SOURCE: "Edward Albee's Triptych on Abandonment," in Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring, 1982, pp. 14-33.

In the essay below, Gabbard explores the theme of abandonment in The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, and The Sandbox, maintaining that each is a "unique picture of abandonment…all hinged together by the shared and related themes of ambivalence, escape into fantasy, and preoccupation with death. "

Edward Albee's earliest plays—The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, and The Sandbox—ring with rage at society's disregard for its outcasts. An adopted child himself, Albee wrote these plays in the late fifties when he was temporarily estranged from his legal parents and, thereby, transferred from wealth to near-poverty. Considering this personal closeness to the theme of abandonment, it is not surprising that his first plays express a serious concern for life's expendable ones. This concern...