JINNAH UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN

Submitted by:
Aashan
Maryam Nasir
Zafreen Mirza
Zarnaab Siddiqui
Class: B.s (1st year)
Department: English
Course title: Introduction to English Literature-I
Course no: 1011
Assignment topic: The Sandbox
Submitted to: Ms. Neelam Shoaib
Date: 24th/April/2019
INTRODUCTION
The Sandbox is a one-act play written by Edward Albee in the year 1959 which was first
performed on April 15, 1960 in the Jazz Gallery in New York City. The Sandbox is
dedicated to Albee’s maternal grandmother, an influential figure in his life. Self-
referential components associated with postmodernism are used throughout the play, with
actors inserting commentary on the events taking place and speaking directly to the
audience and alluding to the theatricality of the space itself. In spite of its distinctly
absurdist nature, The Sandbox is considered one of Edward Albee’s most
autobiographical works. The playwright himself continued to insist it was his finest play
even after Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? became one of the defining stage dramas of
the 1960s.

Edward Franklin Albee (March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American
playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959),Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and A Delicate Balance (1966). Three of his plays
won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and two of his other works won the Tony Award for
Best Play. His works are often considered as frank examinations of the modern condition.
His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that
found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene
Ionesco, and Jean Genet. His middle period comprised plays that explored the
psychology of maturing, marriage, and sexual relationships. Later in his life, Albee
continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?(2002). Albee died
at his home in Montauk, New York, on September 16, 2016, aged eighty-eight.
MAIN CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
The first and the main character of the drama “The Sandbox” around whom the drama
revolves is Grandma who is an eighty six year old wrinkled woman with bright eyes. She
is the protagonist of the play. She married a farmer at the age of 17. Her husband died
when she was thirty years, and she raised her daughter “Mommy” by herself from there
on. Grandma is at conflict with her family, society, and death.
The second character is “Mommy” who is shown a fifty five year old, well-dressed and
an imposing woman. She is Grandma's daughter. She is shown as an out-spoken and
domineering woman .She is the decision maker of the family .After marrying Daddy, she
brought her mother from the farm and into their big town house in the city. She gave her
mom an army blanket, her own dish, and a nice place under the stove. She is the one who
made the decision to put Grandma in the "sandbox" the remaining hours of her life which
exhibits that she does not care for her mother.
The third character of this play is “Daddy” a sixty year old man of small stature with gray
hair. He is shown as an extremely passive man who does not have his own opinions
rather he does whatever his wife says. He is the rich man that Mommy married. Daddy
was by far the more caring of the two. He exhibited this characteristic by asking Mommy
if Grandma was comfortable in the sandbox. He also comforted Mommy when the death
of her mother was at hand. .
The other main character of this play is a “Young Man” who is shown as a twenty five
year old good-looking, well-built boy who is dressed in a bathing suit. Moreover, he is
personified as the Angel of death who is performing calisthenics that is suggested as the
beating of wings.
The last character of the play is a Musician an unnamed character who accompanies the
family to the beach and who plays music and stops playing it on the direction of the
characters. The Musician, whose musical accompaniment is used for satirical purposes.
SUMMARY
The play begins with brightest day on a beach where a muscular young man is
performing mostly arm-based exercises near a sandbox. In the stage directions, Albee
specifies that his movements should look like wings flapping
A middle-aged couple, Mommy and Daddy, enter and begin to complain about the
weather. The young man greets them in a friendly way. As they try to figure out where to
put grandma, a musician comes out on stage and Mommy directs him to start playing.
Mommy and Daddy drag Grandma on stage by dragging her under her elbows. She is
resistant and acts like a petulant child. Deciding that the sandbox is a safe place, Mommy
and Daddy position her in the sand and set up chairs facing her. In annoyed and
dismissive tones, Mommy and Daddy coldly discuss how burdensome it is to take care of
Grandma.
Suddenly, Grandma sheds her childish persona, tells the musician to stop playing, and
chats with the young man. Grandma feels comfortable talking with the Young Man as he
treats her like a human being Grandma then speaks directly to the audience. She informs
the audience that Mommy had brought her to live in the city. While, Grandma has spent
her whole life on a farm where she got married at seventeen, was widowed at thirty, and
managed to raise Mommy and run the farm by herself. Now that Mommy has married the
rich Daddy, they’ve brought Grandma to live with them in the big city, where they’ve
given her space under the stove, an army blanket, and her own plate.
The musician is again told to start playing and suddenly the lights dim to indicate that it
is nighttime. A loud rumble is heard off-stage .Nevertheless, Mommy and Daddy take the
music, darkness, and noise to mean that it’s Grandma’s time to die. Mommy pretends to
be deeply grief-stricken while Daddy compliments her on how bravely she is holding up.
Although Grandma, who is lying down half buried in sand, has continued to mock
Mommy and Daddy, she soon realizes that she can no longer move. It is at this moment
that the Young Man finally stops performing his calisthenics and approaches Grandma
and the sandbox.
Angel of Death. Grandma warmly and reassuringly compliments him on his delivery and
then smiles and closes her eyes. The musician begins to play again and the play ends.

