Nov 12, 2009

The Great God Brown | The Great God Brown and Nietzsche

Perkins, an Associate Professor of English at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland, has published articles on several twentieth-century authors. In the following essay, she examines The Great God Brown as an illustration of Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses in human nature.

In the closing pages of Thomas Mann’s novel, Death in Venice, Aschenbach, the main character, condemns the role of the artist and the artistic impulse: ‘‘the training of the public and of youth through art is a precarious undertaking which should be forbidden. For how, indeed, could he be a fit instructor who is born with a natural leaning towards the precipice?’’ In The Great God Brown, O’Neill offers a more sympathetic view of his main character than does Mann, but he communicates a similar portrait of the artist ‘‘leaning towards the precipice.’’ Dion...