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Theatre and Dance Graduate Theses & Dissertations
Theatre and Dance
Spring 1-1-2014
Hallucinatory Figures in Modern American Drama
Stephanie Lynn Prugh
University of Colorado at Boulder, [email protected]
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HALLUCINATORY FIGURES IN MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA
by
STEPHANIE PRUGH
B.A., University of Colorado- Denver, 2012
A thesis submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Colorado in partial fulfillment
of the requirement for the degree of
Master of Arts
Department of Theatre and Dance
2014
This thesis entitled:
HALLUCINATORY FIGURES IN MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA
written by Stephanie Prugh
has been approved by the Department of Theatre and Dance
Dr. Oliver Gerland
Dr. Bud Coleman
Dr. Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin
Date________________
The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we
find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards
of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.
iii Prugh, Stephanie (M.A., Theatre)
HALLUCINATORY FIGURES IN MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA
Thesis directed by Associate Professor Oliver Gerland
In drama, a “hallucinatory figure” is an absent, imaginary, or allegorical
individual that a dramatic character perceives to be present. Hallucinatory figures are
featured in some of the most prominent works in the American theatre canon including
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, August Wilson’s Fences, Mary Chase’s Harvey,
David Auburn’s Proof, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Tom Kitt
and Brain Yorkey’s musical Next to Normal. Despite its prevalence, the hallucinatory
figure has managed to slip through the cracks of scholarly analysis and avoid any formal
systematic study. This thesis focuses on the role of the hallucinatory figure in canonical
and contemporary American dramas in relation to a leading character’s haunted mind. By
looking at this figure as a product of the character’s psyche, we learn that each figure is a
manifestation of the character’s loneliness; this lends valuable insight into the
relationships between fathers and sons, society and the individual, and the members of a
nuclear family. As haunted characters seek to fill the void in their lives, the hallucinatory
figure reveals the fallacies behind their unwavering belief in the mythic ideals of
American life and ultimately represents nothing more than the hallucinatory quality of the
American Dream.
iv CONTENTS
CHAPTERS
I.
THE HALLUCINATORY FIGURE...…………..........................................1
II.
THE FATHER, SON, AND THE HALLUCINATORY FIGURE.….........14
III.
SOCIETY’S ILLUSION OF MADNESS……………………....…...……..35
IV.
HALLUCINATIONS, GRIEF, AND THE PERFECT FAMILY….……...58
V.
THE HAUNTED MIND…………………………………………….……..80
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….87 1 CHAPTER I:
THE HALLUCINATORY FIGURE
Hallucinations are generally defined as “percepts arising in the absence of any
external reality — seeing things or hearing things that are not there” (Sacks ix). When the
word first came into use in the sixteenth century it simply referred to a “wandering mind”
(Sacks ix). Considered to be evidence of a deranged mind, hallucinations distort an
individual’s ability to separate truth from illusion, converging dream and reality, making
them almost indistinguishable (Foucault 9). For the hallucinator, the images seen and the
voices heard are real. Projected into the external world, hallucinations are believed to be
as old as the mind itself; as these images and voices appear and disappear on their own
accord, they expose the intrinsic workings of a deranged mind (Sacks ix-xi).
Hallucinations haunt the waking moments of a person’s life and are more often than not
“considered to portend madness or something dire [that is] happening to the brain” (xiv).
While hallucinations are generally categorized as either visual or auditory, there is also
the hallucinatory figure, an individual born of hallucinations. The hallucinatory figure
can be created by a wandering mind, more aptly described and identified as a haunted
mind. As we will learn, the characters are haunted by loss or grief, and from that loss or
grief the hallucinatory figure is born. Just as children create imaginary friends when they
are little to stave off loneliness, the hallucinatory figure becomes the adults’ escape from
reality.
2 The hallucinatory figure is either a physically or linguistically constructed
individual that represents a haunted mind. This figure, as a projection of an individual
character’s psyche, may appear on the stage or be alluded to through dialogue. In many
cases, the initial introduction to the hallucinatory figure is devoid of any acknowledgment
that the figure does not belong in the established present time period of the play; there is
some kind of revelation that is experienced simultaneously by the character seeing the
hallucinatory figure and by the audience. As a way of better shaping our understanding of
the play and the characters that see them, the playwright employs the use of the
hallucinatory figure as a physical or linguistic manifestation of a characters’ inner
desires, fears, memories, and even their madness.
The hallucinatory figure has been a well-employed theatrical device for centuries.
It has been used in many Shakespearean plays such as Richard III and Julius Caesar, and
most famously in Macbeth. In Macbeth, it is the title character that experiences several
hallucinations including that of his friend Banquo, who is representative of Macbeth’s
guilt. For Lady Macbeth, the blood that she sees on her hands is a clear indication of the
guilt she feels, guilt that ultimately leads her to her death. And, of course there is
Macbeth’s famous dagger speech in which is he confronted by a hallucinatory object.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
3 Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? (II, i. 33-39)
In this passage, Macbeth states that he sees the dagger before him but understands that it
is a simply a trick of the mind. As he contemplates killing King Duncan, Macbeth’s
hallucination provides the audience with a vivid image of his inner thoughts and the war
that is waging inside. While the focus of Macbeth’s speech is a hallucinatory object, the
power it holds in demonstrating his wandering mind is undeniable; the presence of the
hallucinatory object incites Macbeth to action. The difference between a hallucinatory
figure and a ghost lies in the agenda of the character. In Macbeth, we are invited to watch
as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s mental states deteriorate due to the presence of their
hallucinations, but in Hamlet the ghost is not a representation of Hamlet’s deteriorating
mind. The Ghost appears with an agenda that spurs Hamlet to action (or, more accurately,
inaction). “If thou didst ever thy dear father love — […] Revenge his foul and most
unnatural murder. […] Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange
and unnatural” (I. v. 708-713). It is the Ghost that demands that his murder be avenged
and not a discovery that Hamlet makes on his own, which makes it is easy to see the
difference between a hallucinatory figure and a ghost. As a hallucinatory figure is a clear
mark of an individual character’s psyche, the ghost is an agent brought forth to have his
or her needs met. My interest lies in examining individuals who are “false creation[s],
proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain” and not objects or ghosts, which are primarily
linked to the spiritual world. In an attempt to delimit the scope of my study, anything that
is not clearly the product of a wandering or haunted mind will not be explored.
I have identified two different kinds of hallucinations, which will be analyzed in
each chapter. The first representation includes a figure that is both seen by the audience
4 and by a character on the stage. These figures are physically embodied by an actor and
are generally linked directly to the immediate family established within the play. The
second representation includes a figure that is not seen by the audience but is visible to a
character on the stage. In this particular form of representation, the audience sees that the
character can see the figure but does not directly see the figure themselves. This
particular representation will be referred to as a linguistic construction, meaning that the
dialogue used creates the figure. This style of representation asks for participation from
the audience as the absence of a physical actor engages their imagination and actively
asks that they suspend their disbelief.
While Shakespeare may not have been the first to explore hallucinatory figures or
objects, he certainly was effective in employing them in drama. The hallucinatory figure
continued to appear throughout modern European drama in such plays as Leopold Davis
Lewis’s The Bells (1871) (translated and adapted from Erckmann-Chatrian’s The Polish
Jew (1867)) where a man, Mathias, in an attempt to pay off his debt, robs and kills a
Jewish man. In an almost dreamlike state, plagued by his guilt, Mathias is visited by the
Jewish man, who now appears as a hallucinatory figure. He is placed on trial, found
guilty, and sentenced to die by hanging. As Mathias emerges from his dreamlike state, he
attempts to remove the noose from around his neck, only to die from a pulmonary
embolism. In the Modernist period, we see the hallucinatory figure appear in Georg
Kaiser’s From Morn to Midnight (1912) where the Cashier is plagued by the figure of
Death after breaking free from the confines of his everyday life. The hallucinatory figure
additionally makes an appearance in Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Intruder (1890). This
hallucinatory figure is also representative of Death, as footsteps that are heard by the
5 blind grandfather go unnoticed by the rest of the people in the home. His claim that a
figure has entered their home is confirmed when the nurse announces the birth of a child
and the subsequent death of the mother. Surprisingly, despite the numerous appearances
the hallucinatory figure has made in drama, it has yielded little academic attention. Even
more perplexing is how these characters, especially those featured in modern American
drama, have been largely unexplored.1
The six plays I will examine in relation to their use of the hallucinatory figure are
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, August Wilson’s Fences, David Auburn’s Proof,
Mary Chase’s Harvey, Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s musical Next to Normal, and
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
While these hallucinatory characters are featured in some of the most exceptional
theatrical works in modern American theatre, they have gone largely unnoticed. The
hallucinatory figure is surprisingly prevalent in some of the most celebrated theatrical
works in American theatre history. These six plays have received some of the highest
honors achievable in American Drama, with all of them winning either a Pulitzer Prize
for Drama or a Tony Award for Best New Play or, in many cases, both. While it is a
1 The hallucinatory figure has been largely ignored, However, there are a few sources that investigate these figures in direct relation to the plays in which they appear. One such investigation can be found in Matthew Roudane’s essay “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: Toward the Morrow,” where he explores the son in relation to the illusions that have been built up throughout George and Martha’s marriage. Additionally, Foster Hirsch explores the son as a myth that deforms George and Martha’s life in his book, Who’s Afraid of Edward Albee?. In The Psychoanalyst and the Artist, Daniel Schneider introduces the idea that Ben in Death of a Salesman is a hallucination but then Schneider veers off to speak primarily about Willy and his family. For the most part Ben is looked at as a construct of the American Dream, but is not explored further. Scholars have not explored the hallucinatory figures in the other plays addressed in this thesis. 6 prestigious honor to receive a Pulitzer, the prize is awarded to “a distinguished play by an
American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life,”
solidifying the prevalence these plays have in regards to American culture (Pulitzer.org).
With the exception of Virginia Woolf, which was awarded the Pulitzer by the drama
panel until the committee overrode their decision stating that it did not represent a
“wholesome” view of American life, all of these plays have been awarded a Pulitzer
(“Edward Albee”). Considering the fact that all of these plays have been honored in one
way or another it is difficult not to ask, what is the importance of these figures in relation
to American drama and perhaps more importantly, why do all of these celebrated works,
honored for their representations of American life, feature a hallucinatory figure? What
function does the hallucinatory figure play?
As far I have been able to ascertain, there is no systematic research into
hallucinatory figures or their purpose within the play. Nor is there any analysis of the
different ways in which a playwright may choose to embody them or the affects their
reveal has on the audience’s perception of the character or the play. Additionally, there is
little in-depth analysis of what these figures represent or how these hallucinations affect
the main characters journey. While some studies exist of certain characters, the research
is always done within the context of that particular play, such as Salesman, Woolf, and
Proof, but there is no overarching analysis of these figures and, with the exception of
Woolf, little to no research exists with regard to the hallucinatory figures. It is the purpose
of this study to create a systematic guide to the hallucinatory figure. I will ask questions
such as: What is the purpose of the hallucinatory figure? What does it represent? How
have playwrights chosen to represent it on the stage? How does the process of revelation
7 affect our understanding of the characters and the play? And finally, why are these
figures so prevalent in American theatre?
It is my belief that the hallucinatory figure represents the struggles ordinary
people face in their everyday lives. As each individual struggles to find success, whether
it be economic, social, and/ or familial, the drive toward fulfilling their rightful place in
the heart of the American Dream can only bring forth the conclusion that the use of the
hallucinatory figure, in relation to those who are unable to fulfill their potential, is
directly related to the hallucinatory quality of the American Dream.
James Truslow Adams coined the term “American Dream” in his 1931 book Epic
of America. Introduced the midst of the Great Depression, the concept gave hope to an
impoverished nation (Samuel 13). Basically, the “American Dream” was the idea that,
regardless of a person’s class, hard work could result in success, happiness, a sense of
family belonging, and social acceptance (14). As Adams wrote:
The dream is a vision of a better, deeper, richer life for every individual,
regardless of the position in society which he or she may occupy by the accident
of birth. It has been a dream of a chance to rise in the economic scale, but quite as
much, or more than that, of a chance to develop our capacities to the full,
unhampered by unjust restrictions of caste or custom. With this has gone the hope
of bettering the physical conditions of living, of lessening the toil and anxieties of
daily life. (13)
As the nation recovered from the Depression, the American Dream continued to
gain momentum. It became America’s, as Adams said, “only unique contribution to the
civilization of the world” (14). While the American Dream was not initially associated
8 with obtaining wealth or property, as it would later be, it was and would forever be “our
most precious national possession” (14). At the very core of the American Dream, in its
initial incarnation, was the “opportunity of rising to full stature and living the fullest life
possible […and the] inherent right to be restricted by no barriers,” suggesting that when
Adams initially coined the term it was about life and opportunity and not possession or
material success (14). Soon, however, the boundaries and true definition of the Dream
became vague. “Adam’s ‘American Dream’ continued to spread […] quickly becoming
shorthand for the nation’s guiding mythology” (16).
In 1932, George Norlin, the President of the University of Colorado, included in a
speech given to an audience in Berlin, further insight into the American Dream.
Suggesting that it was not solely about a richer life, Norlin stated that the American
Dream encompassed “self-reliance, self respect, neighborly cooperation and [a] vision of
a better and richer life, not for a privileged class, but for all” (16). The addition of social
acceptance into the construct of the American Dream added a whole new dynamic. No
longer was the American Dream solely based on achieving greatness through hard work
but also on making positive connections with other people.
In the 1950s the already morphing ideology of the American Dream began to
take on a life of its own. With the introduction of television shows such as Leave it to
Beaver (1957), the ideology of the American family began to take hold. “The central
symbol of the nearly perfected America of the 1950s was the suburban family. Suburbia
meant more than physical comfort; it embodied a long-held American dream of a happy,
secure family life” (Skolnick 2). As the idea of a nuclear family began to take hold on the
American public, it centered itself firmly in the construct of the American Dream,
9 becoming another new defining quality. For many, “marriage, kids and a nice house
supported by two generous incomes,” have been and will always be the fundamental
values behind the American Dream (Samuel 198).
Lauren Sandler in her article for Psychology Today wrote that today, “the
American Dream has become an American expectation, a version of happiness achieved
by entitlement and equation” (Samuel 198). In fact, the ever-changing Dream has not
brought about happiness or satisfaction, instead, it has ultimately produced a generation
of Americans who are finding the traditional values of the American Dream unsatisfying
(199). Yet, people continue to strive for its illusive qualities believing that if they can just
achieve its ideals they can somehow achieve happiness (199). Despite the overwhelming
evidence that the American Dream is a myth, it is the standard by which Americans
measure their personal, social, and familial success.
No matter how the Dream has changed over the years to reflect our ever-changing
ideologies one thing remains: the American Dream is an intangible ideal created, twisted,
and morphed from its initial incarnation “of a richer, better, fuller human life for all” into
a hallucinatory capsule full of unrealized dreams (Samuel 13). It was President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt who said, “People had been trying all their lives to achieve security
only to find, like the gold at the end of the rainbow, it usually remained out of reach”
(20). Considering its origins in the midst of the Great Depression, it is hard to escape the
conclusion that the American Dream is anything more than an “elaborate hallucination
[…] something we conjured up while we had our eyes closed to the harsh realities of the
day” (196). The American Dream is a part of our mythology, a part of our “cultural
DNA,” and an undeniably powerful and relevant part of our everyday lives (Samuel 196).
