The Sandbox Essay, Research Paper

THE SANDBOX

The sandbox by Edward Albee is a play that conveys an underlying message of elderly care, senility and death. The characters of the play each take on a personal outlook and each with a roll in life. The play is hard to understand. Each person has to pull out his or her own meanings.

Pointing out the dysfunctional family, Edward Albee begins his non-direct approach to the subject of death and burial. The characters Mommy and Daddy are husband and wife they paint a picture of a typical bossy older woman and a submissive husband. Mommy has the chore of caring for her own mother. This is a chore she has had to deal with for several years.

Taking grandma to the beach and placing her in the sandbox is symbolic to having to pick out a cemetery lot and after your loved one passes away, having to sit thru a funeral and watch them bury the casket.

The grandma seems to be old, fragile, senile and difficult to care for. Mr. Albee addresses the problem the world deals with on a daily bases, what to do when our parents get to old to care for themselves. Unfortunately, most put their elderly in nursing homes and just leave them there.

After the Mommy and Daddy place the grandma in the sandbox they just sit and wait for her to die. This symbolizes her death and burial. But we are faced to look down memory lane and see what type of life grandma had. She was married young, raised a family and worked on a farm. Her husband died at an early age. So she was a single mother. Her daughter took her in after she married and the grandma lived with them until she died.

The young man in the story represents the angel of death. The young man lets grandma know her time has come to die. Grandma accepts death peacefully.

In conclusion as we try to decipher Mr. Albee s silly way of presenting this play, we still see the symbolism of the characters and props in the play. All are connected with getting old, death and burial.