Revisiting Menace in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance in the Covid-19 Era

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 in the recent years raised concerns over the welfare and health conditions of the human being, and urged people to reconsider their existence amid this unexpected pandemic. Following the confinement that health authorities all over the world have imposed on citizens to limit the spread of the disease and curb the incredibly increasing number of deaths, some people resorted to the realm of literature seeking relief and consolation, and discovered that threats have always shaped the life of humans throughout history. In reality, various authors addressed the concept of menace and presented life-threatening situations in their works. Edward Albee, for instance, tackles the idea of menace in A Delicate Balance through the introduction of a mysterious plague that destabilized the existence of all the characters. Like the COVID-19 threat, the unknown terror in the play put the lives of the family members at risk and pushed them to question their very existence. The present article, then, seeks to explore Albee’s conceptualization of menace in his work and investigate the overlapping commonalities between the Coronavirus and the plague that has greatly affected the perception and subsistence of the characters and mankind.