Yank as a Modern Day Oedipus in O Neills Play, The Hairy Ape Essay

twitch as a Modern Day Oedipus in O Neills Play, The hoary impersonatorThe representation of catastrophe today has adapted itself to more humanistic, subaltern and symbolic concerns. Often, they are commentaries on society just as more as they are on the nature of man. Although O Neill insists that his bring The comal copycat is non a calamity, but rather a dark comedy, the play follows the definition of a tragedy. The basic points that make up a tragedy still remain the same, even if they have to be slightly special to be relevant to todays audience. Despite this, The Hairy Ape bears a touch resemblance to the quintessential Grecian tragedy, Oedipus Rex. The only direct challenge to the wayfaring definition of tragedy is the portrayal of the tragic hero as not only not being a noble in the conventional sense, but usually as a working class, common man. Arthur milling machine discusses this belief in his essay Tragedy and the special K Man. In it, he insists that we n ever hesitate to attribute to the well placed and the proud the very same mental processes as the lowly and if the exaltation of tragic action were truly the property of the high bred character alone, it is inconceivable that the bulk of mankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms, allow alone be capable of understanding it(Miller 1162). According to Aristotle, a tragedy concerns a person of noble stature. In the modern sense, as explained by Miller, noble does not necessarily mean royalty or speed class, merely that the tragic protagonist is ready to lay down his life, if consider be, to secure one thing - his sense of personal dignity(1162). Yank is willing to do this. His sense of justice is primitive in that he is not concerned with the consequences of his reve... ... leads him back to the realization that he was the criminal that he had been pursuing. Works Cited and ConsultedCarpenter, Frederic I. Eugene ONeill. New York Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1964. Clark, M arden J. Tragic Effect in The Hairy Ape. Modern Drama 10 1968Egri, Peter. Belonging Lost Alienation and Dramatic do in Eugene ONeills The Hairy Ape in diminutive Essays on Eugene ONeill. James J. Martine, ed. Boston G.K. Hall & Co., 1984. Miller, Arthur. Tragedy and the Common Man. Weales, Gerald, ed. Death of a Salesman Text and Criticism. New York Penguin Books 1996ONeill, Eugene. The Hairy Ape in Four Plays by Eugene ONeill. New York Signet Classic, 1998. Vernant, J.-P. Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy. In J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, eds., Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece. Sussex, N. J. 1981.