THEMES
Albee’s plays invariably adopt a harsh tone towards the cliché of a better life and the
hypocrisies that permeate much of humanity .This play reflects the reality of
contemporary American family. The dysfunction of family is also a theme in the play.
Firstly, it represents indignity that Grandma is the representation of tradition who
deserves respect as she had spent her life in bringing up her daughter while Mommy and
Daddy are arrogant towards Grandma and they effectively leave her to die as she no
longer serves any useful purpose.

Secondly, we notice that when mommy and daddy speak to one another, there is no warm
and sincere relationship between them; she only married him for the money. This rises
the theme of materialism in the play that Mommy married Daddy for money rather than
emotions and thought her mother as a burden because she was purposeless in her view.

Thirdly, they treat Grandma with politeness, yet at the same time with merciless
detachment. They talk about her, but hardly to her. Mommy reveals no emotional
attachment to her own mother, the emotional concern is more hypocritical than sincere.

Albee portrayed today’s society lack of empathy for individuals, regardless of age and
decline of culture and traditions.
JUSTIFICATION OF THE TITLE
The sandbox represents a liminal space in between life and death, youth and age. The two
people who spend time in the sandbox are the Young Man and Grandma. Grandma
represents the world of the living, while the Young Man represents Death, so when they
come together in the sandbox, the sandbox becomes the zone in which life ends and death
begins.

LITERARY TERMS EMPLOYED

There are various literary terms employed in the play “The Sandbox”. Firstly the term is
the “Protagonist” who is Grandma while on the other hand the role “antagonists” are
played by Mommy and Daddy.
Thirdly, the term used is the “personification” as the Young man is personified as the
“Death’. Moreover, “Allusion” to the fictive figure of the "Angel of Death." In addition,
the lights going down on the stage along with the rumbling noises off-stage create the
“imagery” signaling that death is on its way for Grandma.

In addition, in this play, Edward Albee expresses his feelings of disappointment regarding
the way our society treats the elderly. He cleverly conveys his ideas and opinions in the
form of an “allegory”.

Moreover, the large sandbox in the middle is meant to “symbolize” a coffin and its
permanent nature of keeping someone inside or it also represents a liminal space in
between life and death.

Lastly, “irony” which is grounded in the above-mentioned hypocrisy of the antagonists

that is at the center of much of the playwright’s work.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
“The Sandbox” is an absurd play. The Theatre of Absurd is a post–World War II
designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily
European and American playwrights in the late 1950s. Absurdist playwrights adhered to
the theories of French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus, in particular his essay The
Myth of Sisyphus, published in 1942. Their work focused largely on the idea
of existentialism and expressed what happens when human existence has no meaning or
purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and
argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion,
silence.

Ionesco defines;

“Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose……Cut off from religious,

metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost, all his actions
become senseless, absurd, useless.”

Critics believe that Theater of the Absurd arose as a movement from the doubts and
fears surrounding World War II and what many people saw as the degeneration of
traditional moral and political values. The movement flourished in France, Germany, and
England, as well as in Scandinavian countries. Several of the founding works of the
movement include Jean Genet's The Maids (1947), Eugene Ionesco's The Bald
Soprano (1950), Arthur Adamov's Ping-Pong (1955), and Samuel Beckett's waiting for
Godot (1953). Beckett's death in 1989 is said to mark the close of the movement's
popularity.
 "Whatever you say Mommy" -Daddy

Daddy says this when Mommy asks his opinion as to whether the setting will do for
Grandma's death. The quote reveals that Daddy is especially submissive in the
relationship, and takes a passive approach to everything, caring very little about what
happens and always deferring to Mommy.

"So it is! Well! Our long night is over. We must put away our tears, take off our
mourning... and face the future. "-Mommy

Mommy says this just moments after Grandma dies. While the previous evening,
Mommy expressed as thou she was very sad about Grandma's death, in the light of day,
she is able to move on very quickly which reveals her hypocritical feelings for her
mother.

"I mean... I mean, they haven't given me one yet... the studio..." - Young Man

This line shows that the Young Man is a kind of phantom, someone without an identity.
The fact that he doesn't know his name as he hasn't been given one by the movie studio
yet represents that he too is a liminal element of the play space, that he represents an
intermediary between life and death. He tells Grandma that he is "the Angel of Death,"
and in taking on that name, he becomes the Angel of Death, making the metaphor literal:
he has come to usher Grandma into the world of the non-living.

"There's no respect around here" - Grandma

Grandma says this after asking the Musician to stop playing when she is trying to talk to
the audience. She already feels disrespected by Mommy and Daddy, who have carted her
out to a sandbox to die, and here she expresses her disappointment with the Musician as
well. In her eyes, no one respects her and she is mistreated in her old age which
represents one of the theme of the play indignity.

CONCLUSION
Therefore, it is evident that “The Sandbox” reflects the society of the modern era in
which the love for materialist values have overcome the human relations which results in
the disgrace of the elders and the increasing love for money. It shows selfishness and the
attitude of an individual towards the one who is unable to fulfill any purpose or generate
profit which is portrayed by Mommy and Daddy in this play towards Grandma. It also
reveals a reality that at the end of the day, we all just die and go away.