Abstract

One of the key features that makes American literature great and distinct is the positioning of the human subject as a pawn in the confrontation between the past and the present—a human psyche caught in a perpetual quandary over embracing reality and rejecting fantasy, or vice versa. In a more Freudian sense, there is a clear divide between the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind. This confrontation remains inexplicable without its indivisible connection to the Dionysian and Apollonian impulses present in the characters of modern American drama. The paper's central purpose draws upon the recurrent themes of “reality” and “fantasy” in two modern American plays, The Glass Menagerie and Desire Under the Elms, as representatives of modernist plays that best characterize Modernist American Literature.

Key words: Reality, fantasy, individualism, Dionysian, apollonian, modernism.