Tragedy In The Modern Context

The primary goal of this study is to interpret the tragic elements in The Glass Menagerieand explore the tragic idea in the modern context. Most of the researches into this playconcentrate on the analysis of the figures, dramatic devices, psychoanalysis, themes, and theplaywright’s experiences, and a few discuss the tragic elements about this work. The thesisadopts Raymond Williams’s tragic idea to conduct a research into this play so as to probe theconnection between tragedy and the structure of feeling.The term,“structure of feeling” is advanced by Raymond Williams in his book Drama inPerformance (1954) and discussed in his subsequent works. It is adopted to describe thechanges in practical consciousness in contrast to world-view or ideology which describeshuman cultural activity as fixed forms, emphasizing the specific and personal experience orfeeling which cannot be explained by the received ideology. Thus, the concept of “structure offeeling” appears with pronounced empirical quality and possesses collective quality, whichsignifies that the given group, class or society share the same values and social psyche. Theconcept of this term is dynamic and it underlines the cognition of living condition andexperience of social culture.Raymond Williams considers art and literature as “the most complex barometer ofmovement at the ideological level” and the structure of feeling exists as a supersensitiveindicator of such movement. So tragedy is part of culture in a specific phase and deeplyrooted in it. Tragedy also divulges the subtle relationship between itself and the structure offeeling. Through the impulses and contradictions within the tragic protagonists’ behaviour,discourse and psyche, the shared social values and social characteristics of a specific era willbe epitomized. The connotation of tragedy is dynamic and historical and it is not a staticmetaphysical assumption. He writes that tragedy is “immediate experience, a body ofliterature, a conflict of theory, an academic problem.” Williams extends the connotation of tragedy from works of art to the suffering in daily life. Important tragedy emerges from thesocial disorder and the condition is the conflict between the old and the new, the tensionbetween the received beliefs and immediate experience. His tragic idea is empirical, since hetakes modern tragic experience as the starting point for further research on modern tragedy. Inthis paper, tragedy as works of art will be discussed from the perspective of his tragic idea.This thesis consists of five parts. The first part is introduction, which describes theplaywright, Tennessee Williams and his masterpiece The Glass Menagerie, literature review,theory, the skeleton of the paper and the meaning. Chapter One deals with the tragiccharacters in The Glass Menagerie, who are plebeians, distinguishing themselves from thedivines or heroes existing in traditional tragedy. The individuals become the protagonists inmodern tragedy and their roles are transformed into victims instead of heroes. Chapter Two isan analysis of tragic conflicts in The Glass Menagerie. The main tragic conflicts are thoseabout culture, inner world, family and external world. These conflicts represent thecontradictions in the empirical world and the protagonists are set in a predicament: lost theconfidence in the seemingly carefree times and fearful of the future. The characters’ innerworld is laid great emphasis on. In Chapter Three, the tragic ending will be discussed. Thisplay does not end with death, since the individuals, who do not demonstrate the “humanity”or “ultimate value,” are not being destroyed. The protagonists are still stuck in the desperateconfinement, in spite of baptism in spirit. The final section is conclusion, which gives a briefaccount of the paper’s viewpoint and summarizes the quality of modern tragedy.Based on the analysis the writer of the thesis concludes that the predicament of the tragiccharacters in The Glass Menagerie is the epitome of social psychology, value and behaviourduring the Depression. The relationship between the individual and society plays a dominantrole in research on modern tragedy and the changes in tragedy are related to the structure offeeling under the modern context, which functions to link up the individual and social culture.