| Abstract: | Edward Albee’s Everything in the Garden is an ethical tragedy caused by hedonism. Both the hero and heroine lost their rationality for the sake of pursuing the satisfaction of desire, who finally committed the fearful ethical crime, murder, under the control of animal factor. Through the play, the playwright deliberately emphasizes the process of how a happy family moves towards abyss step by step due to the domination of material desire. The destruction of the family means that the “fun morality”, which represents the irrational will, finally defeats the “goodness morality”, which represents the rational will. This paper uses ethical literary criticism as the study method, through analyzing the ethical issues in the play, such as characters’ rational loss, moral turpitude, and lack of ethics, intending to seek the ethical prospect of Albee: by writing characters’ pursuit of extreme “fun morality” and the serious result brought by it, Albee attempts to arouse people’s yearning for “goodness morality”. |