10 “The American Dream is, quite simply, a masterpiece, a work of art whose ideological
beauty can arguably never be surpassed,” and with that it is inevitable that we will see its
continued presence, be haunted by our inabilities to achieve its promises, and will be
plagued by figures that embody its hallucinatory qualities (Samuel 197).2
As a means of delimiting the scope of this thesis, all of the hallucinations that will
be analyzed are considered to be visual hallucinations. While some aspects of this thesis
will focus on the psychological manifestation of hallucinations, the primary purpose of
this thesis is to explore them within the context of their play. By incorporating some
psychological context into the analysis of these plays the hallucinatory figure becomes
more than just a theatrical device — it becomes a projection of a character’s psyche.
While this is in no way a psychological study of hallucinations, the exploration of its
relation to the scientific explanation of their existence will shine some much-needed light
on how they are used by playwrights as a means of helping the characters deal with and
possibly avoid the world they live in.
Using the methodology stated above, this thesis will analyze the use of the
hallucinatory figure in an attempt to better understand how these figures shape the
understanding of the play and the characters that see them.
Chapter Two — “The Father, The Son, and the Hallucinatory Figure” — will
explore the relation between Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Wilson’s Fences and their
failure to achieve the American ideal of success. These plays, written almost forty years
apart, focus on two men, Willy and Troy, and their families as they attempt to deal with
the world around them. As neither Willy nor Troy is able to embrace or see the changing
2 For additional reading on the history of the American Dream see Lawrence R. Samuel’s The American Dream. 11 world around them, they drive a wedge between themselves and their families that cause
the hallucinatory figure to become a prominent presence. For Willy, a high dreaming and
worn out salesman, the past and present exist in an almost indistinguishable blur. As his
brother Ben appears on the stage, he dances between time, providing a clear
representation of Willy’s haunted mind. For Troy, a once promising minor league
baseball player, Death seems to be a frequent visitor. Nevertheless, Troy will not go
easily to his grave. He roots his sense of pride in his family and relies on them to give
him the strength he needs to fight off Death. When Troy’s family begins to slip away,
Death, a linguistic construction, begins to come around more often, finally taking Troy’s
life.
Chapter Three — “Society’s Illusion of Madness” — will focus on Mary Chase’s
Harvey and David Auburn’s Proof through the lens of Michael Foucault’s Madness and
Civilization and Lennard Davis’s Essay “Constructing Normalcy.” As Foucault’s
argument states, there once existed a great debate between madness and reason, yet with
the rise of mental institutions in the 1800s those considered to be mentally disabled were
removed from “normal” society and the debate was silenced. In both Proof and Harvey,
the central characters are considered to be abnormal, yet both posses unique and
exceptional gifts that, if left to the devices of society, would be locked away forever. For
both Elwood and Catherine, the arrival of their hallucinatory figure corresponds directly
with the loss of a parent. As an ever-present issue plaguing American life, the need to fit
in and acquiesce to societal pressure can force those outside of the norm to experience a
mental break, resulting in the presence of a hallucinatory figure. It is through the
12 construction of their hallucinatory figure that we are forced to consider if it is the
individual or society that should change.
Chapter Four — “Hallucinations, Grief, and the Perfect Family” — will examine
the role of the hallucinatory figure with relation to the dream of achieving a nuclear
family in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s
Next to Normal. Both of these plays, through contrasting representations, address the
completion of the nuclear family through the use of the hallucinatory figure.
Additionally, in both plays there is a moment of revelation that will either keep their
family together or tear them apart. This moment of revelation provokes a catharsis for the
family, finally allowing them to address the issue that has lead to the manifestation of the
figure and subsequently release the hallucination. While the concept of the modern
family is forcing America to address the 1950s construction of the nuclear family, the
pressure to have the perfect, loving family can prove too much to bear. By exploring the
role of the hallucinatory figure in each of these plays we will find that they ironically
represent nothing more than the families “unwavering faith in the myth of the American
Dream” (Hirsch 43).
Each of these chapters features a comparison between a hallucinatory figure that
is either physically present or one that is constructed through the dialogue. By pairing
these six plays together in this particular order I also hope to acknowledge the importance
of their differentiating constructions and gain a better understanding of why some
playwrights have chosen to use one construction over the other. For each play the
physical embodiment, or lack there of, of a hallucinatory figure addresses and creates
13 separate and similar moments of revelation for the audience as they engage their
suspension of disbelief and release themselves into the world of the play.
Evidence that the hallucinatory figure is abound can be found in modern culture
with films such as A Beautiful Mind (2001) and television shows such as Grey’s Anatomy
(2005-present) and Perception (2012- present) choosing to employ the use of a
hallucinatory figure to better help their audiences understand the inner workings of their
main characters. Having a place in some of the most prominent works in American
theatre requires attention to be paid. Not only have they been a catalyst in theatrical
works for over 60 years, but they are also beginning to dominate popular culture as the
drive to better understand the human psyche gains momentum. For these six awardwinning plays it is the hallucinatory figure that reveals something intrinsic about
American life and the basic human need to connect to another being, thus allowing the
characters and ourselves to explore the world a little differently.
14 CHAPTER II:
THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HALLUCINATORY FIGURE
So often our idea of who we are is embedded in our sense of personal success, yet
when we are unable to see the changes that are happening around us we get lost and the
idea of success becomes more and more fleeting. Success is perhaps the most valued
aspect of American life, accounting for the numerous immigrants who have left their
homelands in pursuit of the American Dream. The idea that anyone can be successful on
the basis of hard work and persistence sits in the center of Arthur Miller’s Death of a
Salesman and August Wilson’s Fences.
The dream of a traditional American family is usually defined by its structure.
Given to the American public by popular culture in the 1950s, the American family is
generally comprised of the father, the mother, and their child or children (Stanley 11).
Within this construct, the father-son relationship is one of the most vitally important
relationships, giving the father a way to pass on his legacy, his hopes, his dreams, and his
lessons to the next generation. It was even believed that the viability of democracy in
America depended on the relationship of the son and the father (Reiss 6). Yet within that
relationship lies certain inevitable conflicts, arising from abandonment, false dreams, and
an inability to escape the past (Katz 14). Perhaps it is the price of aging that we learn our
parents are fallible and not the heroes we’ve perceived them to be throughout our
childhood. Often within that fall from grace parents are shunned for their sins and forced
to grapple with losing the love they once held so dear. It was the 1950s that hardened the
ideal of the American family and securely lodged it within the heart of the American
15 Dream. Despite how much society has changed over the past sixty years, we still see that
the nuclear family is very much a part of modern society (Stanley 11, Wiseman 3).
Both Death of a Salesman and Fences address a father trying to make a place in
the world for his family and the subsequent disintegration of that family allowing for the
presence of the hallucinatory figure. While the experience of Troy and Willy in relation
to their hallucinatory figure is different, each figure ultimately leads them to their death
and reflects loudly on the psyche of the father as he tries to carve his place into the
American Dream.
In Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winning play, Death of a
Salesman, the focus lies on the high dreaming and worn out salesman Willy Loman and
his family. At the end of his career, Willy, who has always strived for success but never
achieved it, is plagued by a haunted mind. As the play moves back and forth between the
here of 1949 and the past, Willy fights with tiredness, self-doubt, and guilt; each feeling
pulling him back and forth in an almost indistinguishable blur of time. This movement of
time forces Willy to “see present through past and past through present” (Bigsby 83).
Yet, while Willy’s mind seems to be restless, we see the strong and undeniable process
his mind is working through.
Willy, who dreams about living the life of a salesman, has built his existence on
the idea that anything is possible for a man who is well-liked (Miller 1075). Yet,
following the loss of his most valued relationship, his bond with his son Biff, he loses
touch with reality and spends most of his time fighting to keep his mind in the present.
The lack of separation between the past and present in Death of a Salesman plays an
important part in helping us understand the workings of Willy’s mind. “The flashbacks in
16 the play reinforce that Willy is more connected with his perceptions of people and
conversations that he recalls from the past than he is with real people in the present”
(Urgana 84). Willy’s mind is restless and this restlessness is demonstrated through the
continual movement of time, as past and present blend seamlessly into each other.
Despite Linda’s repeated concern that Willy’s mind needs to rest (“your mind is
overactive, and the mind is what counts, dear”) Willy seems to be plagued with the
failures of his past and the disappointments of the present (Miller 1066). For Willy, it is
his haunted mind, filled with guilt and longing, that causes him to return to the past over
and over again. Oliver Sacks, noted neurologist and author of Hallucinations, states that
these flashbacks are focused on “the significant past—beloved or terrible—that comes
back to haunt the mind—life experiences so charged with emotion that they make an
indelible impression on the brain and compel it to repetition” (229-230). Additionally, he
states, “such hallucinations may also be provoked by overwhelming guilt for a crime or
sin, that perhaps, belatedly, the conscience cannot tolerate” (230).
Willy’s haunted mind is vividly seen in the presence of his hallucinatory figure,
Ben. Ben, Willy’s brother and subsequent father figure, died a couple of weeks prior to
the start of the play, yet Ben appears onstage as a strong projection not only of Willy’s
memories, but also of his psyche, offering him advice, acceptance, and permission at the
most crucial moment of the play (Miller 1074). An interesting aspect of Ben’s character
is that he gracefully dances between the lines of memory and hallucination, often
appearing first to Willy in the established present time period of the play, then easily
maneuvering into the memories of Willy’s past. Ben’s movement between hallucinatory
figure and memory also serves to open the world of Willy’s mind to the audience. He
17 becomes invaluable to Willy, not only as someone who was influential to his past, but
also as someone who still helps guide his present.
To Willy, Ben is the epitome of success, but he also represents a missed
opportunity. In the lateness of his years, Willy understands, “There’s just one opportunity
I had with that man… If I’d gone with him to Alaska that time, everything would’ve been
totally different” (1074-1075). Before Ben established wealth in Alaska, he ventured into
the jungles of Africa at only 17 and left at 21 with diamonds. Willy, who is much better
with his hands than he is being a salesman, could have flourished and possibly achieved
his dreams of capitalistic success had he only ventured off into the Alaskan wilderness
with Ben (1075, 1078). Success, Willy would have you believe, does not come from
being a hard worker but in being well-liked, much like Dave Singleman. As a salesman,
Singleman could walk into any town and make sales simply by picking up the phone in
his hotel room, his success solely resting on the fact that he was well-liked (1083).
“Willy’s decision to pursue capitalism’s materialistic values is based on what wealth
represents to him—being respected and ‘well-liked,’ which are merely exterior trappings
that mask Willy’s deeper emotional needs” (Uranga 81). Willy’s sense of success also
extends to his family and building something for his sons. “What Loman wants, and what
success means, in Death of a Salesman, is intimately related to his own sense of the
family. Family dreams extend backwards in time to interpret the past, [and] reach
forward in time to project images of the future” (Jacobson 248). If Willy is unable to
achieve success for himself, he can at least hope to achieve it for his sons.
As Willy returns home at the beginning of the play, tired and weighed down by
his failure, a flute plays a song that is reminiscent of a father he never knew, a father who
18 left home when Willy was just a child in search of riches in Alaska (Miller 1066, 1075).
For Willy, who grew up fatherless, Ben is symbolic of all of the missing pieces of his life.
“Dad left when I was such a baby and I never had a chance to talk to him” (1076). It is
from Ben that Willy wishes to know if he is raising his two boys correctly, teaching them
that to be well-liked is the greatest success they can achieve (1076). As a man who was
denied those lessons from his own father, he looks to Ben to gain acceptance. “I’m afraid
that I’m not teaching them the right kind of – Ben how should I teach them?” (1076). It is
in this first interaction that we begin to understand the importance of Ben’s opinion and
we are provided insight as to why he is Willy’s hallucinatory figure. Much as a son looks
to his father for acknowledgement and support, Willy looks to Ben, and although Ben left
when Willy was just a child, it is Ben’s success that Willy wishes to emulate. In fact, he
pegs Ben as “the only man I ever met who knew the answers” (1075).
The truth of the matter is Ben is nothing more than a stranger to the family, which
he so poignantly states after he pushes Biff, Willy’s oldest son, to the ground, pointing
the tip of his umbrella directly over his eye, “Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll
never get out of the jungle that way” (1076). Additionally, we can see that Willy, perhaps
means little to Ben as he barely has enough time to converse, let alone offer Willy the
much-needed encouragement and advice he desperately seeks. Barely moments into their
first meeting, Ben begins checking his watch, proclaiming, “I have an appointment in
Ketchikan Tuesday week,” and as Willy begs Ben to stay so that he may learn more
about himself and ward off his feeling of temporariness, Ben simply replies, “I’ll be late
for my train” (1075-1076). In every meeting to follow, be it the established present or a
memory, Ben is constantly proclaiming that he doesn’t have the time to answer Willy’s
19 questions. It isn’t until Ben appears to Willy purely as a hallucinatory figure, devoid of
movement between past and present that Ben finally has time to speak with Willy and
offer him the advice he wishes for (1084, 1095).
In what can only be assumed to be their first meeting in years, Willy states, “ I’ve
been waiting for you for so long. What’s the answer? How did you do it?”, which is
quickly followed by another question, “Where is dad?” (1075). As Willy seeks to know
himself, so that he may pass the legacy onto his sons, he looks to Ben. When Ben states
that he headed south to Africa instead of north to Alaska, leaving their father’s fate
unknown, Willy is left with nothing but faded memories of a father he barely knew
(1075). This lack of knowledge about the stock he springs from propels him to seek
acceptance and understanding from his brother. For Willy, Ben has achieved success and
that is something tangible Willy can hold onto; yet when Ben states that he must leave
and catch the train Willy admits, “You’re just what I need. Ben, because I – I have a fine
position here, but I—well, Dad left when I was such a baby and I never had a chance to
talk to him and I still feel—kind of temporary about myself” (1076). But Ben, as a
stranger, can hardly offer Willy any real assessment and simply replies, “I’ll be late for
my train,” before finally stating, “William, you’re being first rate with your boys.
Outstanding, manly chaps!” And just as Ben fades from Willy’s memory, he proclaims,
“William, when I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was
twenty-one. And, by God, I was rich!” (1076). Willy’s need for praise from Ben comes
from a “deeper emotional need. Willy seeks acceptance and love from his family and
friends because as a child, he lacked the male validation he needed in order to risk
creating and following his own dreams” (Uranga 81).
20 Although Willy grew up without any male role models, he still has a strong sense
of fatherly pride. While it appears as though time and faith in the American Dream have
been the cruelest to Willy, his sons, Biff and Happy, show him the distinctness of his
failures. Biff, who has the opportunity to be an All-American football star, is hailed as
Willy’s favorite and his greatest chance to pass on his dream of capitalistic success.
“Despite his inner conviction that Biff is a failure, he persists in pushing for a different
Biff who has attained what Willy has failed to achieve—popularity, financial success and
personal satisfaction” (Uranga 89, Meyer124). Willy has worked to pass along his ideals
to Biff, who also, as a young boy, believed in Willy’s tales of success, although we learn
that they are nothing but falsities. Biff, whole-heartedly believing that his father is
capable of anything because of the stories Willy has told, is propelled to Boston to visit
his father after he flunks math, thinking Willy can change his teacher’s mind, “You gotta
talk to him before they close the school. Because if he saw the kind of man you are, and
you just talked to him in your way, I’m sure he’d come through for me” (1092). This
unwavering faith, however, experiences a harsh reality when Biff discovers that Willy
has been having an affair. Immediately seeing his father as a “fake” and losing complete
faith that Willy has any pull at all, Biff begins to understand that Willy is not the hero he
had built him up to be, “[h]e wouldn’t listen to you… you—liar! You fake! You phony
little fake! You fake!” (1093). This encounter breaks the once spirited father-son
relationship and sends both Willy and Biff down a path that neither can navigate without
the other. As Biff continues to fail as an adult, moving from one job to another,
acknowledging that, “the trouble is we weren’t brought up to grub for money,” Willy’s
21 mind becomes more and more haunted with Happy. Willy’s youngest son acknowledges
that most of the time, as Willy’s mind wanders, he is talking to Biff (1068).
