Comparing Ritual in Beckett, Hemingway, and ONeill :: comparison compare contrast essays

Ritual in Beckett, Hemingway, and ONeillPerhaps the public foreland has simply been overloaded and, like an electrical circuit, has blown its fuse and deceased cold under the weight of too many impulses (Miller, lvi). The modern creation is often looked upon as a cold and un tone of voice one. And the modern instauration is such that it has been called a Wasteland by T. S. Eliot. It has likewise led Camus to analogue it with the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned to repeatedly push a boulder up a mountain, after which it would roll down the other side, and he would have to start all over again. It is this ritualistic behavior which has turn a significant factor in modern life. Although ritualism is a commonplace theme in modern literature, its function had been interpreted differently by modern writers. Many, like Beckett and Hemingway, see ritualistic behavior almost as a form of therapy, a healing action used to get by with internal turmoil. Others, chiefly expressionists like ONeill, look upon ritual with scorn. They see it as the deadening of society, the mechanization of humanity. Expressionist drama protested strongly against the system of industrialized production that transformed man into an automaton (Glicksberg 51).ONeills scorn of ritualism, which is typical of the expressionists, is evident in his plays. The expressionists believed that humanity is out of kilter with nature, and mans obsession with materialism and machines is a factor in the deadening of the soul. ONeill was a man described by Joseph Golden as being a godless, despondent, pessimistic, antisocial creature who was also prone to such exuberance that he could write to a ally Im tickled to death with life I wouldnt go out and miss the rest of the play for anything(31).ONeills drop of belief in religion was a constant struggle for him. He was disturbed not only by the absence of Christianity, but by humanitys inability to find a replacement for it. He described this feeling in a letter to George Jean Nathan when he wrote, The playwright like a shot must dig at the roots of the sickness of today as he feels it--the death of the Old God and the failure of science and materialism to give any satisfying new one for the surviving rough religious instinct to find a meaning of and to life in, harbor his fears of death with (qtd in Golden 39).