Mrs. Barker joins Mommy and Daddy in referring to herself in the plural, saying “we’re here,” Grandma replies “I don’t see them.” As usual, it is Grandma who insists on interpreting the reality of what she sees rather than reacting to a situation as she would like it to be.
There is an odd moment when Mrs. Barker introduces herself as the chairman of Mommy’s women’s club. Taken aback, Mommy at first is doubtful, then she blames her inability to recognize Mrs. Barker on the “artificial light.” When Mommy compliments Mrs. Barker on her hat, saying it is just like the one she bought yesterday, Mrs. Barker replies, “No, not really; this hat is cream.” Mommy tries to object, but Mrs. Barker stops her by referring to her position of authority.
Mommy asks Mrs. Barker to get comfortable by taking off her dress, which she proceeds to do, even though it makes Daddy blush and giggle; he becomes “sticky wet.” Mrs. Barker speaks vaguely about her many activities...
(This entire section contains 981 words.)
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and at one point ponders whether she has come to pick up Grandma’s boxes. The conversation between Mrs. Barker, Mommy, and Daddy, is frequently interrupted by Grandma’s acerbic comments about old and middle-aged people. Much of her anger is directed toward her daughter.
Eventually it is Grandma who reveals to Mrs. Barker why she has come. It seems that many years ago Mommy and Daddy adopted what Grandma calls a “bumble of joy,” a malapropism that Mrs. Barker tries to correct but which Grandma insists on using—perhaps because Mommy and Daddy, in her view, have bumbled things. Grandma never says in so many words that Mommy and Daddy have adopted a baby, but that is the upshot of her story, which she relates in the manner of a dark fairy tale. The child, it seems, has disappointed the adoptive parents and they have punished it by hacking away at its limbs and even its sexual parts when the child shows an interest in masturbation.
The point of Grandma’s remarks is that Mommy and Daddy have never been satisfied and now seek yet another adoption. When a Young Man arrives, who looks handsome and athletic but who also appears to be rather stupid, with little moral or emotional depth, Grandma dubs him the American Dream. The Young Man refers to the fact that he has had an identical twin—the implication being that it must have been his brother that Mommy and Daddy adopted earlier.
At the end of the play Mommy welcomes the Young Man as someone who seems very familiar but whom she cannot quite identify. The play ends with Grandma speaking, making the only overt comment on the play itself, indicating to the audience in an oblique way what the drama of the American Dream has been about:Well, I guess that just about wraps it up. I mean, for better or worse, this is a comedy, and I don’t think we’d better go any further. No, definitely not. So, let’s leave things as they are right now . . . while everybody’s happy . . . while everybody’s got what he wants . . . or everybody’s got what he thinks he wants. Good night, dears.
Dramatic Devices
As Albee’s title suggests, his play is about an idea, a way of conceiving the United States that is also an American illusion—an American way of evading reality. Realistic drama depends on several devices: detailed stage sets, carefully chosen names for characters who have credible psychological histories and who are well placed within their society. Albee eschews all these devices. Only one character, Mrs. Barker, is actually given a name, and it is telling that Daddy has trouble remembering it even when she repeats it several times. The society Albee creates onstage has no distinctiveness, no identity; it is literally a society without a name or a single character of its own. Everyone in the play is a type: a Mommy, a Daddy, a Grandma, a Young Man, and so on.
Another device of realistic drama is logic. Characters are expected to make sense, and what they say is taken up and developed by other characters. In Albee’s play, the opposite is true. Mommy is not even sure Daddy can follow what she is saying, and she insists that he repeat her remarks to see whether he has understood her. In The American Dream characters are illogical and irrational, contradictory and fractious because they do not know their own minds. In fact, it is doubtful whether they have minds, for they seem incapable of following a train of thought, of coming to any conclusion about the things they talk about. However, given the triviality and discontinuity of their world, their behavior is understandable: It is the only way they are capable of responding to stimuli.
Another characteristic of the realistic play that is usually taken for granted is spatial relationships. The characters know where they are in relation to their surroundings. Here, when Daddy leaves the living room to go into Grandma’s room, he is heard complaining that he cannot find it. How can a character not find a room? In an absurdist drama, this unlikely event is a function of the character’s own sense of displacement. He cannot even locate himself; he cannot find a self to express or a society in which he can function as an individual.