Biff’s broken belief in Willy continues to drive an even larger wedge into their
already tumultuous relationship. The palpable tension between the two is noted by Linda
when she asks Biff, “[w]hat happed to the love you had for him? You were such pals!
How you used to talk to him on the phone every night. How lonely he was till he could
come home to you!”, to which Biff simply replies, “I know he’s a fake and he doesn’t
like anybody around who knows” (1078). Because of Willy’s affair, their lives have
stopped. Willy acknowledges that it always seemed to him that Biff had simply laid down
his life after his triumphant football game and Willy, having lost the love he valued so
much, cannot seem to bring Biff back to life (1086). Yet because of their inability to
move past their differences, their two fates are tied together — one will not be able to
move forward without forgiveness from the other. Willy is unable to escape his grief or
his guilt and thus without Biff’s love and admiration, Willy has lost himself, “[h]e thinks
I’m nothing, see and, so he spites me” (1095). Yet Biff’s ability to move on is just as
embedded in Willy as Willy’s is in Biff.
Part of Willy’s problem lies in that fact that he is unable to see the changing world
around him. The fact that Willy so whole-heartedly believes that “the wonder of this
country [is that] a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being well-liked,”
stands in great opposition to Ben’s triumph in the jungle, which seems to have been won
thanks in large part to his aggressive nature (1076, 1086). Not only is the brokenness of
Willy’s success clearly seen in the differences between himself and Ben, but also in the
juxtaposition of Howard and Willy. Howard, the son of Willy’s old boss, is more
22 interested in the machine he has recently purchased than he is in the human being that sits
before him, often interrupting Willy’s dialogue so that the recording of his family’s
voices can be heard (1082). Displaying a complete lack of care for Willy or his situation,
Howard states that Willy should get himself a machine, as “they’re only a hundred and a
half,” and that Willy could simply ask his maid to turn it on when he is not home (1082).
But Howard knows that such an expensive purchase would be impossible for Willy. This
is easily seen as Willy begins to beg to maintain his role as the breadwinner in his family,
a role that was commonly expected of the male within the nuclear family (Coleman et al.
163). As he and Howard approach the argument with opposing ideals, Willy fallibly
believing in the notion of being well-liked and Howard contesting that “business is
business,” Willy continues to decrease the amount he needs to keep his table set in the
hope of keeping his job (1083). He begins by asking for sixty-five, then fifty, and finally
forty, before Howard states there is simply no place for him and that he doesn’t wish for
Willy to represent the company any longer due to his haunted mind (1083). Howard then
suggests that Willy asks his sons for the financial assistance to run the household to
which Willy states, “I can’t throw myself on my sons. I’m not a cripple” (1084). This
embedded sense of pride and false ideal of success doesn’t allow Willy to see that despite
the fact that Willy named him, Howard cares little for Willy outside of his ability to sell,
and the falsity of being well-liked does not help Willy find diamonds, like Ben did, but
instead leaves him with nothing he can put his hands on (1084). As Willy’s dreams of
success begins to die, he has only one hope left, that his son Biff will be able to carry on
the dream for him. Yet Biff, who has come to realize they have lived the entirety of their
23 lives lying about everything (“We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house.”),
refuses to give into Willy’s beliefs (1096).
At the height of Willy’s failure, Ben appears again, both as hallucination and
memory, with Willy confessing to him that “nothing’s working out. I don’t know what to
do” (1084). Believing that Ben always had the answers, he looks to him in hopes that he
may be able to give Willy a solution. Again not having time for him, Ben states,
“[t]here’s a new continent at your doorstep, William. You could walk out rich. Rich!”
(1085). It is not but a few moments later that Willy experiences his first realization that,
“after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up
worth more dead than alive” (1087). The suggestion to Willy that riches can be had just
outside his door is a clear allusion to the insurance money his family would inherit upon
his death; he need only leave the warmth and comfort of his home to discover it. As Ben
stands for every success, and subsequently everything Willy’s failed to achieve in his
pursuit of the American Dream, Ben’s words help to show Willy that the only way to
secure a future for his children is by leaving behind his family and allowing them to
continue his plight.
Ben’s biggest moment in the play comes when he appears solely as a
hallucinatory figure. In a contrasting moment of hope and despair, Willy plants a garden
in the back yard despite numerous mentions that nothing can grow back there. Ben acts as
Willy’s conscience, steering him away from his suicide scheme. In this second to last
visit from Ben, Willy thinks of the possibilities, focusing on how Linda has suffered and
his desire to provide for her:
24 What a proposition, ts, ts. Terrific, terrific... ‘Cause she’s suffered Ben, the
woman has suffered. You understand me? A man can’t go out the way he came
in, Ben, a man has got to add up to something… You gotta consider, now. Don’t
answer so quick. Remember, it’s a guaranteed twenty-thousand-dollar
proposition. Now look, Ben, I want you to go through the ins and outs of this
thing with me. I’ve got nobody to talk to, Ben, and the woman has suffered, you
hear me? (1094)
Yet, Ben is quick to offer up reasons why Willy’s plan may backfire, providing the
audience with a clear visual of the conversation that is happening in Willy’s mind. Ben
quickly counters with facts, suggesting that the insurance company may not honor the
policy, and then he moves to the topic that Willy worries about the most — his legacy.
“You don’t want to make a fool of yourself… It’s called a cowardly thing, William”
(1094). In Willy’s reflective psyche, he knows that he does not have all that he needs to
follow through with the act of taking his own life. He is still missing his son’s love and
he is fearful that if he follows through with the suicide, Biff’s view of him will remain
unaltered (1095).
It is during Biff and Willy’s fight that Willy gains his much-needed permission to
forgive himself and finally take his own life. Willy, who up to this point has believed that
Biff thought of him as nothing, attains self-forgiveness when Biff collapses into his arms
crying, “Pop, I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Pop. Can’t you understand that?... I’m just what I
am, that’s all. (sobbing, holding onto Willy) Will you let me go, for Christ sake? Will you
take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?” (1096). Willy and Biff are
so intrinsically tied to one another that neither can move forward without release from the
25 other. It is at this moment that Willy is redeemed, “[i]sn’t that remarkable? Biff — he
likes me!” And with this realization, he feels free to end his life (Miller 1096). Now that
Willy has achieved the status of being well-liked by his son, Ben reappears to offer Willy
his support. As Willy now believes that he can die, offering Biff something that is
tangible, like diamonds, so too does Ben:
WILLY: Oh, Biff! He cried! Cried to me. (he is choking with his love, and now
cries out his promise) That boy—that boy is going to be magnificent!
(BEN appears in the light just outside the kitchen)
BEN: Yes, outstanding, with twenty thousand behind him…
WILLY: Loves me. (Wonderingly). Always loved me. Isn’t that a remarkable
thing? Ben, he’ll worship me, for it... Can you imagine that magnificence with
twenty thousand dollars in his pocket… (Calling into kitchen) It’s very smart, you
realize that, don’t you, sweetheart? Even Ben sees it. I gotta go, baby.
BEN: A perfect proposition all around.
WILLY: Did you see how he cried to me? Oh, if I could kiss him, Ben!... Oh,
Ben, I always knew one way or another we were gonna make it, Biff and I! (1097)
It is evident that the change in the hallucinatory figure stems from Willy’s own belief that
he can die, and in doing so will pass along security and a future to his son. “Willy
chooses life instead of a living death…[his] happiness comes not in the fulfilling of his
dream but in ever believing in it and reaching for it” (Heyen 56). It is Biff’s love and the
repair of the father-son relationship that allows Willy to find release through his
hallucinatory figure. As Ben sides with Willy, his own conscience is giving him
permission and thus Willy dies knowing that with twenty thousand dollars Biff can
26 pursue his own American Dream. “Willy dies satisfied and redeemed, thinking that he is
leaving Biff a success…but Willy’s true gift is releasing Biff to be his own man and to
seek his own manner of achieving financial stability” (Uranga 93).
Almost forty years later when Wilson wrote his 1987 prize-winning play Fences,
America was introduced to another man’s failed attempt at success. In Fences, Death is a
linguistically constructed hallucinatory figure that Troy battles throughout the play.
Taking place over the span of several years, Fences focuses on the Maxson family and
Troy’s struggle to release the past and accept a changing world. “The family is Troy’s
refuge from the racism and defeat of his daily life, and his proudest accomplishment as
well: he has forced himself to shoulder the responsibility of providing for his children and
of loving his wife, a responsibility that lends his life purpose and direction” (Worthen
1155). Yet, when all that of that begins to fall apart, Death becomes a prominent figure in
Troy’s mind. As Troy often threatens to put up a fight before he will go along willingly,
he promises to be ever vigilant in case Death does decide to make an appearance (Wilson
1160).
Troy, like Willy is a proud family patriarch. He attempts to make a place for his
family in the very tumultuous world he lives in, but unlike Willy, Troy lives on the
underside of the American Dream (Worthen 1155). Having been forced to make his own
way at the age of fourteen, Troy spent many years as a thief until one day a robbery went
awry and he killed a man, forcing him to spend several years in jail. It was in jail that he
discovered his natural talent for baseball, but for one reason or another, be it race or age,
he was unable to make it professionally. At the time of the play, he spends his days
collecting other people’s garbage. Thanks in large part to the money his brother received
27 after his participation in WWII, Troy was able to establish a home for himself, his wife
Rose, and their son Cory. Yet, Troy, much like Willy, is unable to see the changing times.
Through the course of his actions, he drives a fence between himself and the ones he
loves the most. As this fence, both literal and metaphorical, is built and Troy’s world falls
apart, Death becomes a frequent hallucinatory visitor.
While Troy’s hallucinatory figure is not built from a known person of the past like
Willy’s, it is still a prominent figure in Troy’s mind. Death has been represented in
literature in many different forms, from the Greek god Hades to the Grim Reaper, but in
this play he appears as nothing more than a linguistic construction. Yet, Troy’s first
encounter with Death builds much-needed insight into Troy’s character. His ability to
stand up and fight with Death, when on the brink of succumbing to pneumonia, gives
Troy security and strength when he thought he might lose everything:
Death standing there staring at me… carrying that sickle in his hand. Finally he
say, ‘You want bound over for another year?’… I told him, ‘Bound over hell!
Let’s settle this now!’ It seem like he kinda fall back when I said that, and the
cold went out of me… We wrestled for three days and nights. I can’t say where I
found the strength from. Every time it seemed like he was gonna get the best of
me, I’d reach way down deep inside myself and find the strength to do him one
better…Death ain’t nothing to play with. And I know he’s gonna get me… But as
long as I keep my strength and see him coming…as long as I keep up my
vigilance… he’s gonna have to fight with me. I ain’t going easy. (Wilson 1160)
Troy links his ability to defeat Death with the strength he has found in his family. “When
I found you and Cory and a halfway decent job… I was safe. Couldn’t nothing touch me.
28 I wasn’t going to strike out no more” (1174). For Troy, who comes from a broken family
— his mother leaving when he was only a child — the love and safety he finds in his
family makes him feel invincible and thereby provides him with all the strength he needs
to adequately fight death.
Although Troy’s chances at a successful baseball career have passed, his use of
baseball metaphors in relation to Death speaks volumes about the love he has for the
sport that ultimately yielded nothing to him. Death is “nothing but a fastball on the
outside corner… That’s all death is to me. A fastball on the outside corner” (1159). This
tie between his hallucinatory figure and his failure to succeed in baseball lends insight
into Troy’s insistence that racism and the death of his dream are intricately linked. Troy,
who adamantly refuses to believe that he was too old to break into the major leagues,
places his lack of success on racism, stating to Rose, “Don’t you come telling me I was
too old. I just wasn’t the right color” (1166). Even his description of Death is wrought
with racist imagery as he says, “Death stood up, throwed on his robe… had him a white
robe with a hood on it” (1160). This very apt description of Death shrouds the figure in
the clothes of the Ku Klux Klan. Additionally, this link between racism and Death gives
insight into why Troy will not allow Cory to play football. Refusing to believe that
anything has changed since he played baseball, he bars Cory from his one opportunity at
going to college on a football scholarship by stating, “The white man ain’t gonna let you
get nowhere with that football noway. You go on and get your book-learning so you can
work yourself up…That way you have something can’t nobody take away from you”
(1165). Troy cannot see past the pain that was inflicted upon him and subsequently, is
unable to believe there could be any future for Cory in the world of white-dominated
29 sports (1166). His hallucinatory figure is so inextricably linked to the failures of the past,
that Troy, much like Willy, is unable to see the changing world around him.
Willy insisted that a man must be well-liked to be successful and passed this
ideology onto his sons. Troy’s response to Cory is vastly different. He asks him, “Who
the hell say I got to like you? What law is there say I got to like you?” (1166). Troy’s
sense of love is built up through his responsibility, showing the love he has for his son by
providing him with food, shelter, and clothing (1166). This belief that providing for Cory
is enough seems to come from his turbulent relationship with his own father. As a man
who seemed to care little for his children, Troy’s father, who worked on a plantation,
cared more about putting food in his own belly than into the stomachs of his eleven
children. When Troy was just fourteen, the two experienced an altercation that left him
bruised and beaten, ultimately forcing Troy to leave home and make a way for himself in
the world (1169-1170). Perhaps to his own detriment, Troy uses his past experience with
baseball as a reason to interfere with Cory’s chances at college football recruitment,
poignantly stating, “I decided seventeen years ago that boy wasn’t getting involved in no
sports. Not after what they do to me in the sports…I got sense enough not to let my boy
get hurt over playing no sports” (1166). The interference in Cory’s future drives a
substantial rift between the father and son with Cory insisting that Troy simply doesn’t
want Cory to be better than him. Troy adamantly states, “I want him to move as far away
from my life as he can get” (1166, 1178). By drawing such a strict line between Cory and
himself, “Troy loses virtually every sense of affection and bond between himself and his
son” (Bogumil 48).
30 Rose, having been by Troy’s side when he first battled Death, provides him with
safety and security. She is, according to Troy, the “only decent thing that ever happened
to” him and the only part of his life that he would wish for his son (Wilson 1166). Rose is
Troy’s escape from the troubles of the world. Much like Linda Loman, she loves her
husband despite his faults. It is Rose who asks for a fence to be built around the house.
The fence, which serves as the central metaphor in the play, also serves another
interesting purpose. Intending not only to keep people in, but also to keep people out, the
fence doubles as a psychological barrier that allows Troy to enclose himself (Wang 66).
After having an affair that produces a child, Troy loses Rose. Having buried herself,
along with her dreams, feelings, wants, and needs, inside of Troy, she is no longer able to
believe that he is the man she had fallen in love with (Wilson 1174). It is not too long
after Troy loses Rose that he also loses his mistress in childbirth. It is upon this
devastating news that the hallucinatory figure appears and the fence, that was once being
built to keep his family in, is morphed into a safe place for him to stave off Death:
Alright… Mr. Death. See now… I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m
gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay
on the other side. See? You stay there until you’re ready for me… You stay on the
other side of that fence until you ready for me. Then you come up and knock on
the front door. Anytime you want. I’ll be ready for you. (1175)
Yet, ironically, as Troy attempts to keep his family closer to him, they begin to drift
further and further away, leaving Troy without the security he once had that gave him
strength to fight Death.
31 In both Fences and Death of a Salesman, we see the devastating effects both
men’s affairs have on their sons’ perception of them. Both men, “driven by feelings of
inadequacy and failure,” experience a break in the father-son relationship that seems
beyond repair (Ribkoff 123). Biff realizes that his father is nothing more than a fake;
Cory, too, realizes that Troy is not a man to emulate:
You ain’t never gave me nothing! You ain’t never done nothing but hold me back.
