Disintegration of Moral Values in American Society in Albee's The American Dream

Abstract

Moral values are the codes of conduct and the traditional socio-cultural standards, which aim at establishing social order and achieving the ideal of the society. Moral values disintegrate when people feel disenchanted with social codes and start violating them. The disintegration of moral values always results in cultural chaos, anarchy and upheavals. Edward Albee, in the American Dream, shows that moral values are disintegrated in the modern American society because they no longer guarantee wish fulfillment and happiness. Moral values create a system of principles and judgments based on familial codes of conduct in general. But in The American Dream, moral values seem too futile as well as the characters have absurd familial relation. The drama shows the carelessness, cruelty, emasculation, romantic illusions, and also professional failure.