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

Yank as a Modern Day Oedipus in O Neills Play, The wiry-coated caricatureThe representation of tragedy today has adapted itself to more humanistic, base and symbolic concerns. Often, they be commentaries on society just as much as they are on the nature of man. Although O Neill insists that his play The Hairy caricature is not a tragedy, but rather a dark comedy, the play follows the definition of a tragedy. The radical points that make up a tragedy still remain the same, even if they have to be slightly modified to be relevant to todays audience. Despite this, The Hairy Ape bears a striking resemblance to the quintessential Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex. The only direct challenge to the Aristotelian definition of tragedy is the portrayal of the tragic bomber as not only not being a noble in the traditional sense, but usually as a working class, parking area man. Arthur Miller discusses this belief in his essay Tragedy and the Common Man. In it, he insists that we never hesitate to attribute to the well placed and the wonderful 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 mass of humankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms, let alone be capable of understanding it(Miller 1162). According to Aristotle, a tragedy concerns a somebody of noble stature. In the modern sense, as explained by Miller, noble does not necessarily mean royalty or upper class, merely that the tragic superstar is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing - his sense of personal dignity(1162). Yank is willing to do this. His sense of referee 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, Marden J. Tragic transaction in The Hairy Ape. Modern Drama 10 1968Egri, Peter. Belonging Lost Alienation and Dramatic Form in Eugene ONeills The Hairy Ape in Critical 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.