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Sebagai bahan penulisan skripsi ini saya memilih drama yang termasuk
dalam aliran Theatre of the Absurd karena selain isinya menarik, saya mendapati
bahwa alasan penulis drama membuat karya mereka pun menarik dan dibutuhkan
Saya memilih drama karya Eugene Ionesco dan Edward Albee karena
Ionesco terkenal dengan sebutan bapak dari Theatre of the Absurd sedangkan
menuju ke sebuah penyelesaian yang tidak lazim untuk drama yang beraliran
Theatre of the Absurd; dan keduanya adalah penulis yang sangat terkenal dengan
keahlian mereka dalam menulis drama dengan cara-cara yang berbeda dari penulis
Saya membagi skripsi ini dalam dua bagian. Bagian pertama adalah
pembahasan mengenai wanita dominan dalam karya Ionesco Amedee, serta alasan
karya Albee The American Dream, serta alasan Albee membuat karyanya adalah
Amerika.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE …………………………………………………………………… i
BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………..... 27
APPENDICES:
Synopsis of Amedee …………………………………………………… 29
Synopsis of The American Dream …………………………………….. 30
Biography of Eugene Ionesco …………………………………………. 31
Biography of Edward Albee …………………………………………… 32
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APPENDICES
Synopsis of Amedee
Amedee is walking around his living room and once in a while he would
sit in his chair and tries to write as he is a playwright; but no words can come out
and he seems to always have something that distracts him from writing his play.
His wife, Madeleine, has to work to support both of them. Not only does she have
to work but she also has a habit of cleaning their house. They have been living in
this house for fifteen years and they have not left since then. They use basket tied
to a rope to buy provision from the market below their home. They are afraid to
go out because they fear that people will find out that they actually have a corpse
The corpse is getting so big that its feet take almost all of their living room.
Amedee and Madeleine decide that they need to get rid of the corpse. They wait
for midnight so that people might not see them with the corpse. At midnight
Amedee manages to get the corpse out of their house with much effort. Madeleine
does not help a bit only telling Amedee what he should do. Two policemen run
after Amedee. Just before Amedee is caught, the body wrapped around Amedee
opens out like a parachute then Amedee is flying out of reach of the policemen
Mommy and Daddy are sitting in their living room complaining that the
guest they expected are late. Not only that, they are complaining about how these
days people can get away with things. Mommy tells Daddy a story that she has
bought a hat. She was happy with her new hat until she met a chairman of her
woman’s club that said her new hat is wheat color not beige. So Mommy returns
to the store and demands they change her hat to beige color just like she asked.
Grandma enters the living room with neatly wrapped boxes. She drops them at
Daddy’s feet and mourns about how everyone treats the old. Mommy and
Grandma were poor then but after having married Daddy, she is rich. The door
bell rings, and Daddy have to be encouraged several times by Mommy before he
opens the door. It is Mrs. Barker the chairman of the woman club that said
Mommy’s new hat is wheat color. She is invited to sit and they had a conversation.
After being silenced for a while, Grandma finally said a word. Mommy threatens
to have Grandma taken away. Mommy calls her a liar and commands Daddy to
break her television. Mommy left to get Mrs. Barker water. Grandma and Mrs.
Barker had a conversation. The doorbell rings and the young man enters.
American way. The young man said that he will do anything for money.
Grandma asks the young man to take all her boxes outside. Daddy and Mommy
enter again and Mommy asks where Grandma is. The young man appears again
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Biography of Eugene Ionesco
Eugene Ionesco was born in Slatina, Romania, in the year 1909. His father
was a Romanian and his mother was French. The family moved to Paris in 1911
where his father studied law. Because of complex circumstances, his father
secretly divorced his mother and remarried and was appointed general inspector in
Bucharest police. His father was always on the side of the authority in power. His
father took the custody of the children and Eugene with his sister had to live with
his father and stepmother. Eugene was unhappy because he was more attached to
his mother than to his father. He studied French at the University of Bucharest and
After World War II, he returned to Paris and lived in poverty. He taught
himself English and found the essential nonsense of the phrases and expressions
found in textbooks to his amusement which lead him to write his first play The
Bald Soprano (1950). Ionesco had always been associated with the term antiplay.
He avoided realistic imitation and used symbol and language instead to penetrate
His other works are The Lesson (1952), Victimes (1953), Amedee (1954),
Rhinoceros (1959), Exit the King (1962), Killing Game (1970), and Macbett
(1972). In the last twenty year of his life, Ionesco concentrated on paintings and
lithography and wrote several prose works. He died in Paris on March 28, 1994.
<www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/drama/ionesco.htm>
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Biography of Edward Albee
Edward F. Albee was born in Washington D.C on March 12, 1928. He was
adopted at the age of two weeks by Reed and Frances Albee. He was named after
Reed’s father. This family was very wealthy. His parents were a unique couple.
Reed was a small, quiet and unassertive man, whereas, Frances was a loud,
his stepmother. His school records were not a good one. He was sent to boarding
school and was dismissed because of cutting class, ignoring his academic works,
not playing in sports and having a bad behavior. He was transferred to several
In 1948, Albee left his family for New York City. In 1958 at the age of
thirty, Albee quitted his job with Western Union and wrote The Zoo Story. The
play was rejected by several New York producers. After being posted from friends
to friends the play was finally accepted for production and premiere at the Schiller
Theater Werkstatt in Berlin on September 28, 1959. From then Albee won the
recognition as a formidable talent. In 1960 the play won the Vernon Rice
Memorial Award.
