Seite 126 [126]
OCR
ANIKÓ LUKÁCS HUMILIATE THE HOST The overture to “cruel games” is Humiliate the Host, which can be divided into three smaller games. Of these, the first two are not named — I will refer to them as The Story of Our Boxing Match and The Fall of George, the Heir to the Throne, while the third one is named after George, the Book-mentioner. One of the most important features of Humiliate the Host is that it is primarily determined as being Martha’s game (she plays the role of the game master) and is directed exclusively against George. The three phases of the game give rise to three different variations of humiliation, during which Martha attacks her husband with increasing cruelty, shredding George’s former self, which was legitimate in the preliminal stage.** During the first game, Martha tells the story of their boxing match twenty years ago when she accidentally knocked out George with a right hook while joking around, so that he fell into a blueberry bush. Humiliated by his physical weakness, George becomes the underdog in the scene, as Martha, by summoning the past, repeatedly punches her husband — this time not physically but figuratively — and just like Daddy back then, there are witnesses to this moment as well, increasing George’s sense of defenselessness. At the climax of this scene, George leaves the room and returns with a rifle, points it at Martha’s back, then pulls the trigger while Honey begins to scream: “POW!!! (Pop! From the barrel of the gun blossoms a large red and yellow Chinese parasol.) |...] You're dead! Pow! You’re dead!”*> — George says, “killing” his wife in a symbolical way. The strong tension in The Story of our Boxing Match is thus extinguished by a comical closure, which gives way to some relief and laughter, while also stimulating the characters’ impulses. Martha’s statement that the above incident left an indelible mark on their lives is remarkable given the path leading to the second part of the game, and George certainly thinks so: he blames his lack of accomplishments on it.*° The Fall of George, the Heir to the Throne already focusses on this failure, continuing the humiliation in which Martha talks extensively to Nick and Honey about her contempt for her husband and calls him “a great ... big ... fat ... FLOP!”.°” This is the point where, for the first time, one of the characters in the play crosses the line of verbal insults into the realm of physical aggression (Martha’s pretend murder with the toy rifle should be categorized as the former, as the intent there is expressed verbally). As a result of another humiliation, 34 “GEORGE: [...] Do you think I like having ... whatever-it-is [...] tearing me down; You can sit there in that chair of yours, you can sit there with the gin running out of your mouth, and you can humiliate me, you can tear me apart ... ALL NIGHT ... and that’s perfectly all right .. that’s O.K. ...” (bold highlighting: Aniké Lukacs); Albee: Ibid., 152. 35 Ibid., 57. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 84. + 124 +
