Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Réka Cristian: Edward Albee's Castings

he is capable of doing more than he shows or wants to show. It may well be that Jerry was attracted to this unrecognized potential in Peter, who, in an unusual manner suggests his misplacement on a Sunday afternoon in New York's Central Park, alone. He is a man in his "early forties, neither fat nor gaunt, neither handsome nor homely". He wears "tweeds, smokes a pipe, carries horn-rimmed glasses" and while he is "moving into middle age, his dress and his manner would ^ I suggest a man younger".' Peter works as an executive in a small publishing house. He has a wife, two daughters, two parakeets and cats, and lives between Lexington and Third Avenue. The place of his home denotes his way of life: Lexington symbolizes the rules of the society ('lex' in Latin meaning 'law') and Peter's conformist nature, while the Third Avenue implies the symbolic number three, which, according to J.E. Cirlot denotes the solution of the conflict posed by dualism. Peter's conflict will be with Jerry and the end of their dualism will be Jerry's sacrifice. Jerry is described as a person that was once handsome but lost his beauty. His body that "begun to go fat" implies the lack of sexual activity that seems to have caused him a "great weariness" and aimless wanderings among people that only misunderstand him. He is in search of a person with which he can communicate in a world of miscommunication. He is "a man in his late thirties, not poorly dressed, but carelessly", with "once a trim and lightly muscled body" that "has begun to go fat". He is no longer handsome, but it is evident "that he once was. His fall from physical grace should not suggest debauchery; he has, to come closest to it, a great weariness.' Jerry lives in the upper West Side between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, on the top floor of a four-storey brown-stone roominghouse in the rear. The symbolism of West in the context of his home implies a place where the sun sets and where symbolic night (as his implied death) begins. Jerry's death represents the impossibility of living in accordance with the values he carries. To make contact he has to "take his life in hands just as Columbus did when he set out for 3

1 Ibid., 158. 3

2 Ibid., 158. 147