Afraid I was gonna be better than you. All you ever did was try and make me
scared of you. I used to tremble every time you called my name. Every time I
heard your footsteps in the house. Wondering all the time… what’s Papa gonna
say if I do this?... What’s he gonna say if I do that… And Mama, too… she
tries… but she’s scared of you… I don’t know how she stands you… after what
you did to her. (Wilson 1178)
It is in this final standoff between father and son, with the son being cast away from the
home, that Troy experiences his own final standoff with Death. Having lost everything
that has kept him safe in his life and in himself, Troy taunts Death with a baseball bat,
ready for the final fastball, “Come on! It’s between you and me now! Come on! Anytime
you want! Come on! I be ready for you… but I ain’t gonna be easy” (1178). Knowing
that he is alone, that he is devoid of the refuge he once found in his family, Troy’s
hallucination appears, ready to finish their on-going battle. While it seems that Troy will
put up a good fight, he ultimately succumbs, leaving behind the life skills he instilled in
his son, which will allow him to move forward into the future.
Troy does not receive forgiveness before his death like Willy; it is only in Troy’s
death that the father-son relationship can be repaired for “as long as [Cory] is separated
32 from his father, he remains separated from his true self” (Pereira 45). Cory, who strives to
live outside of Troy’s shadow, cannot seem to free himself from the lessons Troy sought
to teach him throughout his life. While Troy’s manner of teaching may have caused a
seemingly permanent rift in their relationship, at the end of the play, Cory can only know
himself by accepting himself as Troy’s son. In his final conversation with Rose, Cory
attempts to tell Rose that he cannot go to the funeral:
CORY: I can’t drag Papa with me everywhere I go. I’ve got to say no to him. One
time in my life I’ve got to say no.
ROSE: I know you and your daddy ain’t seen eye to eye…whatever was between
you and your daddy… the time has come to put it aside… disrespecting your
daddy ain’t gonna make you a man, Cory.
CORY: The whole time I was growing up… living in his house… Papa was like a
shadow that followed you everywhere. It weighed on you and sunk into your
flesh. It would wrap around you and lay there until you couldn’t tell which one
was you anymore. That shadow digging into your flesh. Trying to crawl in.
Trying to live through you. Everywhere I looked, Troy Maxson was staring back
at me… I’m just saying I’ve got to find a way to get rid of that shadow Mama.
ROSE: You just like him. You got him in you good… You Troy Maxson all over
again.
CORY: I don’t want to be Troy Maxson. I want to be me.
ROSE: You can’t be nobody but who you are, Cory. That shadow wasn’t nothing
but you growing into yourself. You either got to grow into it or cut it down to fit
you. But that’s all you got to make a life with. Your daddy wanted you to be
33 everything he wasn’t… and at the same time he tried to make you into everything
he was. (Wilson 1180)
As Cory begins to accept and understand Troy and the lessons he attempted to instill in
him, Gabe, Troy’s brother, looks to heaven and says, “It’s time. It’s time to tell St. Peter
to open the gates. Troy, you ready? You ready, Troy. I’m gonna tell St. Peter to open the
gates” (1181). It is in Cory’s willingness to forgive and accept his father that he is able to
break down Troy’s hallucinations, freeing Troy’s soul and sending him up to the gates of
St. Peter.
It is the father-son relationship that gives power to the hallucination and the sons’
forgiveness that dispels it. Biff’s request to be freed from the confines of his father’s
phony dreams and the act of weeping frees both men and gives Willy permission to die.
For Troy, the hallucination appears when he is no longer shrouded in the love and
comfort of his family but, instead, has been left outside of their familial fence. While
Troy never asked for forgiveness, he receives the acknowledgement of his life and legacy
when Cory is willing to embrace the Troy that lives on within him.
For Willy, the idea that success can be obtained on the basis of being well-liked is
a fallacy, but one that he is unable to face. For Troy, who believes a man has to make his
own way, success is something that can only be obtained through hard work. Neither
character gets it right and, as success moves further and further away, the hallucinatory
figure becomes a closer and more constant companion. Although Troy’s hallucination is
never manifested on the stage, the metaphorical glimpse that the figure offers into Troy’s
psyche is invaluable: Death only appears when everything is threatening to fall apart at
34 the seams. For Willy, Ben’s physical manifestation on the stage offers the audience a
much-needed view of the inner workings of a very troubled and very tired mind.
As both hallucinatory figures ultimately bring about a father’s death, they release
the next generation and allow the sons to pave their own way, free of the trappings and
misguided beliefs of the past. “Death is indeed the breaking of the generational fever”
(Turner 335). It isn’t that Troy or Willy went about teaching their children the wrong
way, or that they had the wrong dreams, but that they could not see beyond their past to
believe that their sons could achieve something outside of their misguided perceptions.
For Troy and Willy, the hallucinatory quality of the American Dream is just an extension
of their hallucinatory figure, and their inability to achieve success reveals nothing more
than the unrealistic expectations we place on ourselves to find happiness in the idea of
success that we adamantly pursue.
While the points of comparisons between Miller’s Death of a Salesman and
Wilson’s Fences are too numerous to count, the hallucinatory figure is certainly an
important one. Whether that figure stands for the disintegration of everything that has
been dear to Troy or the hope of Willy’s success, each hallucination expresses the depth
of these two men, offering us a glance into a world they have been denied, a world that
they hope will somehow open up and give way to a good future for their sons.
35 CHAPTER III:
SOCIETY’S ILLUSION OF MADNESS
Society can be unkind, especially to people who do not fit the accepted norm.
Historically, society has viewed those who experience hallucinations as either blessed by
the divine or marked with evil. These contradicting labels, of course, depended on the
individual’s place in society. Although we have come to learn that hallucinations are
neither divine nor evil but a projection of the human psyche, society is still quick to judge
and seek separation from those perceived to be abnormal. In Mary Chase’s Harvey and
David Auburn’s Proof, we are confronted with an individual who hallucinates and is
thereby marked as abnormal, yet who also has the power to alter society’s judgmental
gaze.
In his 1964 work Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason, Michel Foucault states that there once existed a great debate between madness
and reason:
In the serene world of mental illness, modern man no longer
communicates with the madman; on one hand, the man of reason delegates the
physician to madness, thereby authorizing a relation only through the abstract
universality of disease; on the other, the man of madness communicates with
society only by the intermediary of an equally abstract reason which is order,
physical and moral constraint, the anonymous pressure of the group, the
requirements of conformity. As for a common language, there is no such thing; or
rather, there is no such thing any longer; the constitution of madness as a mental
36 illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken
dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all
those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange
between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a
monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of
such silence. (Foucault x-xi)
It was the implementation of the mental institution that silenced this debate and exiled
madness (Whitebook 319). Around the eighteenth century, as Foucault states, society
began to alter its view on some of those who were different by labeling them as
unreasonable, insane, or mad. This change in perception eventually led to the “gradual,
localized, and piecemeal” process of separating people who are mentally ill from normal
society (Caputo 236, “Foucault and the History of Madness” 55). There was an
astonishing increase in the number of people who were institutionalized. In England
alone, the number of people confined for reasons of mental disorder rose from
somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 in the early 1800s to more than 100,000 in 1900
(“Foucault and the History of Madness” 54, 55). This drastic isolation of psychiatrically
disabled people from normal society and the gradual move to a medical discourse marked
an enlightened period for the psychiatric hospital, where the focus changed to a more
humanistic approach (Whitebook 320). This “psychiatric humanism” removed the penallike structure that had been the norm of previous institutions in favor of a kinder
approach aimed at helping the patients adjust back to the norm (320). Despite previous
generations’ outlook on some mentally disabled people as divine prophets, the wish to
37 separate from society people who deviate from the norm has long been a standard way of
dealing with them.
When looking at the history of madness, we see another historical movement in
the works with the acceptance of the word “normal” as it is currently defined. Normal, as
Lennard Davis, author of “Constructing Normalcy” points out, wasn’t accepted as a
means of distinguishing something as the regular or standard until the 1800s, directly
corresponding historically with the exclusion of the mentally disabled (3). If we look at
“the word ‘normal’ as ‘constituting, conforming to, not deviating or different from, the
common type or standard, regular [or] usual,” it is easy to see that anyone deemed as
living outside of this construct may be ostracized, especially if the construction of
normality implies that “the majority of the population must or should somehow be part of
the norm” (3, 6). The interesting parallel that relates Davis to Foucault is that with the
creation of normal we are confronted with its binary opposite, abnormal, which must
exist in order to establish the norm. Foucault performs the same kind of operation with
respect to reason: madness is the opposite of reason and, therefore, defines it. The two
binaries (reason/madness and normal/abnormal) establish the idea that those who fail to
conform must live outside of normal or reasonable society (3).
Madness is not a medical term (though it was once widely used by medical men).
It is a commonsense category, reflecting our culture’s recognition that Unreason
exists, that some of our number seem not to share our mental universe: they are
‘irrational’; they are emotionally withdrawn, downcast, or raging; their disorderly
minds exhibit extremes of incomprehensible and uncontrollable extravagance and
incoherence, or the grotesquely denuded mental life of the demented. (Scull 2)
38 People are conditioned to care about what others think. “After all, people seem to
have an inherent desire to compare themselves to others. But the idea of a norm is less a
condition of human nature than it is a feature of a certain kind of society” (Davis 3).
Hallucinations are considered irregular in today’s American society just as they are in
modern Western culture in general. Oliver Sacks points out that “in modern Western
culture, hallucinations are more often considered to portend madness or something dire
happening to the brain — even though the vast majority of hallucinations have no such
dark implications. There is a great [social] stigma” (Davis 3, Sacks xiv).
Harvey and Proof contain interesting parallels in the ways that the representatives
of social norms interact with characters that see a hallucinatory figure. Neither Elwood
nor Catherine seem to take much stock in what society thinks of them and both possess
unique and exceptional gifts that cause them to be ostracized. Elwood’s belief in the
presence of a large, white Pooka forces him outside of society’s collective embrace
though he is considered to be an exceptionally kind and caring individual. Catherine’s
gruff demeanor, lack of formal education, and mathematical genius cause her to be
deemed abnormal. Additionally, she lives in the shadow of her father who was plagued
by a wandering mind. The societies in both Harvey and Proof are painted in stark contrast
to these uniquely gifted characters. Representatives of social norms seek to segregate
Elwood and Catherine instead of allowing their gifts to flourish. Chase and Auburn make
it clear that these gifts might propel society forward, suggesting that it is society, not
those deemed abnormal, that should change.
In Chase’s 1944 Pulitzer Prize winning play Harvey, we are introduced to Veta
and Myrtle Mae Simmons, both of whom are concerned that Elwood, Veta’s brother, and
39 his friend Harvey are taking a toll on their social life. Elwood, whose kindhearted nature
allows him to greet everyone he meets as a potential friend, is a lovable eccentric who
has as his closest friend an invisible six-foot white Pooka named Harvey. As Elwood is
not in the business of being impolite, he introduces his hallucinatory figure to several
people, causing them to run away from Veta’s social gathering. Fed up with the effect
Harvey is having on their social lives, Veta moves to have Elwood committed to a local
sanatorium. After a series of comic encounters, Elwood is finally committed to the
sanitarium only to be released when Veta finally comes to understand who and what
Harvey is.
Defined as a “mischievous fairy creature that comes from Irish mythology” a
Pooka is a shape shifter that can appear in any form (Upstage 6). For Elwood P. Dowd,
Harvey takes the shape of a six-foot and one half-inch tall white rabbit. From society’s
judgmental perspective, a man whose constant companion is an invisible white rabbit is
troublesome. Harvey, as a hallucinatory figure, is a linguistic construction, painted
primarily through the language of the script, with a few exceptions. Although there is no
six-foot white Pooka that physically appears on the stage, his presence is established by
Elwood, who addresses him directly and often carries his hat and coat for him. There is
only one moment where the audience is allowed a visual of Elwood’s hallucinatory
friend. This visual comes in the form of an oil painting that displays “Elwood seated on a
chair while behind him stands a large white rabbit, in a blue polka-dot collar and red
necktie” (Chase 43). While it is suggested that this painting only exists because Elwood
has enough money to convince an artist to create it, it is more likely that Harvey is much
40 more than just an imaginary friend that Elwood employs to keep him company. He is also
a hallucinatory figure that may serve a wider purpose for the whole of society.
Before Harvey’s arrival, Elwood seems to have been praised for his manners and
kindness. After exhibiting the bizarre behavior of seeing Harvey, however, he is labeled
“the biggest screwball in town” (3,6,35).
JUDGE: I always liked that boy. He could have done anything — been anything
— made a place for himself in this community.
MYRTLE: And all he did was get a big rabbit.
JUDGE: He had everything. Brains, personality, friends. Men liked him. Women
liked him. I liked him.
MYRTLE: Are you telling me that once Uncle Elwood was like other men — that
women actually liked him — I mean in that way?
JUDGE: Oh, not since he started running around with this big rabbit. But they did
once. Once that mail-box of your grandmother’s was full of those little bluescented envelopes for Elwood… Of course there was always something different
about Elwood… Take your average man looking up and seeing a big white rabbit.
He’d do something about it. But not Elwood… And look where it got him. (35)
As Judge Gaffney points out, Elwood was adored by the community and seemed to have
a bright future ahead of him. Harvey’s arrival causes people to change their mind about
Elwood, shifting him from beloved member of the community to the “screwiest” person
in town (42).
It is noted several times that Harvey’s arrival corresponds perfectly with the
passing of Elwood’s mother. Veta notes that Elwood, who had never married, was very
41 close to their mother and when she and Myrtle Mae came to live with Elwood after their
mother died she noticed Harvey right away (13, 15). It is safe to say that Harvey’s arrival
offered Elwood a much-needed reprieve from his loneliness and as Sacks points out in
Hallucinations:
Especially common are hallucinations engendered by loss and grief… Losing a
parent…is losing part of oneself; and bereavement causes a sudden hole in one’s
life, a hole which — somehow — must be filled. This presents a cognitive
problem and a perceptual one as well as an emotional one, and a painful longing
for reality to be otherwise. (231)
Harvey, as Elwood’s hallucinatory figure, acts as a much-needed companion that fills the
hole created when Elwood’s mother passed. For Elwood, Harvey is much more than just
another friend — he is comfort.
Harvey and I sit in the bars and we have a drink or two and play the jukebox.
Soon the faces of the other people turn towards mine and smile. They are saying
‘We don’t know your name, Mister, but you’re a lovely fellow.’ Harvey and I
warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We have entered as strangers —
soon we have friends… They talk to us… Then I introduce them to Harvey. And
he is bigger and grander than anything they offer me. (Chase 54)
Psychologically speaking, Harvey is a tool that helps guide Elwood through the grieving
process. If Harvey’s appearance corresponds directly with the passing of Elwood’s
mother, as Veta suggests, then he clearly can be identified as a construct of Elwood’s
grief.
42 The society in Harvey is comprised of selfish individuals who wish for nothing
outside of their own needs. However, because of their skewed view of acceptable
behavior, they rally against Elwood and insist that he should be removed from society,
labeling him as a deviant. Veta, whose biggest concern is getting social recognition, cares
little of how her brother’s life would be affected if he were institutionalized. Similar is
Myrtle Mae, Veta’s daughter, who is perhaps the most selfish character in the play. It is
clear that Myrtle Mae’s primary concern is herself. Her self-absorption is seen in her
unbridled desire to have Elwood locked up so that she and her mother can control the
estate, take trips, and entertain guests without concern (35). As selfish as Myrtle Mae is,
Dr. Chumley, the respected psychiatrist at the sanitarium is just as deviant. Dr. Chumley
convinces Veta that the only way to rid Elwood of Harvey is through an injection that
would permanently separate him from his hallucinatory figure. The truth behind Dr.
