Human Dignity and Racism in Edward Albee's The Zoo Story and The Death of Bessie Smith

Abstract

Edward Albee, an American dramatist, is ranked with Eugene O’Neill and other great dramatists of American literature. He has written several plays and adapted writings from other great writers. Apart from dramas he has also written some poems and tried other genres of literature during his earlier years. All of his plays question human existence and he tries to answer this question in his plays implicitly. This paper Human Dignity and Racism in Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story and The Death of Bessie Smith examines the human obligations of Albee. According to Albee, life is meant to be lived. But we are all put in a cage called tradition and society. Albee’s profound interest is in the question of human dignity. Every man is to be respected irrespective of his allegiance. The zoo is a simile for the tightly imprisoned framework of society in which there is no freedom of human response. What is wrong with the racism is want of interest in human dimensions. Thus, the major area analysed here is the need for human concern for the racial problems which prevail everywhere in the globe and to maintain human dignity properly.