"The Zoo Story" is fascinating and startling. Albee creates two distinct yet unknown characters, and their story is extremely compelling. ( )

Horrible. Confusing. Complete waste of time. ( )

The American Dream is so bizarre but then absurdists would say that so is life. We're born, we wait around or play games, and then we die. The language doesn't matter, the point doesn't matter, none of it matters in an absurd world. After having read so many absurdist plays, I just did not particularly like this one-it was a little more tiresome to read than others. The Zoo Story, though, was confusing but I just had to know what Jerry was getting at and what was going to happen-he had me on the edge of my seat. The ending really surprised me-not that it was insane, but the particulars. I thought the plot and the characters made more sense this time around. ( )

"The Zoo Story", Albee's first play, is "a harrowing portrait of a young man alienated from the human race". "The American Dream" is "a startling comedy of middle-class mores and murder". I read these in high school, and remember little of them except that I liked them, although not as much as his best, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" ( )

Amazon.com: The American Dream is a nonsense-farce, with echoes of Ionesco and Becket.
The work that owes most to--or is closest to--the theater of the absurd-particularly to Samuel Beckett. And yet, as the title suggests, the work is far more American-down home, and so is the humor. The main characters are "Mommy," "Daddy" and "Grandma"-and Grandma is a scream. Her brilliant, if irascible, wit contains some brilliant, if not exactly unbiased, observations on the treatment of, expectations from, and inner reality of, the elderly. She comes off as the most intelligent person in the play, and the one we identify with the most-even if her metaphysical capacities for hiding objects, forgetting who her strumpet daughter is, and desiring with spiritual ardor the flesh of the young who may or may not be her own are not necessarily everyone's instantiation of satisfaction's successful pursuit.
n every one of us there exists an ideal, the American dream. While this dream is different for us all, Albee felt that all of us simply expect our American dream to come true. This play examines the anarchy that can result from the realization that life just doesn't work the way we all imagine it can. Albee's goal is to make us all more aware of the way we think, so that we may alter it to be more correct and fulfilled. This play is not for a reader looking for entertainment. The lack of humanity in the play makes it a very abstract piece, obviously aimed at conveying a point rather than a story.