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THE THEME OF DEATH AND LIFE IN
ALBEE’S SANDBOX
Edward Albee’s Sandbox is a brief one-act play which is a combination of realism and fantasy – the characteristic of the Theater of Absurd. ... Grandma for example is not only the leading character, or protagonist but also the chorus; at the same time she is not only the symbol of human being in general in a hostile world that becomes a Christ figure but also is the symbol of life. The same multiple functions happen for the theme of the play. The theme of the play, which has been hailed as a contribution to the Theater of Absurd since 1961, deals with satirizing the hollow social values of modern life. But this mentioned theme at the same time serves as a component part of another broader theme that is the theme of death. Albee makes use of the Theater of Absurd, death symbolism, and the motif of cruelty and violence to suggest that death itself is not absurd but the way people react toward death is absurd, and, by implication, he says the same thing about life.
Albee intends to deal with a world in which the phoniness and sterility in so many of modern man’s responses to the realities of life are visible. ... This allusion nicely serves as a hint to the fact that the characters in Sandbox – from scene two through five – are playing a play within the play. ...
If we ignore the last scene of the play and stick only to the first five scenes, we are dealing with the first clearly stated theme of the play; an attack on “vacuity in family relationship” and on “the cliched American way of death” ; as Richard E. ... A tragedy of modern way of life in which Daddy as the symbol of indifferent and wealth, and Mommy as a figure who bosses Daddy, and the Musician, who is the symbol of process of life – as dividing the scenes of the play – are to blame. ... In other words, every thing changes in the last scene as a romance except the image of death which remains constant throughout the play.
This beautiful image of death at the end of the play – the romantic part of the play – is not shocking since every element nicely fit in a romance.
Approximate Word count = 1842
Approximate Pages = 7.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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