Who's afraid of all the Marthas?

Albee’s Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf presents us with a young couple, Nick and Honey, hopeful and naive, and with an older couple, George and Martha, who are experienced and bitter. The later pair would host a party filled with eccentric games aimed at making the guests uncomfortable by digging the truth and speaking it (though said truth may be indeed false).

The boredom and bitterness of Martha and George drive them to play games as some sort of ritual, a way of speaking the truth and making everyone vulnerable, all while trying to prevail as the strong ones. They mean to be dominant even when they are at their weakest point.

At the same time, Allen Ginsberg shows the same honesty and vulnerability in his poem Howl. The speaker shows no fear in speaking the ugly, the good, the vulgar, the disappointing, etc. However, in Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf honesty is not so certain, for Martha and George keep portraying characters (at least that is how it seems). Moreover, their acting roles are really hard –if possible- to tell apart from their true selves.

Something similar happens with Howl, where the lines are blurred between the poet himself and the lyrical speaker. One could easily get confused about whether the poem is fictional or if Allen Ginsberg is actually speaking from his own experience. The same goes for the speaker, should we assume it is intended to be Ginsberg himself? Or is it simply a regular lyrical speaker?

Even when there is no such confusion regarding the fictional status of Edward Albee’s work, there is an uncertainty, as said earlier, among the characters themselves, and among all the characters each character plays. So, which one is the true Martha? What about George? Are any of their characters their true selves or they kept on acting throughout the whole party?

On another note, both Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf and Howl (actually, the Beat Generation as a whole) criticize the idea of the American Dream. In Albee’s play we can see how bitter and crazy Martha and George are about not being able to fulfill this dream because of their incapability to conceive a child. Also, the fact that Honey does not want any children disrupts the concept of the perfect family. Similarly, the Beat Generation openly rejected the idea of the American Dream, claiming it is a false notion, for the American Dream is actually not American at all. Additionally, they believed it was better to go from place to place, to the streets, downtown, etc. and to really get to know how life in America was like instead of getting comfortable at home and following this imposed idea.

 Finally, the characters in Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf use alcohol as a way to keep them playing, creating new stories, socializing, and acting. While the members of the Beat Generation use drugs as a means of inspiration and as a way of getting creative. They believed drugs would somewhat change their consciousness and positively influence their work.