New Beginnings in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a disturbing and powerful work. Ironically, it is disturbing and powerful for many of the same reasons. As the audience watches George and Martha savagely tear each other apart with knives of hurled words, sharpened by pain and aimed at drawing blood, the way these two relentlessly confront each other is horrifying to watch, yet strangely familiar. Like wounded animals, they strike at those closest to them and recall scenes you witnessed as a child of parents screaming through a cracked door when you should be in bed. In this age of psychoanalytic jargon, George and Martha are the quintessential dysfunctional couple. Yet, despite all their problems, Albee reveals that there is a core of positive feelings that unites these two troubled people and that helps them look beyond the hell they themselves have created. The truth of their relationship is revealed layer by layer as the work progresses, like the peeling of an onion, and although the pattern of this truth appears vague at first, with each cycle of revelations the pattern becomes more distinct and the image it is clearer. fully revealed in the final, cathartic scene. One of the most consistent themes of the play is the question of George and Martha's "child" and all that this child, and children in general, symbolizes for them. The "child" seems not only a desire for fruitfulness within their relationship, but also a projection through which they express many of their personal desires, needs and problems and, in this context, the child's subsequent "death" signifies a milestone in their relationship. their understanding of their marriage and themselves. At the end of the play, after much suffering and flagellation, George and Martha seem ready to approach their lives in a new way. George and Martha have an affair. They are also emotionally trapped by this story, especially that of their respective childhoods. As a result, both are plagued by low self-image and insecurity. The audience learns this story slowly, in bits and pieces. Martha tells Nick and Honey in Act 1 how she lost her mother early and grew very close to her father. She married briefly, but her father had the marriage annulled. She moved back to live with her father after college and met and fell in love with George.