Albee and Twain: Demystifying an American Dream

Albee and Twain Demystifying an Ameri base trance What Happens to a day- ideate differed? / Does it dry up / bid a raisin in the sun / Or fester like a sore- / etc. And then run? / Does it fume like rotten meat? / Or crust with sugar over- / like a syrupy sweet? / Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load / Or does it explode? &8212&8212 Langston Hughes the Statesn Dream was a term that first appeared in James Truslow Adamss The Epic of America, where he states The Ameri send word Dream is that dream of a land in which life sentence should be better and richer and fuller for every integrity, with opportunity for distri exactlyively according to efficacy or achievement.It is not a dream of motor cars and high compensation merely, but a dream of social re indicate in which each man and each woman sh entirely be able to attain to the fullest pinnacle of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the unintended circumstances of birth or position (Adams, 1931) It is this land Twain throws huckaback and Jim to endure the hardships of life, to experience the thrown-Inness of being born into the world unprepared, without choice. Long considered as a quest for go offdom, Huck-Finn basically is as M.Cox puts it a flight from tyranny, not a flight for freedom (Cox, p172-173, 1966). Freedom is fundamentally a relative term, and freedom may manifest itself in corporal and mental realms. Half of the world still considers itself honored under the spoken communication of The Commonwealth, illustrates the limitation of physical freedom alone. One dreams in separateing to maintain that freedom, but as Schumacher put it, The greatest deprivation whateverone can suffers is to have no chance of looking after himself and do a livelihood, depriving one of ones existence and consciousness of being free. Kumar, p2672, 1991). Being a Post-American Dream novel, Twain did not go to the completion to overthrow the ent ire socio-political system to emphasize the impossibility and superficiality of American dream. Europeans found the dark lands flourishing with immense economical and religious opportunities. The estimation was perhaps that opportunities could not be isolated to lands, and certainly these islands cannot claim to win equality and recognition to people of all run aways and creed, when its own socio-political apparatus is plagued with racism and lack of consciousness.With Huck and Jim, the racial discrimination prevalent in America was laid bare. Twain does not talk about conscience as a mode of judgment of human actions rather he infused the unfathomable viewpoint of intuition and innate human instincts as the basis of m resemblingg choices. Conscience, which are essentially derived from society, the learned distinction between good and bad, different to black and white, are merely false reserves upon natural behavior.Such constraint is what Huck rejects (Burg, p303, 1974), som ething which is apparent when Huck says always do whichever right or wrong fill in handiest at the age. There can be no geographic location which can encompass this distinctness of human quality, to change with time as the instincts indicate may be not dictated or etched in law, and no moral order of society could detain the complexity and vastness of intuition. We must not expect Twain to state any moralistic view regarding the confrontation of races in Huck-Finn.Although set in the previous(prenominal), the novel peeps into the future and without dealing with complexities of master- buckle down psychodynamics, interprets the nature of freedom, something which seems to suggest that psychological freedom is hard to achieve in a night with such(prenominal) thing as an Emancipation Proclamation. If organizations like AfroAmerican whiz, Society of African Culture and resistance fronts like Operation stomach and Dont Buy Where You Cant Work were all prevalent during even the late 1960s, suggesting the fact that the whole concept of American dream was unacceptable to most of the black Americans.The final chapter of Huckleberry Finn which is often considered as a chilling descent is not a flaw in architectural unity, but a denial of celebration of freedom which one would expect from Jims liberation. Twain deliberately de-romanticizes and trivializes the whole concept of freedom, since the vagary of equality and opportunity was White American the one who was aware of his past and ensured about his recognition, nativity of his own culture and tradition, the one who assumed the nationality of a land which captured.The slaves, who by now formed the consciousness of a friendship and not the citizen, was more concerned with their soul identity as Joanna Zangrando puts it the quest for black liberation is a search for what whites no longer receive in full measure a clear and purposeful guts of self identity (Zangarando, p154, 1970). Jims never been and would nev er be free unless he acquires an identity like the slaves of the African culture did. A slave in Nigeria, would still be a Nigerian, while Jim, does not go into into that frame of nationality, and neither into that dream which an American saw.The concept of American Dream was built upon the pillars formed by the dislocated and reluctant hands of the slaves, akin to what the Romans did, and just like them, came down the fabrication of entire dream, devastated, stranded and lost. Nationality is not just one issue that can be talked about in reference to American dream. Societal dynamics function through interaction of power, authority and influence. It can well function without the aesthetic and poetic office of human development. And in a society devoid of sustainable rare references, financial status does reverse a determining parameter of individual growth.Although not implicit in the original idea of James Turslow, but economic influence finds its manifestation in the America n dream of the super acid man. Such aspects find distinct voice in Albees flora which revolve around the social fabric. The general view that Edward Albees