Literature and the Human Experience
This is an excerpt from the paper...
In poems of Robert Frost and in O'Neill's play The Hairy Ape, the picture of human experience is one of alienation, desperation, powerlessness, and solitude in an unforgiving environment. The most they can do is attempt to cope with unaccommodating circumstance, diminishing but not eliminating their discomfort and incapable of positive heroism.O'Neill's Hairy Ape transforms characters' mastery of one little corner of the universe into utter helplessness. Emboldened by the spunk and arrogance of privilege and ignorance, Mildred expects to find the liner's boiler room colorful, but she withers in the presence of the animalistic reality in which brute strength is the highest and best attribute. The play's stage directions describe her brief encounter with Yank's domain as one in which she fnds her "personality crushed, beaten in, collapsed, by the terrific impact of this unknown, abysmal brutality, naked and shameless" (33). Meanwhile, the image of Yank as Rodan's sculpture The Thinker is a metaphor of viciously humorous irony that establishes the theme of alienation: "Aw say, youse guys. Lemme alone. Can't youse see I'm tryin' to tink?" (O'Neill 3
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Home Burial, Fire Ice, Hairy Ape, Lemme Can't, Yank Rodan's, Christ Where, O'Neill's Yank, hairy ape, O'Neill Frost, Frost O'Neill's, Rinehart Winston, human experience, robert frost,
Approximate Word count = 777
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Literature and the Human Experience
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
