The Tragedy of Becoming: Hegel in Cruz's Anna in the Tropics

The small world of Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics brings to light a collision between historical and cultural forces personified in the play. It is this drama’s singular transitional moment, the end of the cycle for a way of life represented by Cruz’s characters that reverberates both tension and meaning for modern audiences. The resolution of a conflict between two of the play's central characters effects questions that hover over the play's final tragic tableaux. Their clash of seemingly justifiable positions frames Anna in the Tropics as a dialectical drama that is redolent in many ways of G.W.F.’s Hegel’s view of tragedy, as evidenced by his analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone. The dialectical form of Anna in the Tropics discloses what it means to enter a world of becoming for its immigrant characters of the Depression Era and for its modern audiences as well.