Where is this society dragging us?

  “on freeways fifty lanes wide

                              on a concrete continent

                                        spaced with bland billboards   

                        illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness”

I’ve decided to start this post with a quote “From A Coney Island” written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was considered a political poet part of the Beat Generation of writers that were known by their inhibited style of writing and the way they fight against the conformity of a post war society. They celebrated the use of drugs, alcohol and sexual gratification as a means of expression. This quote represents the image of the capitalist society, in which according to my opinion we are still living in, surrounded by advertisements that tell us what to do in order to be happy, and we believe them, we continuously try so hard to fit in that we end up losing ourselves. In this sense, we grow up with the anti-values of a capitalist society such as ambition, competence, disloyalty, falseness between others, and also this constant violence that we see every day, not only physical, but also verbal. In this sense, there’s a particular play that remained me to all this aspects, which is Who´s afraid of Virginia Woolf? a play of the 60’s that represented through the story of a middle age couple, how this anti-values were presented not only in the society of the time, but also in our current society.

Who´s afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play that talks about how an older couple, Martha and George, played the game of cat-and-mouse with a younger couple, Honey and Nick. This twisted game that Martha and George were playing, had certain rules that were broken when Martha revealed  the existence of their “son” to Honey, it is in that instance when the story turns more interesting.

Violence 

Martha and George’s relation was full of mysteries and secrets, but during the entire play we could see the violent way in which they treated to each other, every time exceeding more the limits of the things they say, using such a harmful language that was capable to destroy anyone. That captured my attention, how they were able to express their feelings or their opinions in such an aggressive way, and the most shocking part wasn’t only that, but also that it was the only way they knew to treat each other, they have lived so many years in this twisted game that they were used to it, but it was becoming everytime more excessively harmful.

“You can sit there in that chair of yours, you can sit there with the gin running out of your mouth, and you can humiliate me, you can tear me apart… ALL NIGHT … and that’s perfectly all right …that’s OK” (p.181)

The same happens in our current society, doesn’t matter where we look because we are surrounded by violence, it is on TV, on the news, on Internet and everywhere we look, in this sense we grow up in this way, with the things that they show us and we learn that is acceptable, this is the main reason why we are becoming so aggressive, because is what the society is dragging us in, showing us an image that people tend to follow.

Lies and ambition  

In addition, the other characters Honey and Nick had their secrets on their own. They got married because Honey was pregnant, but then they realized that she only imagine her pregnancy. But it turns out that Honey didn’t want any children so she had an abortion which Nick never found out, or never wanted to realize. In addition, it was very interesting about this character how she didn’t want it to see that her husband was cheating on her, she preferred to close her eyes and maintain her perfect life rather than knowing the truth, in the same way that she lied to him about their baby.

On the other hand, Nick was an ambitious young man that was able to do everything in order to succeed in life, it didn’t matter who was in the middle of his way in order to accomplish his goals. “you’re ambitious, aren’t you, boy? You didn’t chase me around and up the goddamn stairs out of mad, driven passion, did you now? You weren’t thinking a little bit about you career weren’t you? ”

(p.191)

It is for that reason that he accepted when Martha proposed him to have sexual intercourse, even though his wife was in the bathroom floor of the house sick.

In this sense, we see the lies and ambition as part of the values of our society. It is easier to hide things than tell the truth or even close our eyes when the things aren’t as we want. Moreover, the ambition of Nick is just the reflection of the sense of competence that the capitalist culture expects from us. We should always have goals and keep them on mind, and is not important who we hurt in order to achieve them.

To sum up, the capitalist culture of the society of the time transformed our current society and its values, in this sense in who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? We could see those anti-values personified in the characters. Its seems to me that we are a reflection of what we see in our culture, From a Coney Island of the Mind makes us see the images of the American society, and how we pursue this illusions of happiness, love, friendship etc that we see in the advertisements and how we desire them, because is what we believe is going to fulfill our lives.

 References

From A Coney Island of the Mind Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?