Self-subject’s Loss And Pursuit

The Hairy Ape shows the failure of modern people to find the self-subject,containing modern ethical connotation.This paper uses the core terms of ethical literary criticism:the ethical predicament,ethical selection and ethical identity to analyze the text of The Hairy Ape.Analyze the process of the loss and pursuit of the subject identity.And study the ethical connotation and the writer’s ethical thoughts.The main part of the paper is divided into five chapters.Chapter one analyze the three predicament about self,society and the ultimate meaning of existence.Drama from the physical to the spiritual,arouses the self-identity disorganized.Subsequently,the loss of social status,the subversion of interpersonal relations and social values triggered the collapse of Yank’s social ethics.These eventually lead to Yank’s existential anxiety,resulting in the loss of his survival value.The second chapter studies Yank’s three major ethical choices and the results.The drama begins to imply the completion of an ethical choice,namely Yank’s abandonment of the past and integration into modern society.When he got into an ethical dilemma,he made a second ethical choice: wandering in different dramatic spaces,seeking his own identity to establish his own status.The third is the awakening after discovery.Yank comes to the zoo to maintain the ethical order of his own people.However,due to the confusion of the new and old ethical order,he died in the confusion of ape identity.The third chapter studies Yank’s ethical identity.The first is the strong in the natural law,reflects the western bourgeoisie constantly striving and enterprising spirit.The second is the wander in modern civilization:Yank observed and experienced even shocked,but he disillusioned and tried to destroy and subvert.Finally is the warrior of seeking humanity:in his resistance against modern society,Yank’s humanity factor constantly plays a role,which maintained the person’s identity.The fourth chapter explores the ethical connotation of the Hairy Ape.There are ethical disorder between man and nature,man and society,even man and man as a whole in drama.The offside of natural law leads to the annihilation of human ethics and morality.The infinite expansion of individualism causes the whole society to fall into value relativism and the social ethical out of order.The perfect personality image of “thinker”reflects the alienated image of modern people and reveals the failure of human ethics.Chapter five studies O’Neill’s ethical thought.First,it think the social ethical order with the moral view of “immorality”.Secondly,affirm human vitality,human past and human reason so as to restore human ethical value.Finally,drama is used to transform modern social morality,restore traditional religious morality,restore human ethics and morality,and restore the ethical value of drama.