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

recognition of the nature of the human bonds leaves the beach and metaphorically continues following and "finding the sun". While Henden is the sacrificial body that dies in the end, Fergus is the epiphanic body that gives hope to a new telling ('finding') of the play. All characters find pleasure (the sun) in order then to gain pain. 78 Henden will die (has the 'end' inserted in the name) , Gertrude will renew her skin cancer from the sun, Abigail will try to commit suicide, Edmee will temporarily lose Fergus, who disappears, while all the other characters will continue their socially reinforced heterosexual matrix (Cordelia, Daniel and Benjamin). After the sun (and the son) has (have) disappeared, it epiphanically returns and everything starts from a new beginning. Edmee: (A Frightened child) Fergus? Gertrude: He'll come back, my dear, they do. The sun's returning. What glory! What... wonder! (Indeed the sun is returning)

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9 The end of Finding the Sun equals the end of A Delicate Balance (which is uttered by Agnes in the end). Both plays, as other plays of Albee, tend to reach the state of delicate balance by the end. Agnes describes this end as a possible circular beginning, which has been started by the finally revised nursery rhyme of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: "Well, they're safely gone... and we'll all forget... quite soon. Come now, we can begin the day"

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0. Martha and George unveil the enigma of their love and the enigma of the drama through a verbal and textual production. The result is a fictional son, an imaginary, alternative form of love. In The Play About he Baby there are two characters that are bound in the complex process of having /

S The sunwise turn of Henden implies his "walking funeral", his death, after the beach procession of finding the sun is over. "The custom of turning the way of the sun, or deiseil, when performing any important ceremony or luck-bringing rite, is very old, and has its roots in ancient sun-worship. The sun, the source of all earthly life and fertility, seems to go from east to west, and its worshippers did likewise on every ritual occasion... The dead also went to their last rest thus. When walking funerals were more usual than they are now, the coffin was often taken once or three times round the graveyard before the burial, or in some parishes, round the churchyard." In E. and M. A. Radford, (Christina Hole, ed.) Encyclopedia of Superstitions (London: Hutchinson, 1980), 329-330. 7

9 Edward Albee Finding the Sun (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1994), 39. 80 Edward Albee Who's A fraid of Virginia Woolf? (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965). 169