The Hairy Ape | Tragic Effect in The Hairy Ape
Clark delineates the dramatic elements of O'Neill's play that qualify the work as a tragedy.
The Hairy Ape has been widely praised and widely reprinted. Most reviewers and critics have agreed that it has unusual power and unusual ability to project its sense of tragedy. But critics have disagreed on where that sense of tragedy comes from and, in consequence, on basic matters of interpretation. Early critics saw its power in its brutal naturalism, for a long time hardly noticing the expressionistic techniques—and disregarding O'Neill's explicit instructions that the treatment of the scenes ''should by no means be naturalistic." More recently commentators have recognized...
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