Next Section Metaphors and Similes Previous Section Part 2 Summary and Analysis Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format GradeSaver "The Sandbox Symbols, Allegory and Motifs". Edward Albees play 'The Sandbox' is an example of modern American drama in which he demonstrates cruel relations in a middle class family, criticizing modern societys decay. It signifies to Mommy that Grandma doesn't have much time left. Edward Albees 'The Sandbox' The inability of people to communicate and loss of personal values can lead to dramatic effects. As she tells us, the noise symbolizes Grandma's imminent death. Mommy hears a rumble off-stage after the lights go down. Thus, there is a tension between the fact that he is such a specimen of health and vitality while also explicitly representing the harbinger of Grandma's death. His symbolic significance is left somewhat ambiguous and he seems to represent both death, as well as youth and vitality, as represented by his strapping good looks, physique, and penchant for calisthenics. He seems like an unlikely candidate for a grim reaper, but he plays his part dutifully. The Young Man, as the stage directions and the script tells us, represents the Angel of Death. Her line, "It pays to do things well," suggests that she is concerned with the superficialities of a well-done funeral, rather than the meaningfulness of grief or a real confrontation with death and existence. Mommy and Daddy's response to Grandma's death is somewhat ambivalent, and the emotion beneath Mommy's experience is quickly covered over with a repressed sense of social propriety. The strange dream space to which Mommy and Daddy bring Grandma is somewhere between reality and unreality, a strange beach that is also a sandbox that is also a funeral that is also a gateway to the afterlife. The whole play functions as something of an allegory, representing the psychic world centered around family, loss, grief, and death. His excitable "Hi!" represents his empty-headedness and blankness, the fact that his identity is completely projected onto him-by society, by the characters, and by the audience. He is a vapid character, who does not have thoughts of his own, and instead embraces his physical nature.
Throughout the play, the Young Man barely speaks except to say "Hi!" with the same enthusiastic but vacant smile, every time someone acknowledges his presence. Compre Three Plays by Edward Albee: The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, The American Dream (English Edition) de Albee, Edward na. Depending on how one interprets it, the sandbox can be seen to symbolize either Grandma's mistreatment or the reality of death. It represents the fact that death is a kind of return: to youth, helplessness, etc. It also symbolizes the bridge between life and death on a broader level. It is a juvenile and undignified place for Grandma to die. It is a symbol of the fact that Mommy and Daddy treat her like a child, rather than a wise elder worthy of respect. The sandbox is where Grandma is placed and where she dies in the play.