George; Honey
George
George is married to Martha and is a forty-six-year-old history professor known for his lackluster academic achievements. Early in his career, he married Martha, the daughter of the college president, but has not met the high expectations set by his wife and her father, who hoped George would be his successor. Martha often points out that George is a stagnant presence in the history department; despite years of service, he has not advanced to the position of department chair.
Due to his professional disappointments, George feels threatened by younger, ambitious faculty members like Nick and tries to assert himself through ostentatious displays of intellectual prowess. George is haunted by the fact that he may have played a role in the deaths of both his parents, in separate incidents that Martha suggests were deliberate. This deeply affects him, and he recounts the events to Nick as if they happened to someone else. The "killing" of their imaginary son is intended as a retaliatory act against Martha for belittling him, but it ultimately serves as a compassionate gesture, necessary to release both of them from their harmful fantasies.
Honey
Honey is a twenty-six-year-old blond woman described as "rather plain." Like her husband Nick, she hails from the Midwest and is trying to adjust to their new environment. While Honey is not portrayed as particularly intelligent, she does have a strong will. She fears the idea of having a child and, as George suspects, has secretly taken measures to prevent pregnancy without Nick's knowledge. Their marriage, initiated under the false pretense of a pregnancy, is a source of unease for both. Honey either genuinely believed she was pregnant or pretended to be. Later in the play, she unexpectedly declares, "I want a child." Although this change of heart seems implausible, it appears to persist through to the play's conclusion.
Characters Discussed
Martha
Martha, a middle-aged faculty wife and daughter of the president of a small New England college. Martha is loud, aggressive, and vulgar, secure that her father’s position at the college will insulate her from censure. She has a volatile relationship with her husband, George. A crass joke may turn into a vicious insult, followed by a moment of happy intimacy, all smoothed over by constant consumption of liquor. Martha is particularly cruel about George’s lack of academic success. She had envisioned him taking over the history department and eventually the college, but because he is only an associate professor at the age of forty-six, she considers him a failure. Martha and George’s marriage revolves around a series of games, none more central than the myth that they have a teenage son, a fiction Martha in some strange way has convinced herself to believe despite the fact that they cannot have children. When Martha’s continuous attacks on George’s professional status and masculinity prove too much for him to bear, he retaliates by revealing before their guests Nick and Honey that his and Martha’s son is “dead,” effectively shattering Martha’s carefully maintained fantasy world and forcing both him and Martha to face the future without the comfort of fantasy and game-playing.
George
George, Martha’s husband, an associate professor in the history department. George is more subdued than Martha, but he participates in Martha’s games, becoming especially uninhibited when drinking. George is intelligent and quick-witted, with a gift for wordplay, which he uses against both Martha and Nick. At first, George seems to have an advantage over Nick by virtue of his position at the college, but he soon finds himself threatened by Nick’s youth, attractiveness, and professional ambition. As he drinks, he reveals a...
(This entire section contains 605 words.)
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streak of cruelty by humiliating Honey with the story of her false pregnancy, which Nick had confided to him earlier. Although at first he seems somewhat reticent, even browbeaten by Martha, when the conversation turns to his and Martha’s supposed son, he accuses Martha of making incestuous advances toward the boy. He then destroys his wife’s illusions in the cruelest way possible, traumatizing Martha and mortifying Nick and Honey at the same time.
Nick
Nick, a new faculty member in the biology department. Nick is young, handsome, and ambitious. He is initially willing to play along with Martha and George’s strange games because he wants to ingratiate himself with the older faculty member and particularly with the president’s daughter. His eagerness to please even extends to going to bed with Martha, practically right in front of George. Nick’s inability to satisfy Martha’s sexual demands, coupled with his insecure status at the college, leads Martha to humiliate Nick. He acquiesces until George shatters Martha’s power by revealing the truth about their imaginary son.
Honey
Honey, Nick’s young wife. Honey is very timid, especially in contrast to George and Martha. She has neurotic and psychophysiological problems. Nick married her because he thought she was pregnant, but it turned out to be a false pregnancy. Now Honey becomes ill frequently, particularly when drinking or under stress. Honey is cautious and relatively reserved, careful not to mix her drinks and reluctant to become involved with George and Martha’s games, yet fearful of offending them. Under the influence of liquor, Honey loses many of her inhibitions. Her actions are mostly childlike, in contrast to the viciousness of the others. Honey is humiliated when George reveals that Nick has confided the story of Honey’s hysterical pregnancy to him.
Martha; Nick
Martha
"A large, lively woman in her early fifties who appears somewhat younger. She is robust but not overweight." Traditionally, Martha might be seen as "manlike" due to her loud, rough demeanor and her domineering attitude toward George, with whom she's been engaged in a long-standing battle of endurance. Martha had aspirations of power that she believes were thwarted by George's lack of ambition. Although George is vulnerable to Martha's relentless mockery about his career failures, Martha is equally sensitive to George's critiques of her excessive drinking, occasional flirtatious behavior, and her "braying" laugh. George also tries to present himself as her intellectual superior.
Martha is also highly educated, even if she doesn't hold an advanced degree, and much of their conflict unfolds on an intellectual level (though it sometimes devolves into a flurry of French insults). During the play, Martha breaks a crucial rule in their game-playing world by mentioning their fictional son to others. George retaliates by "killing" the son, profoundly affecting Martha and penetrating her stubborn resilience. The play's closing scene is perhaps its most tender, as Martha lowers her defenses enough to confess to George, for the first time, her vulnerability to genuine human fear.
Nick
Nick is characterized as a blond, attractive man in his early thirties. He is a young biology professor who poses a threat to George on various levels, with his youth, attractiveness, and sexual vitality, as well as his ambition and readiness to compromise himself for career advancement. In essence, he appears to be on track to fulfill the potential George never realized. (Notably, his encounter with Martha results in impotence, highlighting the play's link between sexual and professional success.) Nick is emotionally detached, a condition Albee associates (as in his other works) with a Midwestern upbringing. As a scientist, Nick's role is to avoid surprises and create predictable order. In contrast, George is intrigued by the unpredictability of history and uses this fundamental difference in their intellectual pursuits to distance himself from Nick. George goes further by accusing the biomedical field of conspiring to transform humanity into a genetically engineered, uniform species. Critics have suggested that Nick symbolizes to George the danger of aggressive totalitarianism, hinted at by the similarity of his name to that of Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev (This is not so much a direct allegory as it is one aspect of the play's rich characterization.)