Chumley’s desire to give Elwood the injection is that he wishes to take Harvey for
himself (12, 65). These three “social establishment” characters stand in opposition to the
gentle and kindhearted Elwood, who would happily do anything for his family and rarely,
if ever, speaks ill of another person.
Veta believes that Elwood’s hallucinatory figure is at the root of her difficulties in
getting Myrtle Mae out into society. In the middle of hosting her first party in several
years, Veta is humiliated by Elwood’s insistence on introducing Harvey to everyone. His
actions cause several people to leave, ruining her party. After this embarrassment, she
decides he must be locked up in a sanitarium before he is able to do any additional harm
to their social reputations. “I promise you your Uncle Elwood has disgraced us for the
last time in this house” (9). While it may be easy to assume that Veta works for nothing
43 more than her and her daughter’s needs (“No one could eat at a table with my brother and
a big white rabbit. Well, I’m finished with it. I’ll sell the house—be appointed
conservator of Elwood’s estate, and Myrtle Mae and I will be able to entertain our friends
in peace”), she does express a little concern for her brother (15). While her brother’s
well-being should be her primary concern, it is actually secondary to her concern for her
own social reputation (15).
Veta takes the first step toward separating Elwood from society. Adamantly
stating that Elwood’s behavior is a “slap in the face to everything we’ve stood for in this
community,” she locks him in the study of their home to ensure that he can do no further
damage to their social lives (14). After this initial act of separating Elwood from the rest
of society, she then attempts to place him in Chumley’s Rest, a sanitarium for mentally ill
patients. Initially voicing concern for how society views Elwood, Veta finally admits that
her desire to commit him is more for her benefit than his. “I want him committed out here
permanently, because I cannot stand another day of that Harvey” (14). Yet while she is
there, she admits that she sometimes sees Harvey. “Every once in a while I see that big
white rabbit myself… he’s every bit as big as Elwood says he is” (15). This admission
lands her in the institution instead of Elwood, who has, through his gentle nature,
managed to win over Dr. Sanderson and Kelly, the head nurse. After Veta is released, she
claims that Elwood is a dangerous person, but the truth is that he is only dangerous to
their social standing (45). While Veta only admitted seeing Harvey to the doctors at the
sanitarium because she believed that the confidentiality of the hospital would allow her to
unburden herself, she is reluctant to make any further admissions that she has
encountered Elwood’s hallucinatory figure for fear of the social stigma that may
44 accompany it. Eventually, when Elwood is finally confined to the sanitarium, Veta
pushes herself to believe that she wants Harvey gone; “I never want to see another
tomorrow. Not if Myrtle Mae and I have to live in the house with that rabbit” (66). But it
is not Harvey that she wishes to expel from the house so much as she longs to have her
social life back. “Our friends never come to see us — we have no social life; we have no
life at all. We’re both miserable” (66). However, once she realizes that Elwood is who he
is because of Harvey, she turns against society’s judgmental gaze and decides that living
outside the norm is not so bad. “And what’s wrong with Harvey? If Elwood and Myrtle
Mae and I want to live with Harvey it’s nothing to you” (70). It is not until Veta chooses
to embrace a life outside the norm and give up her selfish ways that she is able to
understand the power of Elwood’s hallucinatory figure.
Myrtle Mae is a stark representation of future generations and their desire to
continue the separation of those considered abnormal from normal society. Her inability
to see beyond her own needs and desires establishes her as the self-absorbed and unkind
norm of society. While she wishes to blame her uncle Elwood for her societal problems,
it is not hard to see that she is, in fact, responsible for her own issues. In our first
encounter with Myrtle Mae it is obvious that she is nothing more than a spoiled brat who
constantly whines that her life is unnecessarily difficult because of Elwood’s relationship
with Harvey. Although she is of an age to meet young men and begin the courting
process, they often run away shouting, “That’s Myrtle Mae Simmons! Her uncle is
Elwood P. Dowd — the biggest screwball in town” (3). Although there certainly is some
backlash caused by Elwood’s hallucinatory figure, there is nothing flattering about
Myrtle Mae. In fact, it would be kind to say that she is unpleasant when all she does is
45 whine and insist that Elwood needs to be locked away or somehow removed from their
lives. She even goes so far as to state that “people get run over by trucks every day. Why
can’t something like that happen to Uncle Elwood?” (9). Her insistence is rooted in her
selfish desire to have the estate turned over to her mother so that they may enjoy the
freedom of travel and societal acceptance (35). Clearly Chase is making a point: although
Myrtle Mae serves as society’s voice, it is she who is a deviant. Through her behavior,
we are invited to see her selfishness as anti-social. Elwood is nothing but kind and caring
towards his deviant niece, often giving her money and asking after her well-being. Myrtle
Mae aptly demonstrates that it is not Elwood who needs to change but those around him.
As a respected psychiatrist and the head of the sanitarium, Dr. Chumley prides
himself on being an extraordinary doctor. He believes whole-heartedly in the mental
institution’s ability to separate those who are labeled as deviant from society. He
becomes obsessed with locating Elwood, believing that he is a threat and the sanitarium
is the only place he belongs (41). However, in his pursuit of Elwood, Dr. Chumley meets
Harvey. This encounter makes him the third person to “see” Elwood’s hallucinatory
figure.
Unable to rationalize why he is now able to see Harvey, Dr. Chumley searches for
a way to rid himself of the white Pooka. While Dr. Chumley tries to rid himself of the
figure, the audience finally sees a physicalization of Harvey. “Rattle of the doorknob.
Door opens and shuts, and we hear locks opening and closing and see light from hall on
stage. The invisible Harvey has come in. There is a count of eight while he crosses the
stage, then door of Chumley’s office opens and closes, with sound of locks clicking.
Harvey has gone in.” Harvey has breached the lines of simply being an imaginary
46 character (56). His movement is an opportunity to open the eyes of society to the
possibilities of his existence. This physicalization suggests that Harvey has become more
real over the course of the play, opening the minds of the audience to his existence.
Fearful that he is losing touch with reality, Dr. Chumley hopes that if he expels
Elwood from his sanitarium things will return to the way they were. Yet, as Dr. Chumley
begins to understand the positive effects Harvey has had on Elwood’s life, he begins to
covet Harvey and his ability to stop time and predict the future. He finally suggests that
Elwood take an injection that will separate him from Harvey permanently, meaning that
Harvey would be free to stay with Dr. Chumley. Elwood confides in Dr. Chumley that
Harvey has the ability to “look at your clock and stop it and you can go away as long as
you like with whomever you like and go as far as you like… Einstein has overcome time
and space. Harvey has overcome not only time and space — but any objections” (62).
This disclosure of Harvey’s ability to halt time leads Dr. Chumley to proclaim, “[t]o hell
with decency! I’ve got to have that rabbit!” (65). We learn in this moment that Dr.
Chumley is willing to give up the normative society in order to obtain what Elwood has;
yet Dr. Chumley does not fully understand what Harvey and Elwood have. Elwood states
that he has no need for Harvey’s ability to stop time — there is no other place that
Elwood would rather be. Harvey came to Elwood in the first place precisely because
Elwood needs nothing from him other than his companionship (62). With Harvey,
Elwood is perfectly happy just as he is, further demonstrating that being a part of the
established norm does not always provide a full life. Sometimes living outside of society
provides much more clarity on the important things. “My mother used to say to me… ‘In
47 this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.’ For years I was smart. I
recommend pleasant’” (64).
In stark contrast to Veta, Myrtle Mae, and Dr. Chumley, Elwood demonstrates a
lack of selfishness. It is through Elwood’s kindness and genuine nature that he is able to
positively affect everyone he meets. Conventional thinking says that Elwood falls outside
of the norm, however, as we learn, being abnormal is not necessarily something to be
viewed negatively. As both Veta and Dr. Chumley push Elwood towards the injection for
selfish reasons, Elwood agrees to it because he’s “always felt that Veta should have
everything she wants” (66). Elwood’s willingness to sacrifice his best friend for Veta and
his family shows a kind and generous nature that is lacking from the social world at large.
Before Elwood receives the medical injection that will make Harvey disappear, a deus ex
machina figure appears, a cab driver, who alerts Veta to the change that will occur in
Elwood once he is normal:
I’ve brought ‘em out here to get that stuff and drove ‘em back after they had it. It
changes ‘em… On the way out here they sit back and enjoy the ride. They talk to
me. Sometimes we stop and watch the sunsets and look at the birds flyin’… and I
always get a big tip. But afterwards… They crab. They yell at me… They got no
faith… it’s no fun — and no tips — Lady, after this, he’ll be a perfectly normal
human being and you know what bastards they are! (69)
Through statements like this, Chase indicates that the social norm isn’t always
desirable. Elwood is a kind and gentle person, always eager to make a friend, despite or,
perhaps because of, his eccentricities. Through the characters of Myrtle Mae, Veta, and
Dr. Chumley, we see that it is in fact the “normal” person who is selfish and deviant. It is
48 therefore easy to conclude that despite Elwood’s differences and his hallucinatory figure,
it is better to be outside the norm, offering a new perspective to all, rather than to be a
selfish and unkind person. Perhaps is it better to believe in a hallucinatory figure and
reject society’s judgment in order to live a happy life.
Elwood takes time to pick the flowers and befriend strangers. He chooses to be
“pleasant” rather than to be “smart.” Such choices may seem simple, but for an
adult living in the modern world, they represent a strong break from the status
quo. By committing to Harvey, Elwood refuses to conform to the reality of those
around him — a choice that makes him a more joyful person as a result. (Upstage
7)
As Elwood says, “I wrestled with reality for forty years, and I am happy to state that I
finally won out over it” (49).
Much like Harvey, David Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning
drama Proof exposes society’s inability to understand anyone who might live outside of
the norm. After giving up the majority of her adult life to care for her mentally ill father,
Catherine, who is only twenty-five, lives in constant fear that she will one day follow in
his footsteps. After making three major contributions to the mathematical field before he
was Catherine’s age, Robert’s mind began to deteriorate, his genius and his madness
becoming indistinguishable. For Catherine, who shares her father’s genius, her isolation
from society and fear of sharing her father’s fate cause her to be erratic and cold towards
those who wish to care for her. It is in the arrival of her sister Claire that we hear
society’s voice — first in the adamant belief that their father should have been
institutionalized, and further in her research of mental facilities where Catherine might
49 seek help. While it is clear that Robert suffered from his own hallucinations, Catherine’s
hallucination is her father. The use of her father as the hallucinatory figure speaks to
Catherine’s fear that she cannot escape her genetic past.
The role of the hallucinatory figure in Proof serves to give voice to Catherine’s
psyche. While Robert is a physically constructed hallucinatory figure that appears on the
stage as a hallucination in the established present of the play, he also appears in
flashbacks that provide the audience with a strong understanding of the closeness their
relationship.
As the play begins, we find Catherine and Robert on the porch celebrating her
birthday. Although this appears to be a routine conversation between the two of them, the
reality is Robert has already passed away. As a hallucinatory figure, Robert exposes
Catherine’s fears through the conversation she is essentially having with herself,
suggesting to the audience that Catherine may suffer from the same tenuous mental state
as her father. Apart from the lack of physical touch, there are few clues leading up to the
revelation that he has already passed away but their conversation reveals to some extent
the genius that Catherine has inherited from her father. Mathematically computing the
days lost to her depression, Robert, as an extension of her psyche, reprimands her for
losing valuable time, “[t]hose days are lost. You threw them away. And you’ll never
know what else you threw away with them — the work you lost, the ideas you didn’t
have, discoveries you never made because you were moping in your bed at four in the
afternoon… by the time I was your age I’d already done my best work” (Auburn 8,9).
Additionally, Robert as Catherine’s voice, exposes her fears and draws a parallel between
her hallucinations and Robert’s:
50 ROBERT: A very good sign that you’re crazy is an inability to ask the
question, ‘Am I crazy?’
CATHERINE: Even if the answer is yes?
ROBERT: Crazy people don’t ask. You see?
CATHERINE: Yes… No…It doesn’t work…
ROBERT: Where’s the problem?
CATHERINE: The problem is you are crazy!... You admitted—You just
told me that you are… You said a crazy person would never admit that…
So how can you admit it?
ROBERT: Well. Because I’m also dead. (11)
This revelation that Catherine has been conversing with her dead father, establishes him
as her hallucinatory figure, while further alluding to the fact that she may be in need of
psychiatric care. Further exploring the extremity of the moment, Catherine ascertains,
through Robert’s voice, that his appearance could be a very bad sign (12). That said, if
we agree with Foucault’s claim that a madman cannot distinguish truth from illusion,
then Catherine’s ability to acknowledge that Robert is not actually there may, in fact, be a
good sign that she is not mentally ill.
It is also this interaction that links Catherine’s need for a hallucinatory figure to
Elwood’s. Although Catherine has lived with her father for twenty-five years it is not
until his passing that she experiences any form of hallucination, making him a construct
of her grief and also her fear. Her haunted mind has created a hallucinatory figure to fill
the hole that was created when her father passed. Her strong desire for “reality to be
51 otherwise” suggests why Robert appears to her as the father she knew and loved prior to
his sickness as opposed to the mentally ill father she took care of (Sacks 231).
The appearance of Robert as a projection of Catherine’s psyche is not the only
hallucination we encounter in the play. Robert, in his deteriorated mental state, is unable
to separate truth from illusion and as such has begun the search for an elusive
mathematical proof. Although his ailment is not identified, it is clear that Robert suffered
from hallucinations of his own. “He believed that aliens were sending him messages
through the Dewey decimal numbers on the library books. He was trying to work out the
code… Beautiful mathematics. Answers to everything… plus knock-knock jokes” (16,
17). Catherine, who shares much of her father’s genius, wishes to avoid the stigma of his
insanity, yet it is a constant battle.
Inexplicably, genius and madness seem to go hand in hand just like two sides of
the same coin (Nettle 11). Catherine, who shares so much of her father’s intelligence,
may also share his fate. She has written a proof that could revolutionize the mathematical
world making the connection between father and daughter even closer.
Catherine, in the hope of providing her father with more personal care than an
institution, was adamant about keeping him at home. Her sister Claire seeks to discredit
this belief by stating that although he stayed at home and had nine months of lucidity, it
was not worth the years that Catherine wasted.
CATHERINE: He needed to be here. In his own house, near the
University, near his students, near everything that made him happy.
CLAIRE: Maybe. Or maybe some real professional care would have done
him more good than rattling around this filthy house with YOU looking
52 after him. I’m sorry Catherine, it’s not your fault, it’s my fault. It’s my
fault for letting you do it.
CATHERINE: I was right to keep him here.
CLAIRE: No.
CATHERINE: What about his remission? Four years ago. He was healthy
for almost a year.
CLAIRE: And then he went right downhill again.
CATHERINE: He might have been worse in a hospital.
CLAIRE: And he MIGHT have been BETTER. Did he ever do any work
again?
CATHERINE: No.
CLAIRE: NO. And you might have been better.
CATHERINE: Better than what?
CLAIRE: Living here with him didn’t do you any good. You said that
yourself. You had so much talent…
CATHERINE: You think I’m like Dad.
CLAIRE: I think you have some of his talents and some of his tendencies
toward… instability. (39)
This interaction between the two sisters vividly shows their contradictory beliefs as to the
power of hospitalization. While it is clear that Claire notices the similarities between
Catherine and Robert, she is not quick to admit that she has investigated resources that
might help her sister. Claire’s belief that the medical system can more aptly help the
mentally ill establishes her as society’s voice. Although it cannot be said that Claire acts
53 out of selfishness or concern for herself like the characters in Harvey, she is ill-equipped
to contribute anything more to the mental health of her family other than providing the
medical care she believes they need.
