John Black
Marshall
Honors English 3 ; period 5
20 April 2015
Virginia Woolf Act Three Study Questions
15.
George, after Honey mentions peeling labels off of bottles, goes into the metaphor of
peeling layers of skin and muscle all the way down to the marrow, which is the innermost part of the bone. This is symbolic of drilling into a person to attack them at their core. The skin, organs, etc. are representative of a person’s story, and one person delves into it to find the deepest darkest secrets they can find and overall humiliate the person. This mirrors the action of the play due to the games they have been playing. First was humiliate the host, where they got at
George. Then they did Get the Guests, which drilled into Nick and Honey’s personal life. In the end, I believe the Marrow is a symbol for the truth, in that they drilled each other through all the lies to get the humiliating truth out.
16.
George and Martha play a game called ‘Bringing up Baby’. This game is telling the story
of their ‘child’, which never existed in the first place. The objective is for George and Martha to tell about the raising of the child, and while doing so to belittle the other parent. George at this point in the play is more man than ever, not backing down against Martha as he had done earlier, overall making him seem more dominant afterwards. Martha on the other hand wants to stop playing games and just end the night. She has lost her presence in the play and is becoming weaker, like is George is a metroid sucking on Martha’s life force, or something. From this game, isense the theme of truth/illusion, as we are seeing a different side of the people than
earlier in the play. Is Martha supposed to be macho, or is George? Who really has power over the other? As the tootsiepop owl once said, the world may never know.
17.
Examples in the whole play that illustrate Albee’s facility with language, ey? well facility
is necessary thing, and the language he uses i suppose is necessary, so theres that. Rhythm’s of speech in this play are very apparent in act 3, when say George and Martha are playing ‘Bringing up Baby’. They go in a melodical verse by verse dialogue, and end with a chorus where they speak at the same time, ending their song, and therefore ‘child’. The song part also fits under the musical structure part of the question, making two birds with one stone right here. When it comes to meaning behind things, We find out that George is Sterile, or at least thats what i’ve concluded. This brings meaning to other parts of the play, such as when George shot ‘blanks’ with the toy shotgun earlier. The sterile face brings meaning to this by implying that it meant
Georges dongerino was nonfunctional. This also relates to how he is a history teacher, of the past, meaning his offspring would be sort of like him, being the past. This is impossible, because as we all know from a previous book we read this year, “You cannot repeat the past,” even