His major work Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ran for 664 performances
and made into a popular film. Albee received three Pulitzers, for A Delicate
<http://www.fundus.org/pdf. asp?ID=59>
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Martin Esslin in The Theatre of the Absurd stated that absurd plays have
no story or plot to speak of, often have neither a beginning nor an end, seems
authors Eugene Ionesco and Edward Albee, and their works, Amedee and The
Eugene Ionesco is a playwright from Eastern Europe who has been called
the father of the theater of the Absurd and he often uses exaggeration as his
the literary world is that his works can be categorized into Theater of the Absurd
but unlike Theater of the Absurd circularity (there is no beginning or the end) or
There are three reasons why I choose these plays. Firstly, because I am
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audiences which are different from other playwrights in their days. Secondly, both
women in the plays are major characters and on top of the men. And thirdly, I am
also interested how the two playwrights portray the dominant woman in different
ways.
I am going to discuss the role of women who are more dominant than their
husbands in both plays. Relating to the American society in 1960s and European
society in 1950s the time both plays are published, society always sees that men
should have a more dominant role than the women; men should make the
decision, men should tell women what to do and demand that the women do what
itself. Not only do I want to discuss about this reverse role, but I also want to
discuss how both playwrights differ in portraying the women domination, and to
information. To know about Ionesco’s purpose, I will use info about the reality of
life when the play, Amedee, was published, and Ionesco’s literary records. For
revealing Albee’s purpose, I will use his biographical data and historical data
the thesis.
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1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
1. To show how the playwrights portray the dominant women in both plays
In writing this thesis, I used library research. First, I read two primary
texts, Edward Albee’s The American Dream and Eugene Ionesco’s Amedee. Then
I search the internet for additional information about the two primary texts. From
the additional information, I make analysis for the two primary texts and draw
conclusion.
I divide this thesis into four chapters. First chapter is Introduction which
Study, Method of Research, and the Organization of the Thesis. Second chapter is
CONCLUSION
categorized into Theatre of the Absurd. Both plays have similarities and
Their similarities are both Ionesco’s Amedee and Albee’s The American
Dream have women characters that are major characters and they both are married
and are more dominant than their husbands. The husbands in both plays are the
Their differences are Madeleine is working to earn a living for her family
whereas Mommy is a housewife; and how the wives in both plays dominate their
shown through how she commands Amedee, her bossy attitude, her blame-fixing,
she keeps on commanding Amedee until she gets what she wants, and she is
always trying to find Amedee’s fault; and she keeps on criticizing Amedee;
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whereas in Albee’s The American Dream, Mommy’s domination like a parent to
attention, how she commands Daddy, Daddy’s echoing Mommy and vice versa,
Daddy‘s seeking her approval of his masculinity, her using reverse psychology
more dominant as she can not function in subordinate position and she has the fear
of losing her independence; therefore, she is always on top of Amedee making her
realize that Mommy is emasculating Daddy by making him like a child as parents
Even though both plays portray dominant women, both playwrights have
different purposes. Ionesco’s Amedee like many of his other plays is experimental
or absurd. The dominant woman is one of the elements that make the play absurd
because it is contrary to the reality of life. Ionesco is living in France by the time
he made the play in 1954 and the French society in Ionesco’s days has the view
that women should be dependent on the husband or the husband should take a
dominant role in families. Ionesco’s Amedee is opposed with the reality of life as
women in 1954 are always dominated by men but Ionesco reverse the role of
Making experimental plays has a purpose to attack the bourgeois realism. Ionesco
feels that realism plays is a limitation for playwrights to adopt a critical view.
wants to reflect his life experiences by making his dominant women characters
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based on his stepmother, secondly, he wants to criticize the society that now men
are emasculated and powerless in the society especially in family life, and thirdly
emasculation of men. The dominant women in his plays are the reflection of the
and weak stepfather. Through the negative portrayal of the woman, Albee’s plays
show that he despises his stepmother. Albee puts forward that men in American
society are emasculated and powerless; seen from Albee’s The American Dream
shows that Daddy is the portrayal of men that need women’s acceptance and
reassurance. Albee also suggest that Feminism plays a role in emasculating men.
Extreme feminist view mentions that men can be made just the same as women by
emasculating them.
and Ionesco only made another play that has the same theme about dominant
woman; secondly as his dominant woman is opposed to the real life, my guess is
the French society at Ionesco’s days will consider the play as fiction and can
never happen. On the other hand, Albee’s plays, talk more frequently about
dominant women in household and people can find such dominant women in real
life at the time the play was published in 1960. Therefore I think Albee is more
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Reference:
Balswick, Jack O., and Judith K. Balswick. The Family: A Christian Perspective
on the
Sarason, Irwin G., and Barbara R. Sarason. Abnormal Psychology: The Problem
of
Inc.1984.
Internet:
<www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/drama/ionesco.htm>
Brantley, Ben. Stage View; Albee’s Tigers, Albee’s Women. 19 Apr 2006
<www.query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html>
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<www.britannica.com/eb/article-22523>
<www.mothering.com/discussions/archive/index.php/t-7176.html>
Ionesco.
<www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/contem/roch.1.htm>
www.essays.cc/free_essays/c2/wuj94.shtml
Primary Text:
Ionesco, Eugene. Amedee or How to Get Rid of it. Paris: Theatre de Babylone,
1954.
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