The Sandbox: An Analytical Research Essay
The absurdity of the characters in Mr. Albee’s “The Sandbox” is necessarily apparent from the beginning of the play. The play’s length of less than 15 minutes is sufficient to ascertain that the audience need not be further abused by the presence of these caricatures of characters. The playwright captured the essence of Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma in such an efficient fashion that there can be no doubt he had rehearsed the play in his mind for some time before he put pen to paper. The impatience and hypocrisy displayed by Mommy and Daddy waiting for Grandma to die is callous and despicable.
A review in the New Yorker, suggests the dedication of this play to Albee’s Grandmother was most likely not made lightly. He was estranged from his adoptive parents. (He reportedly remarked, “They weren’t very good about being parents, and I wasn’t very good about being a son.”) Through his portrayal of Grandma in both “The Sandbox” and “The American Dream” one can surmise he had more affection for her, than his parents.(Als). Indeed, it was Grandmother’s trust fund that was his sustenance until he became successful. Grandma makes her entrance on stage borne under her armpits by Mommy and Daddy, body stiff, legs drawn up and then dumped in the sandbox , she is babbling, “…..her voice a cross between a baby’s laugh and cry.” (Albee 1065). Daddy asks Mommy “Do you think. . . do you think she’s . . . comfortable?” Mommy replies, “How would I know?” (1066).Her incapacitated state shows the innocent helplessness of the newborn and the elderly alike. This suggests Mommy and Daddy’s reluctance to deal with an elderly parent or perhaps their child as well. The ill- treated Grandma in the play rec...
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...gel of Death and has come for her, and then gives her a kiss on her forehead. She compliments him on his efforts and the curtain closes to the sound of the Musician playing.(1069). The conclusion, consistent with the play and characters is bizarre.”Much of his most characteristic work constitutes an absurdist commentary on American life.” (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia).
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Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
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Edward Albee's (1928) play Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1961-62) exhibits concern with the crises of faith of contemporary western civilization. This thematic concern is rooted in two sources.
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Orphans are often forced to mature faster than any other child. Often, they are exploited and used for their labor at a young age, ridding them of any potential childhood. Moreover, orphans lack a sense of belonging and have trouble relying on anybody other than themselves because the people they loved broke the only trust they knew, this leads to an isolation among them and a struggle with social development. Throughout the texts and films such as Anne of Green Gables, Orphan Train, Sidekicks, and The Outsiders we see specific examples of how orphans are expected to behave more maturely than children who grow up in a secure family setting.
The Children’s Aid Society in 1854 developed the Orphan Train program a predecessor to foster care. Charles Loring Brace believed that this would give children the chance of a good life by giving them the opportunity to live with “morally standing farm families”(Warren,
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