Maximum Exciting Moment In Edward's Albee Play example essay topic

The involvement of death, the unknown and extra-sensorial paradigms is a recurrent technique that authors have used during the past centuries until nowadays to make a moment exciting. Death is present as a theme, symbol, or even as a plot device that, joined with literary devices and unique styles keeps creating an electrifying effect on the audience. Shakespeare uses death and literary devices to create an exciting moment in "Hamlet". Which will be compared to Edward Albee's play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in the moment where death and literary devices are used to create the same thrilling effect. William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" has a unique style of writing used in order to portray different emotions to the readers. A peculiar characteristic that has to be analyzed from the master's writing, is the constant use of iambic pentameter such as "come, come you have an idle tongue" or "to grunt and sweat under a weary life".

This type of writing can be considered by many people as poetry; however, it does not only rhyme but creates a sense of fluidity. This is of great help to build up the tension in his plays. On the other hand, Edward Albee contrasts Shakespeare with his own unique style used to show emotions. In "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" , Albee constantly uses suspensive dots to delay the energetic moment and increase suspense like. ".. and... what it was... it was good old western union".

This not only causes a delaying effect but moreover, it helps to build up the tension. In order to achieve the climax of the exciting moment where Hamlet becomes insane, Shakespeare has to build up the tension by different stages. All throughout the dramatic play, The Bard of Avon uses a continuous use of similes and metaphors such as "like a man to double business bound", "suit of sables", "mouse-trap" or "forest of feathers" which are keen to enhance power to their meaning. These literary devices are used to quickly involve the audience on what he wants to express. Edward Albee complies with Shakespeare with these to cause the same impacting outcome by using words like "you keep your paws clean" or "you are a sport". These literary devices help Edward Albee to achieve the climax of the moment in which the imaginary child of George and Martha is killed.

The build up of tension through 5 different stages helps Shakespeare to increase the energy and achieve the climax of the script. The first stage is "the planning of a scene". Here, Hamlet develops a plan to embarrass Claudius and make him feel guilty. The players are to represent an identical copy where Claudius kills Hamlet's father which gives a perfect introduction to the build up of tension. The second stage is "the representation of the scene" where Claudius sees the act and walks away "lights, I say lights" as he cannot bare the guilt. Hamlet succeeds on his aim, this, vastly increases the tension.

The 3rd stage is the king's soliloquy, where he accepts the murder of his brother "my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent" and asks for forgiveness from the angels and his brother "forgive me my foul murder". This is one of the most important or the most important building up of tension. Hamlet, who wanted to revenge the murder of his father, has the opportunity to kill Claudius. He sees him praying and due to his weakness, he is unable to perform that act. Justifying his cowardly with the pretext that he was "fit and season'd for his passage" (page 227) and would not go to hell but to heaven. The 4th stage and probably the trigger for his insanity is when Hamlet is at his mother's room.

Queen Gertrude says to her son that he had offended his father, referring to Claudius. Hamlet full of resentment of the previous action that he could not manage to take forward, replies with hate and despair hurting the queen's feelings. "Mother, you have my father much offended" and saying to her that she had a wicked mouth to talk like, when she was the husband's brother's wife, his mother. He then adds that he would "set her up a glass", a mirror, to let her see what she really was. To add more tension to the climax of his madness, Shakespeare writes the 5th and last stage. Queen Gertrude shouts for help as she thinks that Hamlet is too insane and could murder her.

Polonius that is standing behind shouts for help, Hamlet, paranoiac about the idea of the incestuous relation between his mother and Claudius, kills him thinking that he was the king "is this king?" . Hamlet deepens her mother guilt, and embarrasses her by saying things like "such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty" until the point where the ghost of his father appears. This is considered to be the climax of his madness as Hamlet is too insane and witnesses the reincarnation of his father. Even the queen admitted that he was mad. At the end of the energetic moment, the queen submits to Hamlet's petitions and says to him "if words be made of breath, and breath of life, I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me". Alternatively, Edward Albee follows the same pattern as Shakespeare, and uses 4 different stages to reach to the climax of the exciting moment when George decides to kill the imaginary child he had produced with Martha.

The first stage is shown at the start of act 3, when Martha brings Nick down by calling him a flop "you " re certainly a flop in some", "o but baby, you sure are a flop". The second stage is when George arrives at the house with snapdragons to carry out the last game "pulling out the son". Albee increases the tension by using a Spanish language "flores, flores para los muertos". Giving a preface to the junior's death, George says things like "light from heaven". The flowers are an important symbol to add the tension. This is because they not only symbolize the death of his child, but also because he starts to throw them to Martha because he is jealous about the Nick's sexual intercourse with Martha.

This aggressive action leads Nick to say "do you want me to... do something to him?" , George replies "shut up, stad" and keeps snapping flowers to Martha. This leads to an increase in tension. George then says to Martha that they have 1 more game to play. Although Martha refuses by saying "I don't like what's going to happen", "no more games" George continues "one game, one more game. Suddenly, Martha, almost in tears pleads to George "no George, please?" . When Albee puts the actions that are to be developed by the characters, it adds energy to the climax.

This is because we can see the sentiments and emotions the characters have to play which adds tension. George then talks about a situation that would peel off the heart and go directly down the bone, through the muscles and into the marrow. He mentions the child, "I was talking about our son". When he mentions it, we know from the end of the book that the only condition for the imaginary child to exist was never telling anyone about it. "You broke our rule, you mentioned him to someone else". This adds tension because from this point onwards, he will have to kill the child.

The last stage comes to existence when George starts to recite the death sentence to the child "absolve, Domine, animas omni us fidelium defunctorum ab omni vin culo delictorum". While George is reciting the death sentence, Martha, on the other hand continues to talk about his imaginary child. The moment in which there is a climax occurs in page 132 and page 133 when both Martha talks about the child while Gero ge kills him. Suddenly George says, "im afraid our boy isn't coming home for his birthday" .".. our son is... dead", "he was killed this afternoon" by saying this, the moment of climax reaches its maximum, its saturation point as the child has finally been killed. The use of Christianity is used a symbol to add force to tension and leads to the maximum exciting moment in Edward's Albee play. In conclusion, the building up of tension by the different stages is used by both authors to retain the energy until the explosion.

In Shakespeare the explosion turns to result in Hamlet's madness; in Edward Albee as the death of the imaginary son. The involvement of death by both authors is essential for building up the momentum. Although the death theme is processed in different ways, either in "Hamlet" by the death of Polonius; and in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" by the death of the illusion. Death portrays the same meaningful role, to deepen the climax. This, added to the "Christianity" motif, used by both of the authors, increases the excitement of the moment. Combining these techniques with the literary devices and unique styles, the tension can be built up until the most exciting point of the show business.

The involvement of death, the unknown and extra-sensorial paradigms is a recurrent technique that the old author, William Shakespeare and the new Edward Albee both use to cause the climax point of the books which is the most exciting moment. This climax creates the innermost thrilling effect dramatists want to express to the audience. Patrick Wieger ing.