A reader reading Albee will not fail to notice the tricks of language in operation; a more interesting analysis is to consider how the characters themselves are aware of language, of reading and being read, as text, by other characters. Albee's plays, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Three Tall Women", show the obsession with language and its functions, both good and terrifying. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” It is as much about censorship, attempts to limit speech, as it is about simulation and generation through language. Three Tall Women, like a memory game, exposes language as a primary form of discovery. In both works, the characters approach language in a way that may begin lightly but never becomes meaningless. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, to begin with, takes its title from a play on words, apparently not very meaningful, unless that we do not read it as a reversal of the traditional children's tale and recognize that a female has replaced the male monster. But if we accept the idea of ​​wordplay as betraying the hidden wish of words, then we are thrust into a world where every verbal choice matters, whether we understand it or not. Indeed, upon entering the house with George and Martha, one enters exactly that world, and the pun begins instantly and relentlessly. A vaguely remembered and unanchored phrase enters Martha's mind. What a dump! and she will not rest, nor let George rest, until she has located him in time and place (3). A conflict immediately begins depending on how each person perceives the other's mode of communication in the party from which they return. Martha accuses George of passivity, of sitting and talking rather than mingling, and George retorts: Do you want me to spend all night yelling at everyone, like you do? (7). After a few more pages of verbal exchange, the guests arrive, immersed in George and Martha's world in much the same way as we are. The jokes continue unabated, and when George tries to facilitate the exchange with Nick, Honey and the audience, Martha is a devil with language; it really is, we begin to understand what the theme of the evening will be (21). The exhausting Act I of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, entitled Fun and Games, gives us a glimpse of the breadth of language. There are common, unspectacular but utilitarian aphorisms and phrases, such as Honey's Never mix never Ensure (23) and Martha's bust a gut (25), as well as disorienting statements that perhaps sound familiar because of the rhythm but are in fact the pure invention of the character. , like that of George For the blind eye of the mind, the well-being of the heart and the throat of the liver (24). The characters are always searching for the right phrase, testing possibilities out loud to try to match language with meaning. Thus we have George's image of Martha chewing ice cubes like a cocker spaniel (14) and Martha's more damaging non-image of George as a blank, a number...a zero (17). Added to this desire for successful representation is the disgust of those who treat language carelessly. George ridicules Nick for his attempt to characterize an abstract painting by offering it various empty interchangeable elements, a certain loud, relaxed quality or a quietly noisy, relaxed intensity (22), as he later mocks Honey for reducing the toilet to a euphemism (29). Conventional valuesexpressed in polite speech have no place in the order of this night, which will end with the characters attacking each other not only to the bone, but beyond the bone to the marrow (213 ). In Act I, George tries to reassure Nick nothing extraordinary is happening. We only walk with what's left of our spirit, he told him (34). But once it's revealed that Martha told Honey about the couple's son, the games quickly turn ugly, extending into the second act. As each character exposes secrets known only to them or shared only with their spouse, and as characters move in and out of rooms on stage so that the setup constantly changes, the audience becomes confused as to who knows what. at every moment of the play. For example, the stories of George and Martha's boxing match and Martha's first lover are told to all four characters, but the stories of George at prep school and Nick's marriage to Honey are only shared by George and Nick . This sets the stage for the final, climatic asymmetry of the knowledge that George killed the son shared by George and Honey, much to Honey's terror. This, the play's consummate success with language in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, brings a glorious close to an unsatisfying evening of wordplay. The uses of language discussed so far, to hurt, to reveal or to tell, are not satisfactory for two reasons. In Act I, George says to Nick, I'm sorry. I wasn't listening...or thinking...whichever applies (46). This is similar to Nick in Act II when he says to George, I heard you...I didn't say I was deaf...I said I didn't understand (98 ). As Albee makes clear throughout the piece, listening is not thinking, and hearing is not understanding. The character's dissatisfaction with language takes the form of repeated instances of corrected speech throughout the play. Has there ever been a play in which