The American Dream Themes

Edward Albee’s short play The American Dream, part of the post-World War II “Theatre of the Absurd” movement, is a convoluted and occasionally dreamlike piece that satirically skewers the idea of “the American dream.” A deeply personal play which draws on Albee’s own dissatisfaction with his strained, painful childhood, The American Dream expresses Albee’s desire to expose American idealism as a fallacy. Through the play, Albee argues that “the American dream”—opportunity, equality, success through…

Edward Albee drew on his own childhood traumas (as the adoptive son of parents he could never seem to impress) in composing The American Dream—a play which takes a less-than-generous look at the darkness and unrest simmering just below the surface of a typical American family. Given the societal and sexual revolutions looming on the horizon during the time Albee was composing the play, it stands to reason that his absurdist drama would skewer…

Edward Albee’s The American Dream is part of a movement called “Theatre of the Absurd”—plays written in the decades following the end of World War II which used heightened reality, absurdism, and breaking of the “fourth wall” between the stage and the audience to highlight the irrationality of society, entertainment, and the intersection of the two. The world, absurdist playwrights knew, was plunged into a strange and dangerous new era in the wake of the…