The play is set in the eastern part of the United States, the area where there are the most prestigious of America’s universities. Within this milieu, the characters are above average, and the element of social criticism is directed towards the best that America has to offer by way of civilization. Though the play is concentrated on four characters, there are wider references to society as a whole, and the writer implies that if such people are degraded, the society must also be a degraded one.
The central theme of this play is the necessity of the removal of illusion from a relationship, and it is embodied in the title which Albee has explained as meaning: Who’s afraid of a life without illusion? In the life of George and Martha the illusion involved is the fiction that they have a child, and they indulge in this fantasy to compensate for their actual childlessness and their dreary married life. This is also due to professional failure and disillusionment on George’s part, infidelity on her part and constant bickering on the part of both of them. She breaks the rules by revealing the truth to strangers, and he in turn puts an end to it by publicly announcing the “son’s” death, which she, correspondingly, is forced to accept.
The psychological impact of the circumstances and the manner in which he does this is such that there is no question of the fiction being revived, and they are forced to face life together as it is, and not take refuge in what might have been. For Nick and Honey, the illusion here is their image as a presentable and promising couple. The truth is that there is a squalid background to their marriage due to his being trapped into it by her supposed pregnancy, and also because he agreed to it because of the ill-gotten money she had inherited.
In addition, their present childlessness is not, as they present it, that of a young couple who have not had time to settle down, but is the result of secret abortions on Honey’s part. It is hinted, but never made clear, that the pregnancy which enforced their marriage was a real one, secretly terminated by Honey. Nick’s total disloyalty to this relationship is exposed when he is ready to reveal their relationship to a total stranger, and be unfaithful to her when she is in the same house, with the aim of advancing his career. He has to face public discomfiture at the hands of George, whom he despises for his lack of moral fibre. This is the truth he has to face, while Honey has to come to terms with her reluctance to bear children.
The theme of conflict is also significant in the play. The quarrels in which George and Martha engage, are not merely the product of drunkenness and illnature. They explain the rows between them as “exercise”. The play is full of boxing metaphors, most of which are used to describe married life, and many come from Martha, who is surprisingly knowledgeable on the subject, and even uses technical phraseology. Conflict is also the means by which truth and illusion are separated. In the case of George and Martha, it is their quarrel which precipitates his decision to end the fantasy of their child. George is also prompted to reveal Nick’s secrets by their conflict with each other.
The conflict also reveals Nick to be a grasping and unprincipled man, and we find that he has deserved the exposure and humiliation he has received at the hands of George. Parenthood and childlessness are also prominent themes in the play. Martha was morbidly attached to her father in a way which has precluded happiness with her husband. George’s parents constitute one of the unsolved mysteries of the play. There is talk of his having killed them in separate accidents, but he claims that someone else is responsible for them. Honey had a father who was, it is hinted, a hypocrite and a crook, while no reference is made to Nick’s parents.
The generation represented on stage is childless. In George and Martha’s case, this is simply a misfortune, but in Nick and Honey’s it is by her deliberate choice – she refuses to be a mother because of the pain. The childlessness of these characters is symbolic of a more generalized unfruitfulness both in their lives as individuals, and in society as a whole. Albee is certainly preoccupied with family life gone wrong. He also deplores the materialism and success worship in American society through the portrayal of the characters, particularly Martha and Nick.
Though the play gives an initial impression of disorder and shapelessness, it is, in fact, a tightly constructed piece. The play observes the unities of time, place and action. The play begins at two o’clock in the morning and ends before dawn: a period scarcely longer than the actual duration of the play. The scene never moves outside the living room in George’s house. And the action centres upon a single theme, namely the destruction of the false basis upon which George and Martha have built their lives, the apparently aimless quarrelling in the play also being directed towards this end.
The unity of action is also seen in the titles Albee gives to the acts, because they point to the progress of the action as it relates to this central theme. The “fun and Games” of Act I raise the ghosts which walk on “Walpurgisnacht” (named after the night of St. Walpurga in May, when ghosts are believed to walk), in Act II and which are finally laid in the “Exorcism” of Act II. All the quarrels of the evening which are seen by George and Martha as “fun and games”, are devised by Albee to the moment when George brings them to an end by the “exorcism”.
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