Edward Albee is valued as a representative playwright of the theater of the absurd in the U.S. Since the publication of his "The Zoo Story" in 1958, he has written about 35 plays and is writing more, including his most recent work, "Me, Myself, and I" (2007). He won a Tony award in 1962 and a Grammy award in 1964 for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", which marked his rise to fame. He is also a three-time recipient of a Pulitzer prize and later won two other Tony awards.
The idea for the title of his maiden-success work, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," which triggered a lively controversy and earned for him high praises at the same time, was inspired by accident. In an interview, He said that he saw the line 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' scrawled with soap on a mirror in a bar, and it cropped up his mind again, when he started to write the play. Of course, 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' means 'Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?... Who's afraid of living life without any illusion?' But the line must have struck him as a rather intellectual joke, the kind that is circulated in universities.
As confessed by him, he was inspired by the line and thus created a meaningful drama based on such line scrawled as graffiti. It can be said that this work opened the probability for a simple gesture of an actor or actress, or a short line uttered by him or her, to be seen as a symbol. It seems that Albee wanted to show the realities of human existence in a way that suited the American culture, differently from how it was shown in the theater of the absurd in Europe, as he used a unique literary style and language, which sometimes included obscene, violent, or sexually suggestive words.
George, Martha, Nick, and Honey, the main characters of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," are typical intellectuals who are physically and psychologically infertile. They prefer to live in illusions, making their lives virtually lies. In the end, however, the writer intended to show reconciliation and hope by highlighting the human connection between a man and his wife accepting their real situation.
In other words, although the characters' relationship as a married couple looks very perilous due to the conflicts that occur between them and the events that transpire in the play, the possibility that their relationship will be preserved is shown by the endless funeral mass and the typical religious service that becomes an occasion for the couple to forgive each other. Therefore, in this study, an analysis was made of the meaning of "time", which was the symbol that revealed the flow of the play and its major subjects as well as transmitted the message of the play.
The message of the play, as reviewed in this paper, may be considered slightly abstract, but the play's message has diverse meanings and largely contributes to modern men's discernment of the whys and wherefores of their lives and of their act of controlling their own lives. That is, this study aims to search for the message of the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" as relayed by the complex, delicate, individual, psychological, and internal expressions of the play's characters, as well as the message that is provided externally in the play through the aspects of time, so as to offer a new different message of this work compared to that suggested in past studies.