Perkins, an Associate Professor of English at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, has published articles on several twentieth-century authors. In the following essay, she examines The Great God Brown as an illustration of Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of the Apollonian and the Dio-nysian impulses in human nature.

In the closing pages of Thomas Mann's novel, Death in Venice, Aschenbach, the main character, condemns the role of the artist and the artistic impulse: "the training of the public and of youth through art is a precarious undertaking which should be forbidden. For how, indeed, could he be a fit instructor who is born with a natural leaning towards the precipice?" In The Great God Brown, O'Neill offers a more sympathetic view of his main character than does Mann, but he communicates a similar portrait of the artist "leaning towards the precipice." Dion Anthony, in fact, falls into this...