Edward Albee's Triptych on Abandonment

Abstract

Edward Albee's earliest plays-The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, and The Sandbox-ring with rage at society's disregard for its outcasts. An adopted child himself, Albee wrote these plays in the late fifties when he was temporarily estranged from his legal parents and, thereby, transferred from wealth to near-poverty. Considering this personal closeness to the theme of abandonment, it is not surprising that his first plays express a serious concern for life's expendable ones. This concern struck a chord with the youth of the sixties who vented their own rage by fighting for Civil Rights and protesting the Viet Nam War. In the sixties Albee's one-acts were among the most frequently performed plays on American college campuses. Jerry became the prototype of American youth, unheard by the government and abandoned to the war in Viet Nam. Bessie Smith became the symbol of the disadvantaged Blacks for whom students marched in the South. Grandma was a rallying point for youthful disenchantment with the middle-aged establishment who had rejected old folk along with young adults.