The American Dream and Modern Comedy
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This paper explores how Edward Albee's The American Dream shows the main characteristics of modern comedy. Most often, modern playwrights of comedy ridicule absurdity or irrationality existing within modern society. In their presentation of irrationality, the often-used device is the comic structure of contradiction. There is usually a great contradiction between what the characters think and what the audience believes. This discrepancy constitutes the main structure of comedy and arouses laughter on the part of the audience. In The American Dream, Albee exposes man's emotional aridity and moral decay in the material happiness of modern American society. By ridiculing the discrepancy between spiritual emptiness and material complacency in the characters' life, Albee produces laughter in the audience and further engages the audience in its serious contemplation on the off-stage world. The characters' illusory happiness of material satisfaction is often found in the modern world where the audience lives. Provoked by the characters' colloquial dialogue, the audience views this illusory course as its own and realizes that, while laughing at the absurdity of the characters' life and lamenting their meaningless existence, the audience also responds with laughter and anguish to its own situation which is also devoid of its meaningful existence in the empty routines of dehumanized modern society.
Abstract
This paper explores how Edward Albee's The American Dream shows the main characteristics of modern comedy. Most often, modern playwrights of comedy ridicule absurdity or irrationality existing within modern society. In their presentation of irrationality, the often-used device is the comic structure of contradiction. There is usually a great contradiction between what the characters think and what the audience believes. This discrepancy constitutes the main structure of comedy and arouses laughter on the part of the audience. In The American Dream, Albee exposes man's emotional aridity and moral decay in the material happiness of modern American society. By ridiculing the discrepancy between spiritual emptiness and material complacency in the characters' life, Albee produces laughter in the audience and further engages the audience in its serious contemplation on the off-stage world. The characters' illusory happiness of material satisfaction is often found in the modern world where the audience lives. Provoked by the characters' colloquial dialogue, the audience views this illusory course as its own and realizes that, while laughing at the absurdity of the characters' life and lamenting their meaningless existence, the audience also responds with laughter and anguish to its own situation which is also devoid of its meaningful existence in the empty routines of dehumanized modern society.
참고문헌 (17)
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