Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf Characterization by Elham

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Characterization) by: Elham Alghamdi Ameera Alghamdi Dina Alzain Samah Aghamdi

Major Characters Goerge Nick Martha Honey

Goerge PROTAGONIST The protagonist of the play is George, a professor of history, who is frustrated with his life. He is important in bringing about change in his and Martha's life. He serves the fatal blow at the illusions that he and Martha have been subsisting on for all their married life.

Goerge ANTAGONIST � George's antagonist is the world of illusion that surrounds him. His childless, long term marriage to Martha, a loud, vicious tongued woman, is shallow. The imaginary child they have created to help them cope stands in the way of his facing reality.

Martha � She is the middle aged daughter of the president of the college and the unhappy and domineering wife of George. She taunts him in public but loves him deeply.

Nick � He is a handsome young man who is about thirty. He is a new biology professor at the college and is quite ambitious.

Honey � A plain young woman in her mid twenties, from rich family. She is Nick's immature wife.

Character’s analysis

George � George's role in the play is at first seen to be passive and complacent. He is pushover compared to his wife Martha, who appears to rule the roost. � George appears effete and ineffectual. He has not lived up to any of the expectations that both Martha and her father had for him. He is a terrible disappointment. � He, like Martha, has had a traumatized past. His story about a school acquaintance killing his mother and father in an accident can be seen as possibly autobiographical. � At one point Martha claims that it was George who killed his parents exactly the same way as the boy in the story did. Her caustic remarks about the book he wrote and her accusation that he is a "murderer" provide more evidence that George's story is indeed his own. If so, his actions and behaviors, as well as his fear of life would all make sense.

� In his marriage with Martha, George has compromised a great deal. He is strong willed but weak at heart. As a safeguard to avoid confrontation he finds solace in books � Though George is embarrassed at Martha's revelation of his failures and incompetence, he continues to bear the insults � The father figure, which Martha had always been searching for in him, is not in him. � Along with Martha, he is accountable for the fictional world that they have created and he wanted to maintain it as much as she. They both suffer the "collectively inability to accept reality. " George, however, due to his fear that their illusion will end up destroying Martha as well as make a public scandal of their lives when the news that they have "created" a son becomes public, succeeds in detaching himself from their illusion.

� Therefore, despite his apparent weaknesses, George becomes a mighty force of change in this play, ushering in a new stage of their marriage that will hopefully be more honest and genuine than the previous one. � he does have qualities that are devalued but just as important: understanding, thoughtfulness, sincerity, a moral stand a very firm belief in "humanistic principles. ".

Martha � � Martha was 52 years old She is George’s wife Martha is also very well educated. " She is perceived as a loud, vicious tongued, domineering woman who is angry, frustrated and unfulfilled. George calls her destructive and satanic and treats her as a demonic and perverse woman

� She is the character who had started off as being aggressive and powerful and is left as one totally dependent on her husband � she appears as a "castrator of a defenseless and emasculated husband. " Furthermore, her sterility is also a cause to aggravate her repressed feelings. She refuses to surrender herself to reality

� The "son myth" becomes her greatest distraction. She wallows in this disillusionment. It seems so colorful and real that she can talk endlessly on the subject of her son, from his birth to his metamorphoses as a twenty one year old lad. She creates every moment of living with her imaginary son. � The play’s closing moment is perhaps the most tender in the entire play, as Martha is able to let her guard down enough around George to admit, for once, being subject to real human fear.

Nick � � He is thirty years old and blond, a young genius who received his Master's degree at twenty. He grew up in the Midwest with his wife Honey, whom he knew since childhood. Though he initially appears to love his wife, it becomes evident that he married her for her money and because she was pregnant with what turned out to be a hysterical pregnancy.

� An ambitious new member of the college's biology department, Nick is the golden haired boy who just might succeed where George failed taking every opportunity offered to him to get ahead, including sex with faculty wives. At first, he acts horrified by George and Martha's antics but soon becomes drawn in. He attempts to sleep with Martha and is proved impotent.

Honey She is the pallid, slim hipped wife of Nick, a submissive, doll like figure. � � Her own anxieties and fears act as a deterrent to having a meaningful relationship with Nick and make her impervious to the cantankerous bickering around her. � Their marriage had been a hastily arranged ceremony, motivated by her hysterical pregnancy. � She is apprehensive of having children. Her way of filling this void is to eschew responsibility by acting like a child. � She does seem to change during the course of the play, announcing that she wants a child after Martha regales them with stories of her son.

� The hysterical pregnancy that Nick speaks about is an important indication of Honey's delusion. This along with her constant nausea, her headaches and her constant "whining" as George figures out does not arise from her habit of excessive drinking. Probable reasons could be that she has gone through an abortion, fears the responsibility of mothering, or she could be using birth control methods to prevent any pregnancy at all. � However, she emerges a changed person at the end of the play and displays her courage to reject the apprehensions and illusions governing the lives of the other characters. Her cries, "I want a child. I want a baby" illustrate this.