Essay on Truth and Illusion

Introduction

Existence is often bi-faceted in a variety of dimensions, and one can choose to either live in the one world or the other. Reality is one of these worlds, or alternatively one can create a more convenient imaginary world for themselves. These two worlds are conflicting and cannot exist at the same time; you either live in reality or your virtual dream. Well, many instances, we love to close our eyes under the breeze and imagine we are having a time of our lives, or we are heading a team of experts with our tables dominated with personalized binders, our hands with the projector remote and our mouths uttering words our minds cannot comprehend. And there is the reality where we are just us.

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Edward Albee serves the precise recipe of truth and illusion in his tragic play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Here is a couple, Martha and George who more often than not drown themselves in alcohol and ensure they have made each other's lives a living hell (Albee, 4). The duo has created yet another pre-existing world with insults, games and an imaginary son to keep them from the vulnerability of the real world. Martha is a vulgar and abusive woman while George is calm. In the real world, Martha would be vulnerable to her words and actions, but in this new world, she talks like nobody cares. Martha doesn't miss on a chance to remind her husband of the lesser man he is and even opts to seduce, make out and sleep with Nick, a 30-year-old biologist, all in the presence of her husband. She masks her actions with a bottle of beer or a couple, and this illusion makes her immune to the repercussions of her actions.

Esther Greenwood is a character presented by Sylvia Plath. Miss Greenwood takes us to this world that expresses her dissatisfaction in the hot summer sun of New York City. She brings us to the world of her failure and boredom where she thinks of the electrocution of the Rosenbergs and her poor judgment for buying the clothes in her closet instead of being in the real world having the time of her life (Plath, 1). Plath takes us to a world where women are given the upper hand in life. The Amazon hotel is a world class women exclusive hotel, a place where parents can feel safe to take their daughters to, without the risk of having some men taking advantage of them. There is the event, for lack of better words, of the ladies day, and they offer the ladies taste privileges. In yet another instance, when Greenwood and her friend Doreen are picked up by Lenny and Frankie, she (Greenwood) assumes an alias of Elly Higginbottom from Chicago (Plath, 8). She does this to avoid being Esther Greenwood from Boston, and thereby avoid being her real self while hanging out with them.

Conclusion

A generational illusion, the vague idea of an illusion graduating from the current generation onto yet another generation, is also evident. Honey, Nick's wife, had experienced the feeling of being pregnant but later on realizes it was only a feeling. When crossing from the alluded world to the reality, she was taking pregnancy control measures, and they were giving her the sense of being pregnant when she wasn't (Albee 270). Martha and George went a step ahead and had a son. They describe this son as if he exists, and they are very protective of him. When George feels it is enough living a lie, he virtually kills the son through a letter, and they are back to the real world.

Works Cited

Albee Edward (1962). Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Broadway poster. Pp. 1-272

Plath Sylvia (1963). The bell jar. Heinemann, New York. Pp. 1- 244