The American Dream summary

Edward Albee: An American playwright famous for absurd plays.

Theme: America has forgotten its old values and replaced them with material things that don't have any real meaning, which has caused Americans to become emotionally unattached and unable to find satisfaction in life.

Setting: Small American apartment in the late 1950s. The setting is significant to the play because television is new and creating mass media, which also fosters American consumerism. Albee criticizes these in the play. The apartment is also very plain, which makes the reader focus more on the characters than the room.

Basic Plot: Not too much happens in this play as far as progress and action, but the main events that happen are that Mommy and Daddy get a new child and that Grandma moves out. These things don't happen until the end of the play, since before then everyone is wondering why Mrs. Barker has come and they talk about things that don't progress the plot at all.

Major Character list:
Mommy- The member of the family with the most control over home life. She makes all of the decisions for the family, while her husband, Daddy, merely agrees with everything she says. Mommy goes so far as to become a man and daddy becomes a girl in his passiveness, indecisiveness, and with his operation. Mommy and Daddy can't have a baby because of this gender swap. However, even though mommy made Daddy into a woman and almost like a child, and became masculine, she still has some sexual longings. When Mrs. Barker takes off her dress and Daddy says "I'm going to blush and giggle." Mommy isn't as hospitable as before to her. She also makes a sexual suggestion to the Young Man at the end of the play. These strange lusts she has show how her bubbled up sexual desires are spilling over in strange ways. Society told her not to talk about sexual things, so she must confine them to the home.
Grandma- She represents the idea of the old American values that are starting to fade. We notice that Grandma, unlike any of the other characters, appears to have feelings and important opinions. Whenever she has something valuable to say, Mommy always quiets her. The only time she is allowed to finish a thought is when she talks about how old people are never listened to and always complain. When everyone else is confused about why Mr.s Barker has come, and when mommy and daddy get lost in the house looking for her things, Grandma is the only one who knows anything. Grandma's role becomes clear when she meets with the young man. She is old and withered on the outside, while he is young and attractive. Her ideas are outdated like her body, so she must leave to make room for the Young Man. She exits the play not by dying, but by crossing the 4th wall and talking directly to the audience at the very end. This is significant, since the rest of the characters cannot leave the play, and only the Young Man can see her. Since she represents more than just a person, she can transcend the play, and the Young Man sees her since he also is an ideal as well as a character. The old American Dream also becomes our responsibility instead of                      dying for good. There is still a chance these old values will return.
The Young Man- Even though he isn't present for most of the play, the Young Man represents the main focus. He, as stated very clearly by Grandma, is The American Dream. At a time where TV, mass media, and consumerism dominated America, Albee believed that the American Dream had turned into something that is only valuable on the surface. The Young Man reflects this in his attractive appearance. However, he tells Grandma that ever since his twin was taken from him, he has lost the ability to feel anything. The twin was killed by Mommy and Daddy when they tried to get satisfaction with it, but since they didn't have any emotions left, they didn't see that what they were doing was a terrible thing. So, he will agree to live with Mommy and Daddy under strange conditions just because of the money they will give him. The new values only care for money too.
Mrs. Barker: She also represents more than just one person, since the characters always refer to her as "them" instead of she. Mrs. Barker stands in for the government, who is the overseer of the materialistic society America has embraced. She makes sure that everything is running smoothly and covers up anything that is dirty. She runs the bye-bye (buy-buy) adoption service like a store full of goods. The children are merely items to everyone in the play except for Grandma. She also has little time for personal matters since she is the head of many committees  Mommy must treat her with respect, even though we can tell that she doesn't like her personally. Mommy disagrees with her about the hat, but says that she is fond of Mrs. Barker even though she has a dreadful life. Then, she insults her husband after the daddy incident pretending it was an accident. This is the only way mommy can get back at her without jeopardizing her place in society. Likewise, the people who are against the government do not speak out since it controls society.

Voice and Style:
The American Dream is considered to be in the Theature of the Absurd category, because the characters often have problems communicating, and when they do, it often doesn't have any significance. Many times the characters repeat things over and over and still don't catch the meanings of things. The exchanges between Mommy and Daddy especially are lacking in meaning. Mrs. Barker also has problems understanding things. In fact, in a large portion of the play, the characters are all unsure why they are gathered together. The only character that keeps the play from being completely absurd is Grandma. Her words always make sense and almost always have sarcastic undertones. By saying that she agrees with the other members of the family, she implies the exact opposite. This sarcastic tone shows the readers just how twisted American society has become. He also shows this dark side of society with the way Mommy, Daddy, and Mrs. Barker talk about things very plainly, even things that most people feel very emotionally attached too. The small emotions they have are only about goods, and do not seem to give them deep satisfaction.

Memorable Quotes:
Grandma: "A bumble; a bumble of joy."
Mrs. Barker: "Oh, like a bundle."
Grandma: "Well yes, very much like it. Bundle, bumble, who cares?"
This quote shows grandma's sarcastic tone as well as showing how the baby has become commodified.

Young Man: "It's that I have no talents at all, except what you see... my person; my body, my face. In every other way I am incomplete, and I must therefore... compensate."
The Young Man sums up what the new American Dream is by describing himself here.


"What a masculine Daddy! Isn't he a masculine Daddy?"
Mommy can take away Daddy's manliness, and uses it to control him.

