Summary
The Young Man tells Grandma that he and his twin were separated very early on, "torn apart...thrown to opposite ends of the continent." He tells her that he doesn't know what happened to his brother, but since their separation, he himself has suffered indescribable losses: "A fall from grace...a departure of innocence...loss...loss." At one point, the Young Man explains, he felt like he was losing his heart, and since then has been unable to love. Then he felt as though his eyes were burning and he has only been able to look at things since then with "cool disinterest." Then he became unable to love anyone sexually, and then became unable to "touch another person and feel love." He tells Grandma, "As I told you, I am incomplete...I can feel nothing."
Grandma is moved by the story, realizing that this is the twin of the boy from her story. She tells the Young Man that he can now have a job, but they are interrupted by the calls of Mrs. Barker. When Mrs. Barker comes in and sees the Young Man, Grandma tells her that he is the van man, there to cart her away. On Grandma's prompting, the Young Man plays along with her lie, and agrees to take her things out to the van. As he does so, Grandma tells Mrs. Barker that she knows a way for Mrs. Barker to get out of her dilemma with Mommy and Daddy. She whispers her idea in Mrs. Barker's ear, and Mrs. Barker is delighted by it.
After Mrs. Barker goes off to implement Grandma's idea, the Young Man comes back in and tells Grandma that her boxes are outside. When he asks her if she needs a cab, she assures him that she'll be fine, and encourages him to stay, insisting, "It will all become clear to you." The Young Man walks Grandma out to the elevator.
Mrs. Barker, Mommy, and Daddy come back in, having settled some matter of business. Realizing that Grandma is gone, Mommy becomes upset and asks where she went. The lights dim as Mrs. Barker tells her that the van man took Grandma away. "There is no van man. We...we made him up," Mommy says, close to tears.
As Mommy worries, Grandma comes onto the stage near the footlights and tells the audience that she wants to watch the rest of the play, unseen by Mommy and Daddy. She motions to Mrs. Barker to open the front door, and we see the Young Man standing there. Mrs. Barker introduces the Young Man to Mommy and Daddy and they are suddenly filled with delight. They thank Mrs. Barker, who tells them she'll send them a bill in the mail. Mommy sends the young man to fetch them drinks from the kitchen. When the Young Man returns, Mommy notices that he's brought five glasses. Grandma eyes the Young Man, who looks at her and realizes that he's supposed to keep her presence a secret.
Mommy gets tipsy immediately and promises to tell the story of "the other one," maybe even that night. She can't put her finger on it, but the Young Man seems very familiar to her. Grandma addresses the audience, calling the play a "comedy," and saying, "So, let's leave things as they are right now...while everybody's happy...while everybody's got what he wants...or everybody's got what he thinks he wants." She bids the audience goodnight.
Analysis
As the Young Man talks more about himself, we learn more about his biography and discover what might be considered the most climactic plot point. He describes that he was born with an identical twin brother, but that his brother disappeared when they were very young. Then, over the years, the Young Man began to suffer unusual ailments and losses. These losses correspond to the various disfigurements to which the "bumble" from Grandma's story was subjected. The "bumble's" physical disfigurements correlate with the Young Man's spiritual and emotional disfigurements, and have rendered him unable to love. Rather, he is just a receptacle for other people's love, a rather tragic arrangement. As he tells Grandma this, the audience realizes that the Young Man is in fact the twin brother of Mommy and Daddy's adopted son from so many years ago.
It is notable that Grandma and the Young Man have a rather intimate relationship from the moment he arrives. Grandma is immediately drawn to him, taken aback by how attractive he is. He is receptive to her attention, and they talk in a straightforward manner that is unusual given the vagueness of the rest of the play. For the first time, Grandma has a companion who respects her and pays attention to her, and for the first time, we meet a character who knows exactly why he is there (or at least thinks he does).
In this section, Grandma decides to finally escape from Mommy and Daddy's house. To Mrs. Barkley, she pretends the Young Man is one of the van men come to take her away, and the Young Man plays along by bringing her boxes out of the apartment. Once she has cleared out her things, she is freed from the claustrophobic apartment and finds herself in a more liminal stage space. As the action continues onstage, she creeps towards the footlights at the edge of the stage, at once viewing the action like she is in the audience while also mediating the action like a kind of narrator or guide. Grandma's position within the whole play—wise but always underestimated—is finally given a new position in relation to the action. Outside the confines of the apartment, she cannot be underestimated, and she can finally have a direct relationship to the audience.
Mommy and Daddy, for all their villainousness and selfishness, are rewarded at the end of the play. They are delighted to find that the Young Man is there to live with them and be a kind of surrogate son. While Mommy is initially disturbed to find that Grandma is missing, the Young Man proves to be a perfect replacement. In this way, the play presents adoption, parenthood, and the loss of one's elders as transactions in a kind of market system, in line with the "American Dream," in which people can be exchanged and replaced, which recalls Mommy's story about the hat and Grandma's story about Mommy and Daddy's disfigured baby. In each case, a replacement is demanded, and the characters are less human beings than they are customers. The Young Man represents the fact that Mommy and Daddy have finally found their replacement son, and they toast a "dreadful sauterne" "to satisfaction." Mommy says, "Who says you can't find satisfaction these days?"
At the very end of the play, Grandma addresses the audience and delivers a final monologue. Rather curiously, she tells us, "for better or for worse, this is a comedy." This statement is unusual for two reasons; for one, the play, in all its grisly and tragic facets, hardly feels like a comedy to the viewer, and secondly, Grandma's saying that this is "for better or for worse" suggests that even though it is a happy ending, it is ultimately an ambivalent one. A comedy, as Grandma defines it, is a story in which the ending comes "while everybody's happy...while everybody's got what he wants...or everybody's got what he thinks he wants." Thus, Edward Albee suggests that the "American Dream" itself is indeed a dream, a shared fantasy that ends before anyone realizes that anything's wrong, or that they wanted anything different.
