Antihero, Paradox And Absurdity: An Analysis Of Black Humor Features In Tracy Letts'S August: Osage County

Tracy Letts's?1965-?play August:Osage County has been hailed as“the first great American play of the 21^st century”.It has obtained almost all the major awards of American drama from the Pulitzer Prize to the Tony Prize,which is undoubtedly the most awarded drama in the 21^st century.The play not only successfully continues the theme of family dysfunction in classic American drama,but also endows it with a unique aesthetic color due to its obvious black humor.Black humor,as a post-modern writing technique,represents morbid events in a humorous way to show the absurdity and cruelty of society.Guided by the theory of black humor,this thesis interprets the play from three aspects:characterization,construction of the plots,and thematic concern.By analyzing the protagonists'anti-hero characteristics,paradoxical plots and theme of absurdity,this thesis aims to prove there are black humor features in the play in order to probe into Tracy Letts's solemn considerations on the absurd world behind his humorous language.First and foremost,this thesis focuses on the black humor features of characterization in August:Osage County.With the help of the anti-hero theory,some features of antiheroes presented in the characters reveal their absurdity.Antiheroes are different from the heroes in traditional fictions and dramas,who have a sense of reason,justice,courage,responsibility and mission;on the contrary,the antiheroes are the mediocre ones of abnormality,cowardice,selfishness,irresponsibility and self-deception,which make them riddled with absurdity and irony.By portraying the antiheroes,the author highlights the confusion and helplessness of the characters in the face of contemporary absurd society,and shows the real living conditions of ordinary people.Secondly,this thesis goes to analyze the paradoxical plots of August:Osage County,revealing the author's interpretation of the absurd predicament of life.Through the interpretation of the complex and contradictory relationship among the characters,their desperate struggle in the tension between love and enmity,familiarity and strangeness,life and death breaks the paradoxical dualism in their relationship.They yearn for the love and companionship of their families,but they are discouraged by their indifference.Faced with the choices of love or hate,familiarity or strangeness and life or death,they are desperate and helpless,and can only be left at the mercy of fate.Finally,the theme of absurdity in August:Osage County is then explored.The absurdity of the theme reflects the author's solemn understanding of social life.According to Camus and Ionesco's interpretations of absurdity,this thesis analyses the absurd theme of the play from two aspects:alienation of the protagonists and meaninglessness of life.The protagonists in the play are trapped in their own predicaments and inevitably alienated in their own world.The lack of communication and love from their families and their beloved ones leads them to taste the strangeness of the world,arising from the huge gap between what they desire and what they really experience.They have lost faith and hope,and are desperate,deeply impressed by the cruelty and absurdity of modern society.The play,August:Osage County,not only adds a unique tragicomic color to the traditional American family tragedy but also displays an aesthetic significance of black humor.Through depicting the distorted protagonists and analyzing the complex and contradictory relationship among them,Letts intends to reveal the absurdity of life,society and the world.This ordinary family is regarded as a miniature of modern society,whose distortion and abnormality reflect the real living state of American people in the 21^st century when terrorism and economic depression ravage,triggering the readers'serious concerns on the absurdity of American society.