SOURCE: "Verbal Prisons: The Language of Albee's A Delicate Balance," in English Studies in Canada, Vol. 7, No. 2, Summer, 1981, pp. 201-11.

In the following essay, Fumerton provides an analysis of Albee's use of language in A Delicate Balance.

A Delicate Balance forms part of Edward Albee's continuing exploration into the potentialities and limitations of language. Surprisingly, however, no one has yet provided a detailed analysis of the play's language. This work intends such a study. The characters of A Delicate Balance are conscious manipulators of their language: a frightened people who use language in an attempt to control or simply to survive fearful realities. They use the decorum of language to disguise anxieties, to balance between implications (as when Agnes habitually says "either … or" and "if … then"), and thus to evade truths and choices. At the same time, they sharpen their language of evasion into a precise instrument of...