Archetypical images of a child and a cultural hero in the playwrights of Edward Franklin Albee and Sławomir Mrożek in the light of the generational problem (original) (raw)

The article examines the place of archetypal images of a child and a cultural hero in the ideological and imaginative system of theatre of the absurd of Edward Franklin Albee and Sławomir Mrożek. It is stated that in Albee’s dramas («The Sandpbox», «The American Dream», «Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf», «A Delicate Balance») and Mrożek’s dramas («Tango», «A Happy Event», «Racket-Baby») the archetypal images of a divine and demonic («unruly») child, outlined in Carl Gustav Jung’s psychoanalytic philosophy, enter into ambivalent relations. The thanatological motifs which accompany this archetypal duality testify to the distorted image of the future in the consciousness of twentieth-century human, so that the image of a child in the drama of the absurd becomes a reflection of the general process of dehumanisation in modern society as well as in the family. The archetype of the cultural hero, according to the world mythological tradition, embodies the ideas of individuation and transfor...