Institute of Liberal Art (ILA)

Permanent URI for this community

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Deconstruction of American Dream in Edward Albee’s The American Dream
(UMT, Lahore, 2021) Faiza Zaheer
This dissertation is an attempt to apply Jacques Derrida’s Theory of Deconstruction to the American Dream and its linguistic treatment by Edward Albee in his play The American Dream (1961). Different deconstructive terms such as Différance, Erasure and Aporia have been applied to understand and analyze the language of Albee’s The American Dream. While applying these terms to the philosophical tropes of the American Dream, the selected play has been discursively analyzed within the context of both old American Dream, as envisaged by its founding fathers, and the new American Dream as defined by James Truslow Adams (1931). These deconstructive terms will help the readers to understand the themes and discourse of modern and postmodern American drama in general and those of Albee’s in particular. This in turn makes the reader realize that American dream as depicted and projected in Albee’s play is based on materialism, illogicality, futility and absurdity.