The Decline Of American Pastoralism

As a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, American dramatist Edward Albee focuses most of his works on modern dysfunctional family and troubled marital relationships. Yet Albee has also shown a lasting concern for ecological issues by creating some plays’ that contain obvious ecological elements. This thesis intends to explore the ecological elements in his three modern tragicomedies-The Zoo Story, Seascape, and The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?-from the ecological perspective. Through a detailed analysis of these three plays, this thesis explores Albee’s American pastoral ideal and its trajectory of decline over nearly half a Century. In The Zoo Story (1959), Albee still holds an American pastoral vision for human beings’ communication. The protagonist in this play desperately attempts to communicate with others, even at the price of his own life, hoping that people in modern society could communicate with each other as openly as people in primitive tribal communities. In Seascape (1975), the characters seem to have no choice but to accept industrialization and evolution, Albee thereby discussing the possibility of compromise between following the trend of the era and keeping the pastoral ideal in modern society. In The Goat (2002), Albee uses a shocking case of sodomy and the resultant family crisis and animal slaughter to imply that humanity’s destruction of ecology, here typified by stranded animal ethics, has gone beyond salvation and the American pastoralism is reaching its end.By analyzing the three modern tragicomedies with ecological elements, each from a different historical period, this thesis argues that Albee reveals the trajectory of destruction and disillusionment of the American pastoral ideal. The ecologically conscious characters in Albee’s plays first try to connect with others and nature initiatively; then in order to merge with modern society, they have to make concessions to modernization and the problems it brings about; at last they victimize nature in the name of "love", leading to disintegration of human family and death of innocent animals, by which the play interrogates animal ethics in the already ecologically debased modern society. This three-step process of degeneration indicates that the ecological conditions are getting worse in modern society and Albee’s attitude towards humanity’s existence is becoming more and more pessimistic.