What Claire fails to understand is that by keeping Robert at home, Catherine
facilitated a few months of clarity for her father. Catherine firmly believes that if Robert
had been institutionalized he would not have experienced those months of lucidity and
the act of shutting him away would have prevented him from returning to work at the
university. Yet, after Catherine left Robert in order to pursue her own education, he
relapsed into his mental illness and was never productive again (39). During his few
months of lucidity, Robert pointed to the normality of his life and how that helped to
keep his illness at bay, writing about the mundane rituals of “being outside, eating meals
in restaurants, riding busses, all the activities of ‘normal’ life” (20). He further admited
that the thing that helped “most of all [was] Cathy. The years she has lost caring for
me…. Yet her refusal to let me be institutionalized — her keeping me at home, caring for
me herself has certainly saved my life” (20).
Claire, fearing that Catherine is exhibiting the same instability her father did,
treats Catherine as a child. Upon her arrival from New York, Claire immediately begins
placating Catherine, asking if she is all right or if she needs anything (21). However, this
demeanor is dropped when she alerts Catherine to the fact that some officers stopped by
to check on her after she exhibited some erratic behavior towards them. Attempting to
explain the events of the evening to Claire, leaving out her encounter with their father,
she explains that she believed Hal, one of Robert’s old students, was attempting to steal a
notebook from their home. Not believing that Hal is real, Claire questions Catherine as to
54 why she was abusive towards the officers, who simply seemed to be trying to help (25,
26). Her willingness to side with the officers, due to their friendly demeanor further
points to her role as society’s voice. Claire institutes the idea that Catherine may be in
need of care when she suggests that she leave Chicago and move to New York where
Claire can keep a closer eye on her, suggesting that it would be easy to set her up with a
small apartment in New York where they would have access to the best of everything,
including doctors (37, 40).
Claire also acknowledges her fear of Catherine’s tendencies towards mental
illness when she explains to Hal that Catherine inherited a great deal of Robert’s genius.
“I probably inherited about one-one-thousandth of my father’s ability… Catherine got
more. I’m not sure how much” (58). In keeping with her belief that her father might have
been better off if he had been placed in an institution, Claire seeks medical help for
Catherine, hoping that removing her from the stresses of society might somehow help her
avoid her father’s fate. In selling the home that Catherine has lived in for years, Claire
leaves her with no choice but to move to New York where Claire will be better equipped
to handle Catherine and take care of her needs. Before leaving, however, Catherine
decides to antagonize her sister by stating that she sees New York as nothing but
“restraints, lithium, [and] electroshock” and she will quietly take the treatments the
facilities prescribe to her as she blames all of her issues, not on her father, but on Claire
(66). It is through Catherine’s erratic behavior that Claire begins to believe that she is
becoming more and more like their father and further believes that the only thing that can
aid Catherine now is psychiatric help. What Claire fails to understand is that Catherine
55 simply needs to feel understood. When Catherine feels belittled and degraded, she lashes
out and fights against society’s wish to contain her.
At the center of the entire conflict is the discovery of a mathematical proof, a
proof that could completely revolutionize the mathematical world. When Catherine
claims to have written the proof, both Hal and Claire refuse to believe her, each burdened
by their own inadequacies. It is hard for Hal to believe that she could have written the
proof, considering that the notebook in which the proof was written was found in her
father’s desk drawer. After working for years on his Ph.D. Hal cannot fathom a world
where someone with no formal education could have created a proof this important.
Believing that the only normal way for anyone to make any form of accomplishment in
the field is through years of study, Catherine shatters his perceptions and forces him to
come to terms with the possibility of her genius. Claire’s inability to believe Catherine’s
claim of authorship is bound tightly to her belief that Catherine is becoming more and
more unstable. Claire is adamant that medical treatment and being close to Catherine is
the only way to help. Hal, however, begins to believe Catherine and attempts to reassure
her:
HAL: There is nothing wrong with you.
CATHERINE: I think I’m like my dad.
HAL: I think you are too.
CATHERINE: I’m… afraid I’m like my dad.
HAL: You’re not him.
CATHERINE: Maybe I will be.
HAL: Maybe. Maybe you’ll be better (70).
56 As Catherine begins to embrace the genius that she inherited from her father and learns
that she cannot live her life hindered by the fear of becoming him, we begin to
understand that she has released the hallucinatory figure. Living with her father who was
labeled as insane traps Catherine within her own discourse, causing her to adopt and fear
the label once placed on her father. While it is unclear if Catherine will ever shake the
stigma or ever stop fearing the possibility that she may share her father’s fate, she has
revolutionized mathematics, contributing greatly to the society that cannot accept her
abnormalities and would wish to see her silenced.
Viewing Catherine and Elwood side by side reveals important similarities and
differences. Elwood is the representative of sanity amidst the chaos of the society around
him. In complete opposition to his gentle demeanor is Catherine, who is much more the
chaos within her society.
The hallucinatory figures in Harvey and Proof expose the faults of society while
also aiding the characters who see them. The loss of Elwood’s mother coincides perfectly
with Harvey’s arrival. Catherine lessens the pain of losing her father by creating him as a
hallucinatory figure, while also increasing her fear that she may indeed be more like him
than she wishes to admit. While Elwood has chosen a life with Harvey, Catherine’s
hallucinatory figure is released when she comes to terms with who she is and lets go of
the fears that have kept her from fulfilling her true potential.
In alignment with the historical belief in the sacred fool who was valued for their
“unique wisdom and contribution to the spiritual ‘thickness of the human world,’” both
Catherine and Elwood, the two characters that live outside of society, make unique
contributions through their individual genius (Whitebook 318). While society has
57 attempted to expel the abnormal from the rational world, it is the abnormal, or those who
live outside the realm of normality, that have the greatest gifts according to Harvey and
Proof. A mathematical genius, Catherine contributes a proof that will revolutionize the
field while Elwood, through his compassionate and friendly nature, allows those he
encounters to see the world through gentler eyes. Each character, individually, works to
undo the stigmatization those considered abnormal have suffered (321).
In classical antiquity madness was a gift. As society’s perceptions of normality
changed so too did the world of people considered mad. Although their tones differ —
Harvey being comedic and Proof dramatic — both plays look at society’s efforts towards
normalization. The hallucinatory figure exposes society’s inability to accept what stands
outside the norm. In American society, those who do not fit the norm are generally
outcast and excluded, resulting in unknown losses that possibly could have added to the
betterment of our society. The existence of the hallucinatory figures allows the characters
in Mary Chase’s Harvey and David Auburn’s Proof to see the world differently, not
absent of reason but perhaps more enlightened. Maybe it is time we end the attempt to
silence those we choose to label as different by opening our minds and allowing the great
debate between reason and madness to recommence.
58 CHAPTER IV:
HALLUCINATIONS, GRIEF, AND THE PERFECT FAMILY
The idea of having a family is at the forefront of many people’s hopes and
dreams. For some of us that dream is achieved, for others the long and arduous process of
trying to have a child ends in failure. When we fail or when something heartbreaking
happens to the family, it is often catastrophic, leaving nothing but the disintegrated
remains of dreams, hopes, and ideals. Despite its introduction over 60 years ago with
television shows like Leave It to Beaver, the idea of a nuclear family still firmly sits in
the heart of American culture and at the center of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? and Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s musical Next to Normal (Stanley 11).
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Next to Normal focus on the discourse of the
family. In both plays, a hallucinatory son exposes the fallacy behind the nuclear family
and forces characters to choose a life that is either full of illusions or free from
hallucinations. The son in Albee’s play is established as a linguistic construction and
works to complete a fatally incomplete family. The son in Next to Normal is a physically
constructed representation of the family’s suppressed grief. Despite these differences in
presentation, each hallucinatory son plays his own role within the family dynamic and
ironically represents these families’ “unwavering faith in the myth of the American
dream” (Hirsch 11, 43).
Edward Albee’s 1963 Tony Award winning drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? introduces us to George, an associate professor of history and his wife Martha,
the daughter of the college president. Set in the living room of their home in New
59 Carthage, George and Martha’s tumultuous relationship is marked not only by their
incessant need to degrade, attack, and belittle the other, but also by the existence of their
son. Declaring “total war” against each other, the two embark on an evening that can only
end one way: with the death of their son. However, their guests, Nick and Honey, come
to learn the child is a complete fabrication created to help Martha and George deal with
their failing marriage and inability to conceive. Their hallucinatory son is the one perfect
aspect of their otherwise venomous relationship. When Martha breaks the agreement of
their private hallucination by mentioning the existence of their son, George reacts in the
only way he can to save what is left of their marriage — he dismantles the hallucination
and forces them to face reality.
Theatre historian Christopher Bigsby’s exploration of the son looks at the child as
a form of escapism for George and Martha. “We are plainly invited to recognize a
connection between the elaborate and detailed fictions which George and Martha have
created as an alternative to confronting the reality of their lives” (131). It is easy to
identify the child as a mere construct of their haunted minds, seeking a way to fill the
hole that was created in the absence of a biological child. The son they create represents
nothing more than “a lie of the mind,” a projection of their unbridled desire to have a
child of their own (Roudane 62).
In the beginning, when we are first introduced to George and Martha there is a
sense of unabashed playfulness between the two as they send little jabs at each other, but
this quickly morphs into an all out verbal war with the arrival of their guest Nick, a
biology professor new to the college, and his wife Honey. Almost performing for their
company, they begin to take blatant stabs at each other until finally their son is mentioned
60 and the games truly begin. These insults are not the mere markings of a dysfunctional
marriage that is devoid of love and compassion for each other, but an exercise, as George
calls it, where they are “merely walking what’s left of [their] wits” (19). However,
conversation for these two is more than just a game of wits; words have a concrete
impact, creating a visceral reaction in the other. This impact is evident in the full-bodied
linguistic construction of their hallucinatory son.
George and Martha’s dependence on language is seen throughout the play as each
of them takes turns demonstrating their skills. George’s dexterity with language is visible
in the subtle and sometimes condescending way he corrects those around him and his
pointed use of semantics. “His verbal inventiveness, honed over the years as a survival
measure, may be seen as a way of gaining an upper hand with others. His language, at
times, is as manipulative as it is communicative” (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 64).
This is especially poignant when George calls Martha out for bringing up the subject of
their child. As she attempts to brush the issue aside she states, “I’m sorry I brought it up”
(Albee 34). This use of “it” in reference to their son is quickly and pointedly corrected by
George when he says, “Him up… not it. You brought him up […] Martha is sorry she
brought it up… him” (34). In complete contrast, Martha’s use of language is harsher,
designed to wound or praise as she shifts her tactics. Her language is unabated and even
intensified by the presence of her guests. In a sense, Martha’s language is designed as a
sort of performance where she effortlessly switches from braying to bewitching and from
cooing to spewing profanities in a matter of minutes, all, consequently designed to help
her get whatever she is after. In fact, according to George, “Martha’s a devil with
language’ (14). But despite their differences in language, there is nothing as beautiful as
61 the linguistic creation of their hallucinatory son, where all barriers between them seem to
fall away and they exist in a perfectly formed world as a family.
In an attempt to fill the void created by the absence of a child, they embark on a
shared hallucination. The invention of their son creates a marriage they can both inhabit
with relative ease, creating memories and perfect carefree moments that they share. Their
happiness is palpable as Martha describes the rehearsed story of their hallucinatory “allAmerican” son (Albee 81). The child is perfect, often referred to with endearing
sentiments such as “Junior” and “little joy” (88, 87). Martha and George share their hope
for a nuclear family in stories of their son’s youthful and carefree days. The hallucinatory
figure acts as a balance that evenly matches the two in their marriage. Martha
acknowledges, “so wise he walked evenly between us… a hand out to each of us for what
we could offer by way of support, affection, teaching, even love” (91). As they each
create and dream up the life of their son, together, they envision an idealized family life
with perfect Sunday nights eating sandwiches and Saturday mornings where they play
with their food and create boats made of fruit and bananas, all moments a nuclear family
takes for granted. However, this perfection cannot last as George and Martha,
alternatively, use their son as a sounding board against which they ricochet their
complaints at each other, shifting the hallucinatory figure’s role in the family from
perfect son to weapon of mass-destruction (Albee 90; Hirsch 24).
It is perhaps the linguistic construction of the hallucinatory son that brings so
much life to the child that never existed, allowing both George and Martha to change the
figure as they need. “The parents use the child as a pawn in their own embattled
relationship — the child has no identity apart from his usefulness as a projection of the
62 parents’ psychoses” (Hirsch 23). Indeed the son experiences several “physical” changes
throughout the play with Martha and George changing and adjusting the son as they need
and exposing their individual desire for some kind of connective tissue with their
hallucinatory offspring:
MARTHA: He has green eyes… like me.
GEORGE: He has blue eyes, Martha.
MARTHA: (determined) Green.
GEORGE: (patronizing) Blue, Martha.
MARTHA: (ugly) GREEN! He has the loveliest green eyes… they aren’t all
flaked with brown and gray, you know… hazel… they’re real green… deep, pure
green eyes… like mine.
NICK: (Peers) Your eyes are… brown, aren’t they?
MARTHA: GREEN! (A little too fast) Well, in some lights they look brown, but
they’re green. Not green like his… more hazel. George has watery blue eyes…
milky blue.
GEORGE: Make up your mind, Martha. (Albee 36)
This clear allusion to the fact that the child is a linguistic construction goes largely
unnoticed by Nick and Honey and even the audience, and appears to be nothing more
than a continuation of their banter. However, a closer look reveals that this seemingly
insignificant fight over the color of the child’s eyes is plainly intended to bring the child
closer to one parent or the other. George’s insistence that his son shares his eye color
reflects a father’s desire to pass on his genes to his son. For Martha, who claims that his
63 eyes are green like hers, this loudly reflects her psychological desire to be biologically
close to her offspring.
Whatever the child’s “physical” construction, the three of them together create a
nuclear family. Traditionally in the nuclear family, the father was supposed to be “stable,
financially secure, good natured, and a source of wisdom and understanding,” yet George
seems to have failed on all accounts (Coleman et al 168). Martha expected her husband to
amount to something. Instead, George has achieved nothing more at the college than a
position as an associate professor in the history department, a department Martha once
envisioned he would run before taking over her father’s position, “He was going to be
groomed. He’d take over some day… first, he’d take over the History Department, and
then, when Daddy retired, he’d take over the college” (Albee 40). However, Martha’s
hopes and aspirations for George’s career have given way to spite and vicious attacks,
which are all primarily focused on his failure to achieve the expected role as man of the
house. Her disdain for his failure resonates in her every utterance as she continues to
humiliate him in front of their guests, “ You see, George didn’t have much…push… he
wasn’t particularly… aggressive. In fact, he was a sort of a FLOP!” (40).
For as much as Martha attacks George for all of his failings, she too is openly
chastised for her flaws as George declares that she is vulgar, lustful, and drunk,
suggesting that Martha has “a tiny problem with spirituous liquors — she’s can’t get
enough” (46, 92). Indeed, to count the amount of liquor Martha consumes during the
course of the play, which only spans from the very late evening to early dawn, there are
roughly eight drinks to be accounted for, suggesting that Martha’s use of alcohol serves
64 to drown out her failure. A form of self-medication, the alcohol works as a coping
mechanism, which she admits to a picture of her father:
I cry all the time too, Daddy, I cry allll the time; but deep inside, so no one can
see me. I cry all the time. And Georgie cries all the time, too. We both cry all the
time, and then, what do we do, we cry, and we take our tears, and we put ‘em in
the icebox, in the goddamn ice trays until they’re frozen and then… we put
them…. in… our drinks (76).
