Open Prompt - #4

1970 Also. Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a specific inanimate object (e.g., a seashell, a handkerchief, a painting) is important, and write an essay in which you show how two or three of the purposes the object serves are related to one another.

     Many literary works use objects to represent greater meaning than what the objects actually are. For instance, the conch in The Lord of the Flies represents freedom of speech and order. In Edward Albee's play The American Dream, Grandma and her boxes symbolizes the values of the old American dream. Through language and stage settings Albee creates a mood of curiosity from the audience that leads the audience to understand the greater meaning of the boxes.

     Cluttering the stage, Grandma's boxes number among its more enigmatic objects. The play is empty of interesting objects and can only be followed by the characters' dialogue until Grandma comes in with the boxes. From then on, for much of the play, Albee toys with the audience's curiosity to discover what the boxes contain and what purpose they will serve. Although Albee has Mommy and Daddy continually complimenting the boxes' pretty wrappings, it is important that they do not consider its contents. Also when Grandma almost reveals the boxes' purpose and what they contain, Mommy silences her. Mommy and Daddy inadvertently shuts Grandma out of their presense and ends up never knowing the contents. Ultimately the audience learns that in reality, the boxes contain the haphazard list of objects that Grandma has accumulated over the course of her life. In a play where an outwardly perfect Young Man becomes the son who provides satisfaction, the boxes represent Mommy and Daddy's satisfaction with surfaces and their negligence of the old values by the American dream.

     The boxes also serve as a diversion when the household attempts to ascertain the purpose of Mrs. Barker's visit. They perhaps then also allegorize the composition of the play, which largely consists of apparent and perpetually surprising diversions that keep the audience from the heart of the matter. Just as every event in the story seems out of place and unimportant, the boxes function in the same way. The boxes are spatially referred throughout the entire play to provide distractions from the audience and perhaps remind them of their curiosity of why those boxes are even there. Because after the initial wave of curiosity has past, it is easy to forget about the boxes. Therefore Albee keeps referencing them through the characters dialogue to hint at their importance such as when after Mrs. Barker comes into play nobody knows why she is here, Mommy suddenly diverts the audience's attention to the boxes by suggesting that Mrs. Barker is here because of them. It is later shown that indeed Mrs. Barker has some relation between the boxes because of her association of the American dream. Therefore Albee's use of language in The American Dream hints subtly at the greater meaning and importance of the boxes.