Yank’s Absurd Inheritance in The Hairy Ape
It is intriguing how Eugene O’Neill stages the audience for The Hairy Ape. When the curtain opens upon the forecastle of the transatlantic liner, the audience is immediately beset by Yank’s seemingly unassailable sense of identity. “Everting else dat makes de woild move, somep’n makes it move. It can’t move without somep’n else, see? Den yuh get down to me. I’m at de bottom, get me!” (261). Yank trumpets himself, in effect, as the prime mover of the industrial world. He “belongs” because that world, like its metonym the ocean-liner, depends upon him to function: “I’m de ting in coal dat makes it boin; I’m steam and oil for de engines . . . Steel, dat stands for de whole ting! And I’m steel—steel—steel!” (261). It is undoubtedly easy for an audience to be swept up by the conviction of Yank’s speech. Nevertheless, O’Neill’s expressionistic imagery, which emphasizes confinement and impotence, almost certainly exposes “Yank’s rhetoric” to be what Marden J. Clark describes as “a frighteningly blind hubris” (373). What Yank sees as evidence of his subjectivity—his association with commodities—is, in actuality, confirmation of his objectivity. In effect, O’Neill creates an explicit discrepancy between dialogue and mise-en-scene, thereby not only demanding the intellectual contribution of his audience to interpret this incongruity but also distancing that audience from Yank through dramatic irony. But O’Neill does more than rely upon irony to distance the play’s spectators and stimulate their critical participation. He draws upon Brechtian alienation techniques to emphasize Yank’s brutish nature in the opening scene. Yank is given to outbursts of violent threats against his fe...
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Convention’s struggle against nature is one that has existed since the beginning of time. Whether it be through illnesses, facing the elements, or suppressing one’s natural tendencies and desires, man has always suffered greatly from challenging the ways of nature. Man himself is a natural creature; however, due to his own pride, he has been turned against nature, and towards the industrial habits of convention. In the three short stories “The Birth-Mark,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and “The Open Boat,” the reader sees this theme of man’s failure to control nature, as well as the risks he takes in order to do so.
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"The Monkey" is a short story written by Isak Dinesen. The story was published in 1934. "The Monkey" is a form of gothic sublime. In this story, I encountered many elements that related to magical realism as well as the sublime.
Revelation has always been linked with God and his people. God is the one that made his will known to us. Through
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Here we run up against the bugbear of historically informed performance. So many of the treatises (in music and dance as well as in acting) depend on the student's imitation of an admired master, and a gradual perfection of "good taste" as his society constructed that elusive quality. We cannot recreate those apprenticeships, those saturations in a period aesthetic. However, by constructing exercises along the lines of a Renaissance aesthetic, we may expose some of the differences between what the Shakespearean audience saw, and what the North American audience sees today.
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A disease should be considered as an uncontrollable illness that can negatively impact one’s life for a consistent amount of time. Diseases are not wanted nor would one fuel the disease’s progression by continuously repeating the same behavior. Some particular diseases are genetically transmitted and are apparent at birth. An addiction, on the other hand, is the repetition of a particular behavior regardless of the consequences. If the behavior is stopped then it is not uncommon for withdrawal symptoms to become evident. An addiction is something that is carried out through personal choice and is controllable based upon the actions that are being taken. An addiction can be stopped at any time with a little persistence and dedication to alter the behavior that feeds the addiction. In contrast, a disease can sometimes be cured with medical attention, depending upon the disease, as opposed to simply j...
The first two parts of the book discuss the kind of theological-historical perspective and ecclesial situation that determines the form-content configuration of Revelation. The first section attempts to assess the theological commonality to and differences from Jewish apocalypticism. Fiorenza focuses of the problem that although Revelation claims to be a genuinely Christian book and has found its way into the Christian canon, it is often judged to be more Jewish than Christian and not to have achieved the “heights” of genuinely early Christian theology. In the second part of the book, Fiorenza seeks to assess whether and how much Revelation shares in the theological structure of the Fourth Gospel. Fiorenza proposes that a careful analysis of Revelation would suggest that Pauline, Johannine, and Christian apocalyptic-prophetic traditions and circles interacted with each other at the end of the first century C.E in Asia Minor. She charts in the book the structural-theological similarities and differences between the response of Paul and that of Revelation to the “realized eschatology”. She argues that the author of Revelation attempts to correct the “realized eschatology” implications of the early Christian tradition with an emphasis on a futuristic apocalyptic understanding of salvation. Fiorenza draws the conclusion that Revelation and its author belong neither to the Johannine nor to the Pauline school, but point to prophetic-apocalyptic traditions in Asia Minor.
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Many playwrights drew from outside influences to compose their works. They would look the era they were living in, their personal lives, childhood experiences, and even ancient texts to acquire inspiration for their works and famous playwright, Eugene O’Neill, is no exception. Writing through two world wars, a great depression, and boom of the motion-picture industry, O’Neill certainly had much inspiration to choose from. Although not becoming nationally recognized until after his father’s death in 1920, O’Neill still managed to produce fifty completed works. Using influences from the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Eugene O’Neill demonstrated how he used the era he was living in to help compose his works.