The American Dream Summary/Analysis

• Summary: This play is basically an afternoon in Mommy and Daddy's apartment. They begin with childish conversations about what Mommy did the day before, and they keep mentioning that they are expecting a visitor, who is late. Grandma is also present, and offers contrast to the Mommy/Daddy characters. Their visitor arrives, and it is Mrs. Barker, a professional woman. Everyone seems to have forgotten key facts about the others, including names. They remain fixated on the subject of Grandma's boxes and the conflicts that branch off of that, including the imminent fact that they will need to have Grandma taken to a nursing home soon. It is evident that Daddy is being harshly emasculated by Mommy. Finally, they begin to remember a story from long ago about Mommy and Daddy's baby that they mutilated, and that is when the Young Man shows up. The Young Man displays a hollow aspect that was created in him when Mommy and Daddy murdered his twin. Grandma ends the play after Mommy and Daddy have decided to take the Young Man into their household by breaking the fourth wall and speaking her final lines to the audience directly.
• Basics:
• Author: Edward Albee
• Setting: average middle-class American living room, mid 1900s
• Significant characters: Mommy (very controlling, demeaning towards Daddy, but still immature and childish), Daddy (even more childish than Mommy, submissive), Mrs. Barker (a professional woman), Young Man (hollow shell left from the murder of his twin), Grandma (relative voice of reason in the play)
• Symbolism:
• Throughout the play, Grandma contrasts heavily with all of the other characters in that she represents the ideals of the old American dream.These ideals include:
• reverence for past experiences
• respect for the elderly
• connection to personal experience
• Mommy, Daddy and Mrs. Barker serve as transition individuals between the old and new American Dreams, and the Young Man represents the new American dream.  New ideals include:
•  materialism
• conformism
• arrogance
• feminism
• Mrs. Barker symbolizes the system to which society adheres. Her role causes the audience to reevaluate if the system should be blindly accepted.
• Quotes:
• "Most people think that when you get so old, you either freeze to death, or you burn up. But you don't." (19)
• Here Grandma can be seen as interpreting the demise of the old American dream. The treatment of Grandma throughout the play is analogous to how the old ideals are being treated by newer societal conventions. The possible Hell reference brings in the fate of the old American dream.
• "I don't know why I bother to take them with me. They don't have much in them... a few images, a little garbled by now... you know... the things one accumulates." (84-85), "I have been drained, torn asunder... disemboweled. I have, now, only my person... my body, my face. I use what I have... I let people love me." (78)
• These two quotes highlight the ideals of the old and new American dreams. While the old focuses more on intangible things such as memories, the new is fixated with material things, like the human form.
• Theme: Albee is offering a commentation on the state of American society and a call for the return to older, less radical values. It is evident that the older values are to be seen as preferable when their characteristics are listed and compared to eachother. Grandma, while an absurdist character, is able to show Albee's point by continually talking about the mistreatment of old people, i.e. the old American Dream. The emasculating and destructive nature of Mommy pushes the negative responses towards the new American Dream.

*This version takes into account the peer comment.