Despite her willingness to subject George to public humiliation, Martha faces a very
private failure. Martha and George’s inability to produce a child constitutes a marked
failure in their joint ability to achieve a nuclear family. In fact, George mentions that,
“Martha doesn’t have pregnancies at all,” suggesting that she may have been the reason
they were unable to conceive (46). The American Dream is bred into a woman in the
form of the idea that she should desire a child above all else. It is not surprising that
Martha would use alcohol as a means of dealing with her failure to become pregnant
(Coleman et al. 159).
As the evening wears on and the basic insults they have used do not seem to be
enough, they begin to use the son as a way of sticking their verbal knives into each other
even deeper, distorting the innocent life they have crafted. More perverse than the fact
that each uses the son individually to fill the void left in their lives, is the fact that they
use the child to degrade the other in the most vicious and devastating way when they
each, independently, declare that the other has failed as a parent to their hallucinatory
child. George declares that their son came to him, “for love that wasn’t mixed with
sickness…” when he “could not tolerate the slashing, braying residue that called itself his
65 mother” (92). Martha counters by declaring that their son could not “tolerate the shabby
failure his father had become” (92). As if exposing all of his failures were not enough to
satisfy her, Martha attacks the one part of George that has, perhaps, suffered the most —
she claims that “deep down in the private-most pit of his gut” George is unsure that he is
truly the father of their child (35). Knowing that their son is nothing more than a mental
construct, he calls her a “wicked woman” and firmly states, “There are very few things in
this would that I am sure of […] but the one thing in this whole sinking world that I am
sure of is my partnership, my chromosomological partnership in the …creation of our…
blond-eyed, blue-haired…son” (35).
The real problem that these two must face is the fact that Martha has taken their
private hallucinatory figure and made him public (Roudane 61). It is upon learning that
Martha has broken their agreement and mentioned the existence of their son that George
begins to understand just how much their lives have come to depend on their illusion.
Martha’s announcing their son’s existence signals, George realizes, that their
private life has disintegrated into an unreal make-believe world. Distinctions
between truth and illusion, and that relatively narrow space between the real and
the imaginary, become blurred, not by the continual drinking, but by a psychotic
reliance on (when it’s convenient, at least) fiction as truth. (Roudane 47)
As Martha “has become psychologically dependent on [their] fantasy,” George begins to
understand that she can no longer distinguish between truth and illusion (51). Finally,
George understands “what is necessary to save not his marriage, but his and Martha’s
very existence; the son-myth deforming their world must be confronted and against
unfavorable odds, purged from their psyche” (43). George knows that he must initiate the
66 act of killing their nuclear family in order to save their marriage and finally declares that
they are “playing this [game] to the death” (Albee 86).
After the evening has decayed into drunken games, ranging anywhere from
“Humiliate the Host” to “Get the Guest” and “Hump the Hostess,” George knows there is
one game that must be played: “Bringing Up Baby.” Aware that the couple can no longer
subordinate their lives to their illusions, George begins the process of exorcising their
minds of their hallucinations. Uncertain of where this is going, Martha is hesitant to
embark on a game where the rules are not already established. However, George will not
give up. Prompting Martha to expose their linguistic creation, he begins:
GEORGE: All right, Martha; your recitation, please.
MARTHA: (From far away.) What, George?
GEORGE: (Prompting) “Our son…”
MARTHA: All right. Our son. Our son was born in a September night, a night not
unlike tonight, though tomorrow, and twenty… one… years ago […] It was an
easy birth…
GEORGE: Oh, Martha; no. You labored… how you labored.
MARTHA: It was an easy birth… once it has been… accepted, relaxed into.
GEORGE: Ah… yes better.
MARTHA: It was an easy birth… once it has been accepted, and I was young
[…] and he was a healthy child, a red, bawling child, with slippery firm limbs…
GEORGE: …Martha thinks she saw him at delivery…
MARTHA: with slippery, firm limbs… and a full head of black, fine, fine hair
which, oh, later, later became blond as the sun, our son. (89)
67 The recitation of the hallucinatory birth distinctly emphasizes the nuclear family they so
desperately longed for. Martha exclaims, “I had wanted a child… oh, I had wanted a
child […] A child! (Quieter) A child. And I had my child […] Our child. And we raised
him… (Laughs, briefly, bitterly) yes, we did; we raised him…” (89). In their inability to
have a child of their own, this perfect moment works to dispel their loneliness and fear of
failure, while also creating some semblance of happiness in which the two, for the sake of
their child, worked together to raise him, love him, and offer him support. It is easy to be
caught up in the story they share, believing the moments they speak of as if they had been
real. However, the opposite is true and as George marches Martha towards the fateful
demise of their hallucination, the beauty of their shared moments become broken as each
begins to use their linguistic construction to tear down the other. Despite the few
moments of peace George and Martha share as they recount the birth of their son, they
quickly fall back into their verbally abusive ways, demonstrating how closely linked the
hallucinatory figure is to their failures.
As Martha desperately tries to cling to her claim over their “beautiful, beautiful
boy,” George begins the exorcism by performing the rites of the dead (90). Over his
prayers Martha continues to throw insult after insult at George in an attempt to regain
control over the situation, but her efforts are in vain. Finally George announces, “Our son
is dead” (95). This announcement sends Martha into a fit, furiously declaring, “YOU…
CAN’T… DO… THAT!” (95). But the truth is, George can.
GEORGE: YOU KNOW THE RULES, MARTHA! FOR CHRIST’S SAKE,
YOU KNOW THE RULES!!
MARTHA: NO!
68 GEORGE: I can kill him, Martha, if I want to.
MARTHA: HE IS OUR CHILD!
GEORGE: AND I HAVE KILLED HIM! […]
MARTHA: (Great sadness and loss.) You have no right… you have no right at
all…
GEORGE: (Tenderly.) I have the right, Martha. We never spoke of it; that’s all. I
could kill him any time I wanted to.
MARTHA: But why? Why?
GEORGE: You broke our rule, baby. You mentioned him… you mentioned him
to someone else.
MARTHA: (Tearfully.) I did not. I never did.
GEORGE: Yes, you did.
MARTHA: Who? WHO?!
HONEY: (Crying) To me. You mentioned him to me.
MARTHA: (Crying) I FORGET! Sometimes… sometimes when it’s night, when
it’s late, and … and everybody else is… talking… I forget and I …want to
mention him… but I… HOLD ON… I hold on… but I’ve wanted to… so often…
oh, George, you’ve pushed it… there was no need… there was no need for this. I
mentioned him… all right… but you didn’t have to push it over the EDGE. You
didn’t have to… kill him. (96-97).
It is in these moments, that Nick utters what is finally dawning on all of us; “You
couldn’t have…any?” to which George and Martha both reply, “We couldn’t” (97). This
first moment of communal agreement brings an acknowledgement that life must now
69 proceed free of hallucinations. It also provides the audience with a moment of revelation
that points simply to the unadorned truth — George and Martha never had a child and the
evening that unfolded before us, full of hateful words based upon a son that didn’t exist,
was nothing more than a lie of their minds, a construction of their loneliness and grief.
George and Martha, together, created a child that would bring some comfort to
their lives. However, as Martha has lost her ability to distinguish reality from her haunted
mind, George does the only thing he can to keep them from imploding. As the beginning
of a new day dawns, George and Martha are reduced to simple exchanges that are void of
the complex and manipulative words that flowed so freely the night before. When Martha
admits to George that she is afraid of Virginia Woolf, we are aware that “the end is not
necessarily a ‘return to sanity’ or ‘happiness’ but [the beginning of a] complex process of
confronting their essential selves honestly,” free from hallucinations (Roudane 60).
“Killing the child who has both kept them together as well as representing all that keeps
them apart is a symbolic sacrifice in order to gain a marriage based on truth and devoid of
illusion” (Hays 441). In killing the son, Martha and George earn a chance to repair the
relationship that has been controlled by the hallucinatory embodiment of their
disintegrated American Dream.
Next to Normal, with music by Tom Kitt and book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey,
appeared on Broadway in 2009 with a noteworthy beginning. Diana, sat on the stage,
waiting for her son to come home, reading a copy of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(Ross 388). It is not an accident that Diana’s first appearance onstage is marked by the
presence of Albee’s script — the two plays share more than a dysfunctional marriage —
Diana, too, has constructed a hallucinatory son.
70 Next to Normal deals with a family as they try to survive their day-to-day lives,
while also attempting to avoid the reality of their situation (Getlin 23). Diana, who is
diagnosed as bi-polar depressive, lives with her supportive husband Dan and their
planned daughter Natalie. Yet all three are haunted by Diana’s hallucinatory figure,
Gabe. As a physically constructed hallucinatory figure, Gabe appears on the stage,
though he passed away when he was just eight months old. Diana had always believed
that she would be too busy to have a child, but the unplanned pregnancy propels her and
Dan to marry, beginning their path towards the creation of a nuclear family. When the
baby arrived, Diana acknowledges that, “it all seemed to make sense” (Yorkey 39).
However, when Gabe dies, Diana is thrown into a depression that takes a lasting hold on
her psyche. Her grief is pushed aside by doctors who declare her depression is now
pathological. Rather than allowing her to deal with the issue directly, they turn to
medicine in an attempt control her hallucinatory episodes (84). Her inability to fully
grieve the loss of her son allows him to manifest as a projection of her haunted mind, his
presence filling the hole his death caused in her life. When Diana lost her child, she also
lost part of herself (Sacks 231).
As the lights come up, we find Diana waiting for her son to come home:
GABE: What are you doing up? It’s three-thirty.
DIANA: It’s the seventh night this week I’ve sat till morning…
GABE: Great. Here we go.
DIANA: Imagining the ways you might have died.
GABE: Ah, yes, and tonight’s winner is?
DIANA: In a freak September ice storm with no warning…
71 GABE: Because that happens.
DIANA: There’s a gang war, there’s a bird flu, trains collide.
GABE: What’d we say about watching the news?
DIANA: Now you act all sweet and surly but you swore you’d come home
early and you lied.
GABE: You gotta let go, Mom — I’m almost eighteen. (Yorkey 1)
This seemingly normal interaction between a concerned mother and her flippant son is
marred by one simple fact, Gabe died when he was eight months old from an intestinal
obstruction that went undiagnosed (86). As we watch the family, father, mother, sister,
and brother, prepare for their day, nothing seems to be out of place; their interactions are
as easy and as effortless as a dance that has been performed over and over again for
years. However, something is amiss. Diana is the only who sees or interacts with Gabe,
but the audience is unaware of his displacement or even his lack of interaction with the
others on stage until a stingingly heartbreaking moment of revelation. After, what appears
to be a calm family dinner that includes the family’s first interaction with Henry,
Natalie’s new boyfriend, Diana enters with a birthday cake about a quarter of the way
through the musical, Gabe disappears:
DIANA: Okay… It’s someone’s birthday!
HENRY: Whose birthday is it?
NATALIE: (small pause) My brother’s.
HENRY: I didn’t know you had a brother.
NATALIE: I don’t. He died before I was born. (24-25)
72 It isn’t until Natalie reveals to her boyfriend Henry that Gabe has already passed away
that we realize he was nothing more than a hallucination, and that all of the events which
have unfolded up to this point are a direct reflection of Diana’s haunted mind.
Like George and Martha, Diana and Dan’s life has become a blur between truth
and illusion. Unlike the couple in Virginia Woolf, Diana is professionally medicated and
has been for sixteen years (12). When her grief goes beyond the suggested amount of
time, she is diagnosed with bi-polar depression and given more medication. As Diana
begins to understand that nothing will free her from her hallucinatory figure outside of
actually being able to grieve, she questions, “My first psychiatrist told me that according
to the manual, grief that continues past four months is pathological and should be
medicated. Four months. For the life of my child. Who makes these decisions?” (84).
As a physically constructed hallucinatory figure, Gabe is not subject to the whims
of change like the hallucinatory son in Virginia Woolf. Instead, his physical presence acts
as a shadow that haunts the family, causing separation and unease in Dan and Diana’s
marriage, consequently forcing Natalie to fight for the attention of her distracted and
emotionally distant parents. For Diana, her hallucinatory son is as real as her husband and
daughter. The presence of her perfect, blue-eyed son allows her to keep her “perfect,
loving family” intact (7). Additionally, because Gabe is a physical manifestation, his
construction is not left to the creation of his parents to be changed as they see fit, instead,
he is a visual representation, "an idealized version of a handsome young man” that
resembles the husband Diana once loved so dearly (Ross 382). This hallucinatory figure,
much like Ben in Death of a Salesman and Robert in Proof, is a physical representation
of Diana’s loneliness and grief.
73 Dan, who appears to be the ideal husband, attempts to hold onto their perfect
nuclear family by keeping the pieces together. He willingly accepts the responsibility of
his role as the patriarch and even takes over parts of Diana’s role so that the family’s
balance may stay intact. In contrast to George, Dan fits into the traditional role of
provider and breadwinner, giving Diana and Natalie a house that at one point felt like a
home, but has since disintegrated (Yorkey 51). Dan, in addition to providing for the
family, has been given the role of caretaker, bending and adjusting his life to Diana’s
needs in order to keep their family together despite their apparent dysfunctions.
Diana and Dan depend on each other, but for very different reasons. While Diana
has become dependent on Dan because of her mental illness, Dan, who has never been
alone, can’t imagine a life that is separate from marriage (“I’ve never been alone… I
could never be alone.”) (28, 48). Despite his constant pleas for Diana to acknowledge that
pain and grief are not hers alone, Dan desperately needs to also acknowledge the
destruction that is taking place within his own family. Although Dan pushes for Diana to
release the past, he himself has been unable to do so, plunging head first into caring for
his wife and avoiding his own grief.
As Dan continues to ignore the anguish that is suffocating his family, hoping that
a new form of treatment will finally allow Diana to come back to him, something darker
begins to take hold of Diana’s mind. Prompted by her doctor to initiate the process of
releasing Gabe, she decides to go through a box of his old things, where she happens
upon a music box. As the music begins to play, she is confronted by her hallucinatory
figure. Longing for a moment that they were never able to share in real life, Diana
hallucinates a moment where the two dance (44). Understanding that the process of
74 sorting through his old things was a way to open the door to letting go she sings, “I’ll
wake alone tomorrow/ The dream of our dances through/ But now until forever love/ I’ll
live to dance with you/ I’ll dream my love…/ I’ll live my love…/ And I’ll die to dance
with…” (45). As we begin to realize that Diana is not ready to fully let go, Gabe
announces, “There’s a world/ There’s a world I know/ A place we can go/ Where the pain
will go away […] There’s a world where we can be free — come with me” (45). As a
projection of Diana’s haunted mind, Gabe pulls Diana towards his world and as she
disappears from the stage, her doctor announces, “Goodman, Diana. Discovered
unconscious at home. Multiple razor wounds to wrists and forearms. Self-inflicted” (46).
Her suicide attempt prompts her doctor to suggest that the only thing left that may cure
Diana of her hallucinatory figure is electric convulsive therapy. Initially unwilling to
submit to the doctor’s suggestion, Diana attempts to leave. However, Dan stops her
saying, “Take this chance/ cause it may be our last to be free/ To let go of the past and to
try/ to be husband and wife/ to let love never die--/ or to just live our life […] I can’t get
through this alone” (51).
While watching his family disintegrate, and even though Diana is able to
acknowledge her broken heart, Dan must also accept the death of his original nuclear
family and face the despair that the hallucinatory son represents (82). He is no longer able
to avoid the hallucinatory son’s role in the disintegration of their dream by helping Diana
avoid the grief that she now knows she must face in order to heal. Until Dan fully
acknowledges his son’s hallucinatory existence, he will be unable to move on from the
death of their nuclear family and his own heartbreak. This simple acknowledgement
comes in the only utterance of the hallucinatory son’s name in the musical: “Gabe.
