The American Dream by Edward Albee

The American Dream by Edward Albee starts off with explaining the scene of the play. Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma live in an average to lower class house. Mommy thinks that they live a higher lifestyle. The reader can see that at the beginning when Mommy explains her hat encounter at the store. She picks out and buys a hat, thinking it is beige. She walks out of the store, and a woman from the woman's club (meaning upper class) tells Mommy she has a lovely wheat colored hat. Mommy gets upset by this comment because the woman called her hat wheat colored. The color of the hat is important to Mommy because the wheat color is referring to farming, meaning lower class, and beige is a classier name that makes her sound sophisticated. This scene shows that Mommy is very concerned with social status. Later in the play, there are comments made that make it sound as is Mommy only married Daddy for is money, even though he doesn't have much.
The character, Grandma is introduced soon after. She comes off as being an old woman who complains about they way old people are treated. She says that the way they are talked to basically brings them to their death. She constantly complains, and yet she is the most knowledgeable character in the story. She knows and acknowledges the audience, and knows more about Mrs. Barker's hint about Mommy and Daddy's child than they do. Grandma also has the important role of being almost the director of the play. She controls the action, and almost allows the reader to understand what happens next. At the very end of the play Grandma is completely outside of the actual play and talks directly to the audience, fully knowing that they are there. Grandma is the most knowing character by far.
Throughout the beginning of the play, Mommy and Daddy continually bring up that someone is running late that should be meeting them. They refer to the people running late as "them", when later we find out that a woman, Mrs. Barker, is the one that is coming to meet them. She is referred to as "them" and "it" because she is symbolically a corporation, the corporation of the adoption service that brought Mommy and Daddy their child they killed 20 years ago. She is also the woman who Mommy ran into outside the store. She is almost a model of the responsible American housewife. Why does she come to see Mommy and Daddy? Well, She does not even know the answer to that. Mommy and Daddy plan to have her come by in order to get satisfaction about their past child.
Towards the end, the young man is introduced. He happens to be the twin of the boy that Mommy mutilated and killed when he was young because he "only had eyes for his daddy" and "called mommy a dirty name". The twin is referred to as the American Dream by grandma. Because he is a twin, he felt all of the loss of feelings that his brother did when he was being tortured and killed. Now, he is basically a hollow shell with no feelings or emotions. Oddly enough, mommy wants to keep him around to fill the void of not having a son, and to get satisfaction.
Throughout the play, Daddy plays a low tone role. He is emasculated by Mommy and is forced into agreeing with everything that Mommy says and not having his own voice. Mommy says, "Daddy has tubes now, where he used to have tracts." This basically shows how controlling Mommy is of Daddy and how emasculated Daddy is because of her. Daddy plays the low key, agreeing husband throughout the play.
Like discussed before, the narrative voice in this play is Grandma, because she takes the role of the director and provides a narrative on the play and the action. The tone throughout this play changes based on the situation that Grandma is in. If she is listening to Mommy say rude things about old people and her, she is rather snappy and has a condescending tone, almost looking down on Mommy because Grandma is much more intelligent. When Grandma is talking to the young man, she also has an intelligent tone, but is much more open and friendly with him. Overall, the tone of  the narrative voice is intellectual. I personally did not see much imagery throughout the piece, because it is a play with very dumb characters who are not all that great at adding imagery to make things more exciting.

THEME: achieving the american dream and satisfaction will never truly happen.
Events in the play support this theme. Mommy not being able to achieve satisfaction with Daddy and the hat is one. They also do not achieve satisfaction with their first child. When Mommy marries Daddy, she is hoping she will achieve the American dream because she will have a lot of money and a family and what not. in reality she is not that wealthy, only acts like it, and because of her lack of satisfaction, she does not achieve the American dream. When the young man finally comes, he looks like he is going to bring satisfaction and the American Dream (Grandmas reference), but he does not because of his emptiness. the young man symbolizes the American Dream, but on the inside he is nothing, meaning the American dream and wanting to achieve satisfaction is not possible.