bleeds are ferocious attacks on lethargy and complacency in American society and a frustrate denial that everything is just dandy receives a nod from Albee himself (Albee, p8, 1961) and he goes on to confirm his own claim with Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a play through which pastity speaks out for entire American civilization.How subjects receive names is as well as interesting. While George corresponds to the then president of United States and Martha being her wife, Albee certainly hits the hold back on the head, illustrating a family whose life is drowned deep into the artificialities manufactured under in the social machinery. Near the end of the second act of Whos Afraid of Virginia Wolf, George, the prof of history, is left alone onstage while Martha, his wife, and Nick are acting the preliminary rounds of hump the hostess in the kitchen.Attempting to control his hurt and temper he pronounces aloud from a book he has taken from the shelf, And the West, encumbered by crippling alliances and burdened with a morality too stern to accommodate itself to the swing of events must eventually fall (II, 174). George is clearly encumbered with a crippling alliance in his marriage to Martha and does seem to be burdened with a kind of morality that makes it difficult for him to respond in kind to her vicious attacks.At the same time, this observation on the run awayments of history, read in connection with the events of Georges personal history, is a splendid example of how Albee has managed to authorize the events of the family drama with a deeper significance, suggestive of larger events and movements. Upon the historicity and its relation to American Dream, Holton writes One of the principal myths on which this country was founded was the notion that America was a New Eden, a second chance or dained by idol or Providence in which man could begin all over again, freed from the accumulated sin and corruption of Western history (Holton, p47, 1973).With Holtons comment, we move yet closer to the objective of this paper, that not only when could the American become a New Adam and found upon the unspoiled continent an holy man human polity, but this new way of life and new order of society could serve as a shining example to pay back erring Europe from her own sinfulness. Such a dream was essentially impossibility in an imperfect world where multitudes dream their own dreams. consequently the majority of American historians, says David nole, have been Jeremiahs, decrying Americas involvement within the transitory patterns of European history and calling Americans back to their duties and obligations (Nobles, p4, 1965). With such a catastrophic dream at hand, the people of American couldnt have gone far with the nightmare it was to cast.It was not unprecedented, as such a crumbling of social order already shook the British machinery where The Angry Young Man was invented during the mid(prenominal) of twentieth century who looks back in anger and, shouts Id love to live too But I must say, its pretty dreary living in the American age (Osborne, p9-14, 1954). This disenchantment and dissatisfaction with life and lack of recognition in society, was soon realized in America as well. In fact the three acts of the play coroneted Fun and Games, Walpurgisnacht and Exorcism may be said to illustrate the historic passage of American civilization from innocence to guilt to madness.America which began as an un-spoilt continent, convinced that it was unique in human history to create a perfect society, just like the Germans once thought, in a race of differentiation, cut themselves from European tradition and history, in effect killed its parents. But how can one neglect the parenting they once received in Europe, when memories transform into haunting, only by r etreating into madness can one escape the vicissitudes of history.Again in the words of Holtan, Both George and Martha indicate at various points that back there, in the beginning, when I first came to New Carthage, there might have been a chance for them. That chance was lost and now their crippling alliance exacts its gong from both of them (Holtan, p48, 1973). Finally, what Johnson perceived with his panoramic eye while surveying piece from China to Peru (Johnson, p50, 1749), acknowledging the everydayity of human behavior, holds true for any nation any island claiming to become land of opportunity.Freedom again is a responsibility, that functions under a collective consciousness of being free, consequently whoever, in mans universal condition, chooses freedom chooses it for everybody concludes Franz Adler (Adler, p284, 1949). Similarly an idea that negates the masses, devoids itself the potential of transformation into a phenomenon, its placement soon consumes its very prese nce with time. References Adams, James, Truslow, The Epic of America, Simon Publications, 2001.Adler, Franz, The Social Thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, The American diary of Sociology, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Nov. , 1949), The University of Chicago Press. Albee, Edward, The American Dream, Coward-McCann, Inc. , New York, 1961. Burg, David, F. , other View of Huckleberry Finn, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 29, No. 3, University of California Press, 1974. Cox, James, M. , Mark Twain, The Fate of Humour, Princeton University Press, 1966 Johnson, The Vanity of benevolent Wishes, emended by Harriet Raghunathan, Worldview Publications, 2004, New Delhi.Noble, David, W. , Historians Against History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1965. Osborne, John, Look Back in Anger, edited by Neeraj Malik, Worldview Publications, 2002, New Delhi. Schumacher, E. F. , Dilemmas of Measuring Human Freedom, Kumar, K, G, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 26, No. 47, Economic and Political Weekly, 1991. Z angrando, Schneider, Joanna, Zangrando, L. Robert, Black Protest A Rejection of the American Dream, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, Sage Publications, Inc. , 1970.