the characters corrected each other's speech so persistently and for so little functional purpose? There's George and Martha arguing about abstruses and abstracts (63), the flock of geese corrected to gangle and ultimately flock (113), and Honey's correction of George when he says that the doorbell rang, not rang, which exasperatingly prolongs the tension. before the watershed (229). The characters, I think, attempt to assert this small measure of control over speech because they fail in a more important way, in their attempts to censor the speech of others when it counts. In Act III, Martha tells George, Truth and Illusion. .. you don't know the difference, to which George replies: No; but we must continue as if we had done so (202). The failure of language could be the final message of the play, but it is not, because George has prepared one final game to end all games. He says to Martha: Now listen to me... We're going on, and I'm going to come after you, and your performance tonight will be like an Easter show. Now I want you to be a little alert. (Slaps her lightly with his free hand) I want some life in you, baby. (208) This seems to be a rather gentle and almost human conduct from Martha in the ring, coming after what we have seen before. George says to Martha: Please be on top of your game, because I'm going to need you. What George imagined he would follow is an entirely new and powerful use of language. This is accompanied by his transition from a man of contemplation, a historian, to a man of action, a biologist, in coherence with the human organization of the play. As George said earlier, when people can'tto endure the present, they do one of two things: they either turn to a contemplation of the past, as I did, or they set out to modify the future (178). At the end of the play, George and Martha realize that their incessant play with language keeps them trapped in a claustrophobic and unbearable present. Thus, when George kills the son to close the play, he activates in reverse the original scriptural function of language, logos. Rather than creating through speech, George's act is one of dismantling. So when he tells Martha, I'm not a god. I don't have power over life or death, he's a little shy (233). George removes the fundamental lie in their relationships with others and each other through another lie, and thus creates space for a new world in which they will no longer have to carry on as if they knew the difference between truth and illusion. They will either know the difference from the most hopeful reading, or they will recognize their human limitations and not add to the darkness. Throughout the play, the characters take on language through a range of functions, but only the latter is useful and therefore satisfying. Like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Albee's later play, Three Tall Women, betrays an obsession with exchanged language. between people. The play is divided, although in an unorganized manner, into two acts, each of which has its primary function carried out through language. In Act I, Albee aims to individualize or differentiate the three women A, B and C, by classifying them in largely economic but also biological roles, in which the existence of each character is nourished by that of another ( A in the role of the old lady). in need, B as guardian and C as attorney's representative). In Act II, on the other hand, the three women undergo a form of condensation or compression into one, and the fundamental asymmetry of knowledge (C does not know that she is the same woman as B and A), as in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. ?, gradually disappears. However, the boundaries between acts are not entirely strict. Verbal clues begin to penetrate the reader's consciousness from the beginning, at the same time as C begins to realize what she has gotten herself into. When C says in Act I, There's nothing wrong with me, B responds, with a sour smile, Well, wait (18). This is the play's first warning, and while it can be understood in its direct sense that with age the complacent C will no longer be complacent, it also sets the stage for more ambiguous statements, as when A said to B: She will learn. (To C; threatening.) Isn't it (24). This suggests that there is something that C will need to discover, through careful listening, careful remembering, and a synthesis of the two. Albee gives us clues to the secret early in the play, even though at this point we are not sufficiently educated in the matter. language patterns operating in the room and are therefore unable to grasp the nature of the riddle. It is, as in Oedipus Rex, an enigma of identity. In an exchange that shows Albee in full control of his talents, A drags himself into the room after being abandoned in the bathroom and complains, A person could die there and no one would care, transferring the emotion to a third disembodied person in order to generate feelings of guilt without seeming to ask for it (14). C understood the intention, and so she makes fun of her for her circumlocution: C (For herself, but to be heard.) Who is this... person? A person could do that, a person could do...BIt's a figure of speech.C(Slightly sarcastic.) No. Really?B(I can't do it.) So they tell me. (15) The,.