"Cuddle Your Kid!" by Nicholas Kristof Voice anlysis

In this article, Kristof believes that the source of America's problems lies in the way that mothers in poverty raise their children. His strong opinion is supported well with researched studies and is related to the election to connect with a broader base.
Kristof uses scientific studies to back up his beliefs. One such study was with mother rats and how much they licked their young at McGill University where "Meaney’s team dissected adult rats and found that licking led to differences in brain anatomy, so that rats that had been licked more were better able to control stress responses." By relating this study to humans, Kristof shows how helping adolescents feel loved will help our economy. To boost his argument even more, Kristof also uses a social experiment among humans. At the University of Minnesota, a study judged weather a group of about 200 children recieved supportive parenting and then tracked their academic progress in later life. According to Kristof, "It found that whether a child received supportive parenting in the first few years of life was at least as good a predictor as I.Q. of whether he or she would graduate from high school." This experiment supports his opinion that by breaking the poor parenting cycle of people in poverty, the economy will improve.
Since many people associate improving the economy with the upcoming presidential election, Kristof mentions both candidates names to relate with more Americans. He shows how both of their plans will fail if they ignore his opinions. First, he mentions how conservatives think that poverty relates to not just "welfare or tax policy but also must consider culture and character." which he says is valid, but these studies show that the main cause of poverty is an imbalance of "brain chemistry." This balance can be fixed later in life too unlike, how the candidates feel. he directly calls them out: "President Obama and Mitt Romney, listen up: Kewauna’s story underscores that strengthening our nation means investing not only in warships but also in America’s children." Kewuna improved her test scores dramatically in high school with help from a group called OneGoal that helps children with school in a supportive way. Kristof may not agree with the presidents while some readers do, but relating his beliefs to his helps the readers relate too.

Prompt #1975

In the play The American Dream, Edward Albee uses foil characters and devices in the dialogue such as repetition and insulting language to show the relationship between Mommy and Daddy as well as compare and contrast Grandma to the Young man. Albee establishes these relationships in order to tell readers that the old American Dream has been replaced with a new Dream that embodies only physical appearances and consumerism.
Mommy and Daddy have switched traditional gender roles to the point where Mommy is completely in charge while Daddy is reduced to almost a childlike state. At the beginning of the play, Mommy tells Daddy all about her shopping trip where she, the shopkeeper, and Mrs. Barker all are unsure of the color of the hat she buys. While she is enraptured by her consumerist attitude, Mommy also keeps asking Daddy things like "What did I say? What did I just say?" while Daddy responds "You didn't like any of them, not one bit." repeating everything she says. In this manner, we see how Daddy isn't the dominant member while Mommy rules the house. Later, Daddy tries to stand up to Mommy when he doesn't want to answer the door, but she convinces him to by saying "...you were masculine and decisive." when he decided to have the person come to the door. When he still doesn't get the door, Mommy insults him by telling him "...you;re indecisive; you're a woman." This statement also shows how masculine Mommy has become, since she thinks that womanhood is a bad thing. Daddy thinks that she can take away his masculinity, even though it was gone long ago from being subordinate to Mommy. In fact, Daddy had a surgery where "the doctors took out something that was there and put in something that wasn't there." suggesting that Daddy is physically a woman with a vagina instead of a penis. Mommy's manly role and abuse of Daddy show how Mommy is greedy and uses anyone to get what she wants, which include wealth, an aspect of the new American Dream, as well as the "bumble of joy," the baby that the couple dismembered in order to try and get satisfaction. This is less hard to believe once we learn what a cruel person Mommy is.
Albee uses Grandma and the Young Man as foils to show the differences between the old American Dream and the New American Dream. For one thing, Albee made the character's appearances reflect which ideals they represent. Grandma describes herself as "...gnarled and sagged and twisted into the shape of a complaint." while the Young Man has a"Good profile, straight nose, honest eyes, wonderful smile..." to appeal to the common American. Grandma's ideals are outdated like her body, while the Young Man looks fresh like his ideals. However, on the inside, the Young Man can't feel anything. He himself simply states "I can feel nothing. I can feel nothing." since his heart was ripped out when his twin died. His outside looks like all the things a person could dream for, but these goals aren't full of emotion and don't give you the satisfaction that all of the characters strive for. Grandma, on the other hand, is the only character in the play who has any true emotion. Every time she speaks, she uses verbal irony to show just how twisted the other characters are. For example, when Grandma describes the incident with the "bumble" to Mrs. Barker, she uses a matter of fact tone to describe this horrible event. She says they "smiled and cried and bit their fingers, and said some more intimate things, which were totally irrelevant..." Of course normal people would be genuinely exited about the event, but Mommy and Daddy don't have real feelings and just went through the motions. In the end, since no one can feel like Grandma does, she leaves the scene all together while the Young Man, the new dream, takes her place. She then joins the same level as the audience and speaks directly to them, as if to warn us not to end up this way. This shows how these ideas aren't just in the play, and that the dream Grandma believes in isn't dead.
The relationships between the characters in The American Dream show how the New American Dream has consumed the minds of Americans, while the old Dream is almost forgotten. All of the strange connections and reactions of the characters serve as a warning not to becomes consumed by consumerism and to remember what true dreams are.

Response to course material

My favorite part of the class this past month was reading The American Dream. I enjoy reading plays in class because listening and looking at the words help me to understand the reading better. Although this play was very confusing at first, I had some vague ideas while we read it. I noticed how the characters often had trouble communicating to each other when some phrases were repeated for their own understanding. Another thing that seemed odd was that grandma was the only character who made sense. Her lines were straightforward unlike the others. Now I see that every time she speaks, her words refer to how the old American Dream is dying. I guess the difference in clarity shows how the old Dream makes more sense than the new Dream. The thing that stuck with me right after reading the play were Grandma's last words. She said to stop now while everyone is happy, which I interpreted as meaning that the young man's life will end just like the other adoption did, since he is superficial. I wasn't sure if I liked the play that much after the first read, but now I am starting to really enjoy it as I understand the deeper meaning of the play.