75 Gabriel” (92). For all of the years that Dan has attempted to avoid his grief, he must now
come face to face with it. The presence of a physically constructed hallucinatory figure,
allows the audience to see the shift Gabe makes from Diana to Dan. As Gabe does not
leave with Diana but instead lingers and confronts the father, Dan has no choice but to
face his own haunted mind and begin the process of grieving.
Although, Natalie is a part of the family, born to replace the first child her parents
lost, she lives an invisible life within the walls of their nuclear family. Her best efforts to
be acknowledged are constantly thwarted by the perfect son, the only child to be a part of
Diana’s world, at least to this point. Natalie is only a replacement child, a fact
acknowledged by Diana when she states, “We had Natalie to… and I know she knows”
(41). It is no small accomplishment for Natalie, being the child that actually exists, to
gain the attention of two distracted parents. She works to perfect her piano skills so that
she can get into Yale and leave the dysfunctional family that cannot acknowledge or
validate her life (9). Despite Natalie’s accomplishments, Gabe continues to eclipse her in
Diana’s mind with his all-American activities, “jazz band before school, class, Key Club,
then football” (5). When Natalie, fearing that she will never escape her hallucinatory
brother, plunges into destructive behavior to help drown out the pain of being a
substitute, we see a child on the verge of submitting to her fears of becoming her mother
(37, 88).
Crippled by a fear of losing her newborn daughter, Diana immediately distanced
herself from Natalie: “I couldn’t hold her, in the hospital. I couldn’t let myself hold her”
(41). Diana acknowledges her limitations in regards to Natalie when she explains,
“You’re our little pride and joy, our perfect plan. You know I love you… I love you as
76 much as I can” (31). Natalie is invisible to Diana, buried beneath the hallucination and
unable to fulfill her role as a part of their nuclear family. It is interesting to note that the
only child Diana sees is the child that no longer exists. This inability to connect with her
living child points to the depth of her haunted mind and speaks to the misery that has kept
her distant from Natalie. Natalie laments in her song “Superboy and the Invisible Girl”
that she is “everything a kid oughta be” yet despite her attempts to be the perfect
daughter, the Superboy “immortal, forever alive” remains in the forefront of Diana’s
subconscious (30). Unwilling to take it any longer, Natalie goes to her mother’s medicine
cabinet, and in the presence of Gabe, her hallucinatory shadow, she begins taking the
pills her mother has been prescribed. “Gabe finds Natalie in the bathroom. He opens the
medicine cabinet for her. She looks inside and pulls out a pill bottle. NATALIE:
Risperdal? […] Valium? Xanax? […] (Shrugs) What the hell. (She pours out a couple
pills and pops them)” (36-37). This moment is a clear visual indication of the power Gabe
holds over the entire family, demonstrating that the hallucinatory figure is not just a
representation of Diana’s grief, but also Dan and Natalie’s. After Natalie decides to begin
taking pills to cope with her issues, she sends herself down the same path her mother is
already on. Natalie realizes that as long as Gabe exists, she never will. She begins to
throw away everything that has made her the perfect child, as that has yielded nothing,
and instead chooses to spend her nights clubbing, hopped up on Adderall, Xanax, Valium
and Robitussin to avoid the pain that is beginning to take ahold of her life (53).
Natalie’s fear of being completely overshadowed by her mother’s hallucinatory
figure is only intensified when Diana’s memory is almost completely destroyed by ECT.
No longer able to remember much from the last nineteen years, Diana completely forgets
77 Natalie and her son (57, 59). While it may seem as though the loss of her memory will
allow her to continue on with her life devoid of the hallucinatory figure, the already
fragile Natalie is destroyed, causing her to push away the only thing that has brought her
happiness — her boyfriend Henry. It isn’t until the effects of the ECT begin to fade and
Gabe returns that Diana is able to see what needs to be done to save her family from
destruction.
When Diana chooses to step away from the doctors and medication that have
controlled her life, she begs Natalie to believe that “things will get better […] We’ll live
with what’s real/ Let go of what’s past/ And maybe I’ll see you at last.” But after a
lifetime of playing second fiddle to a brother she never knew, Natalie doesn’t believe her
(86). It is not until Diana, for the first time, speaks to Natalie about what happened to
Gabe that Natalie can move away from the shattered mess of their family and accept the
absence of normality in their nuclear family, embracing that “something next to normal
would be okay” (87).
The son in Virginia Woolf is constructed from George and Martha’s failed dream
of having a family. As such, this figure functions to create some semblance of stability in
their marriage. Gabe provides just the opposite. He causes complete imbalance in Dan
and Diana’s marriage, even creating a barrier between them and subsequently one
between Diana and Natalie. Additionally, while the release of the hallucinations are
freeing for George and Martha who are able to proceed with their life sans illusions, Dan,
Diana, and Natalie’s acknowledgement of their grief and subsequent release of Gabe is
the catalyst for the dissolution of their dysfunctional nuclear family. Once the son is
released in Virginia Woolf, George and Martha can begin to honestly communicate with
78 each other, equally acknowledging their shortcomings and roles — they can accept the
breakdown of their American Dream without hiding behind the protection of their
hallucinations. Equally, the act of acknowledging the grief in Next to Normal allows
Diana to free herself from the constraints of her broken family, and allows Dan to grieve
and deal with the breakdown of his marriage. Acknowledging that she must let herself
fall before she can start the process of putting herself back together, Diana tells Dan:
With you always beside me to catch me when I fall, I’d never get to know the feel
of solid ground at all. With you always believing that we could still come through,
it makes me feel the fool to know that it’s not true […] I’ll take a chance on
leaving. It’s that, or stay and die. […] (She addresses both Dan and Gabe) I loved
you once, and though. I love you still, I know it’s time for me to go… (90).
The acknowledgement of their broken nuclear family not only allows Diana and Dan to
be freed from the physical manifestation of their grief, it also allows Natalie to get out
from under the brother she never knew finally giving her permission to focus on her own
happiness (Ross 394).
The existence of the hallucinatory son reflects the hallucinatory quality of
American life. Once this figure is released, the two families must continue a life free
from the hallucinations that have sought to destroy them. This suggests that what causes
the most damage in our lives is not the hallucinations that we hold but our unwavering
belief in myths like the American Dream. Watching the leading characters in Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Next to Normal strive to have the perfect family, audience
members begin to understand that it is an illusory construct. Whether the hallucinatory
son is shared and crafted linguistically or transferred from one grieving parent to another,
79 his presence is nothing more than proof that a life lived by means of hallucinations is no
life at all.
80 CHAPTER V: THE HAUNTED MIND In these six award-winning plays, the hallucinatory figure is a gateway into the
psyche of the individual, a device that exposes the haunted mind and gives life to the
inner workings of the character’s troubled subconscious. From Mary Chase’s Harvey to
Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s musical Next to Normal, the hallucinatory figure reveals
the desires and fallacies that accompany American life. Whether the characters dream of
passing on their hopes for success to their children, of receiving social acceptance or of
obtaining the nuclear family, the presence of the hallucinatory figure marks a decided
break from reality and exposes the hallucinatory quality of the American Dream.
Playwrights are faced with many choices during the process of creation.
Obviously, determining the number and nature of the characters in the play is an
important one. The inclusion of a hallucinatory figure, whether linguistically or
physically constructed, is significant. As I have shown, it clearly marks an opportunity
for audience members to gain a deeper understanding of the hallucinating character’s
innermost desires, fears, and failures. Physically constructed hallucinatory figures give
the audience a visual of the character’s haunted mind, providing a glimpse into his/her
subconscious as it is breaking down. A physically constructed hallucinatory figure also
blurs the lines between past and present, allowing the individual the character most longs
for to reappear, dispelling loneliness. Linguistically constructed hallucinatory figures
allow for the figure to take on many different forms, from the figure of Death dressed as a
member of the KKK to a child that changes and morphs at his parent’s whims. By using a
81 linguistically constructed hallucinatory figure, the playwright is given the opportunity to
create a figure that takes on many different shapes and meanings without ever
compromising the realism of the production. However a playwright chooses to construct
a hallucinatory figure, it is difficult to ignore the power it carries and the way in which it
exposes the complexities of life.
When the term “American Dream” was coined in 1931 in the midst of the Great
Depression, it gave hope for a better life (Samuel 13). The American Dream, more so
than any other ideal, has become the standard by which we live our lives, explaining why
we whole-heartedly believe that the only way to live our lives to the fullest is by
achieving the elusive promises of success, happiness, family and acceptance (14). Within
the defined construct of the American Dream lives the ability to be successful, the
acceptance of society, and the love of a perfect family. The father-son relationship has
generally received precedence as the most important relationship in the family, whereby
the ideals of one generation can be passed down to the next and the hope for success can
be felt through the son’s achievements. The desire to fit into society and be accepted by
our peers drives many of us to embrace a life within the constructed norm in order to
avoid being ostracized and marginalized by communities that would seek to stigmatize
our differences. And for many, the dream of achieving the nuclear family is the bedrock
of our very existence, giving meaning and substance to our lives. As American life works
in pursuit of obtaining the promises that are deeply embedded in the American Dream,
we begin to understand that living within these constraints makes life all the more
difficult.
82 At the center of each of these plays is a family falling apart. This fact invites us to
wonder why the family and the hallucinatory figure are so intricately linked. Of course
the family drama has been a part of American theatre for years, for, “what is more real,
more tragic, and more heroic to an American audience than an American family?” But
what the hallucinatory figure represents in relation to the family is all the more real and
tragic (“It’s All Relative”). As each of these families strive to fit into the ideal American
life, or have their lives perceived by the existing society as fitting in, the hallucinatory
figure reveals the futility of such attempts and the fallacy of their dream.
For these six plays, the hallucinatory figure works to unmask a haunted mind,
providing the audience an image (either seen or imagined) of the characters’ private
thoughts. For Willy in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Troy in August Wilson’s
Fences, the hallucinatory figure exposes a father’s misguided perceptions of success.
These figures are tangled so deeply with the past that the characters are unable to let go
of them nor can the characters see the damage it is doing to their families. For Elwood
and his family in Mary Chase’s Harvey and Catherine in David Auburn’s Proof, the
hallucinatory figure reveals the fallacy of social acceptance and the accomplishments that
can be made outside of society’s judgmental gaze. And for Martha and George in Edward
Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Diana in Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s
musical Next to Normal, the existence of a hallucinatory son brings to light the
devastating realities that accompanies our unbridled desire to have a nuclear family.
The connecting factor between all of these extraordinary works is a character’s
grief or loneliness expressed through the presence of the hallucinatory figure. As the
haunted mind produces “hallucinations engendered by loss and grief [such as] losing a
83 parent… or a child,” it is important to remember that these losses create “a sudden hole in
one’s life, a hole which—somehow—must be filled” (Sacks 231). These intense and
often overwhelming feelings are calmed only by the presence of the hallucinatory figure,
which works to fill the void created by the character’s losses. Willy’s hallucinatory figure
is a product of his overwhelming guilt stemming from an affair that ultimately cost him
the love of his son, Biff. It is the loss of his prized relationship with Biff that causes Willy
to turn to Ben in his moment of need, as he firmly believes that he no longer has any one
to talk to. Troy’s hallucinatory figure demonstrates his inability to hold onto the one thing
that gives him the strength and courage he needs to walk out into the world everyday. By
losing his wife and his son, Troy is no longer safe nor is he is strong enough to fight
Death. The appearance of Harvey speaks to the loneliness Elwood felt after his mother
passed. Acting as a shield between Elwood and his grief, Harvey allows him to continue
to live a pleasant life free from the constraints of society and fills a void that would have
otherwise left Elwood as jaded and unkind as everyone else. Catherine’s hallucinatory
figure reveals her deep-seated fear of becoming like her father, while exposing the loss
she feels after his death. When she can no longer avoid her anxiety of becoming her
father by taking care of him, she is forced to abandon the fear that has stopped her from
revealing her extraordinary mathematical talents. While George and Martha’s
hallucinatory son exposes their unbridled desire to have a child, he also speaks to the
despair that is directly related to their inability to conceive. Since they could not have a
child of their own, the hallucinatory figure fills the hole left by a child’s absence. For
Diana, the constant presence of her hallucinatory son Gabe provides a visual of her and
her husband’s unexplored grief while simultaneously filling the hole left in their lives by
84 his death. In each play, a character works to deal with the intense emotions surrounding
some kind of loss. These strong emotions are given embodiment through his or her
hallucinations. The character must ultimately confront the loss or grief and work through
the emotions connected to it in order to dispel the hallucinatory figure and move on with
life.
Through the course of the play, the issues that have given rise to the hallucinatory
figure are faced and the figure is finally dispelled. In both Death of a Salesman and
Fences the hallucinatory figure is only expelled once the son forgives the father for his
failure. While both fathers are incapable of seeing the fallacy in their beliefs, it is the
son’s journey, not the father’s that dispels the hallucinatory figure. Once the son accepts
the fallacy behind the father’s misguided perceptions, he is free to pursue his own beliefs
and ideas of success unhindered by the haunted mind that suppressed them. Catherine is
freed from her hallucinatory figure when she faces her fears and learns to accept the part
of her father that lives on in her. It is through the process of acceptance and
understanding that Catherine is allowed to move forward and achieve incredible feats in
the world of mathematics. As George destroys the hallucination that has haunted their
lives, he and Martha must learn to move forward and face a childless life together. By
releasing the thing that has kept them apart for so long, they are finally able to turn to
each other for the support and love they once sought from their hallucinatory son. And
the figure that has haunted Diana is finally expelled once she acknowledges the
heartbreak that has plagued her life for the last sixteen years. By learning and accepting
that life cannot continue as it has in the past, Diana releases herself and her family from
the haunted mind that has controlled them. However, for Elwood, Harvey is not expelled
85 so much as society’s expectations are. The expulsion of society’s constraints allows
Elwood, and more importantly Vita, to embrace a life that is full and uninhibited by
judgment. It is through the action of the play and fulfillment or acknowledgement of their
grief or loss that these characters are finally able to release the pressures that have
impeded their lives and embrace a life that is free from hallucinations.
Loss is something that all humans experience, and as art emulates life, it only
seems fitting that the theatrical world would work to define this loss in some tangible and
real way. Used as a means of signifying loss, the hallucinatory figure works to fill the
hole left in the characters’ lives and provides the audience with a look into their haunted
psyches. When we look back on plays that have featured the hallucinatory figure such as
Leopold Davis Lewis’s The Bells, Georg Kaiser’s Morn to Midnight and Maurice
Maeterlinck’s The Intruder, we find that the figure is almost always representative of a
loss of some kind that is experienced by the characters. Even for Shakespeare the figure
marks a loss, whether it is life or sanity or something else. It is time to pay attention to
the abundance of hallucinatory figures in theatrical works. As we have seen, when
encountering a hallucinatory figure, readers and audience members should ask, “Where is
the loss in the hallucinating character’s life and how does the hallucinatory figure work to
fill the hole created by that loss?”
Immigrants flocked to America in the hope that they could some day achieve the
promise of the American Dream. Their desire to achieve success, to be accepted by
society, and to obtain the perfect nuclear family still firmly sits in the heart of the
American psyche. Given that all of these plays won (or essentially won) the Pulitzer
Prize, there is no question as to their resonance with American audiences. As the Pulitzer
86 is awarded to plays that deal directly with American life, it is easy to see why these plays
have endured the test of time (Pulitzer.org). As we have learned through these varying
representations of American life, there will always be struggles and challenges to face if
we try to live within the construct of myths such as the American Dream. As long as we
believe in the hallucinatory qualities of the American Dream, we will live in a world
where the hallucinatory figure is inevitable.
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