CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Eugene O’Neill occupies a unique place in the history of American

literature by virtue of his monumental contribution to American drama. Rightly

labelled as the ‘the pioneer of the American drama’ by discerning critics,

enthusiastic audience and average readers alike, with his impressive output of

sixty-four plays Eugene O’Neill almost single handedly transformed the

American drama from the hitherto mere imitation of Shakespeare’s tragedies and

nineteenth century European plays into a vibrant art in its own right. A

voracious reader and a man of many parts albeit his frail health, O’Neill

underwent varied unhappy experiences early in life and tried his luck in several

professions rather unsuccessfully which made him form a tragic vision of life.

Finally, he decided to follow the footsteps of his father who was a stage artist and

took to creative writing. Soon, he took the public by storm with his awe-inspiring

dramas, becoming immensely popular not only in America but in the European

countries also. A dramatist par excellence, while practicing his art O’Neill was

greatly inspired and influenced by the Greek tragedies and myths, Shakespeare’s

tragedies and the contemporary psychoanalytical theories of the founding father

of modern ‘psychoanalysis’, Sigmund Freud and his close associate Carl Gustav

Jung. The present thesis titled The Impact of Psychoanalysis on Eugene O’Neill

is a modest attempt to trace the presence of various psychoanalytical theories

propounded by Freud and Jung in the select plays of Eugene O’Neill: Mourning
Becomes Electra, Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude and Long Day’s

Journey Into Night.

O’Neill’s historical importance is clear and his prodigy in the dramatic

world is remarkable. After O’Neill had achieved fame in 1920's, many other

American dramatists won distinction, some were his contemporaries, like

Maxwell Anderson, and Elmer Rice, others, like Tennessee Williams and Arthur

Miller, followed the path O’Neill investigated and surveyed, but no contemporary

or follower, approached his stature. Now, more than a century after his death,

his lead in American drama is unquestioned.

As mentioned Earlier, Eugene O’Neill shed light on the problems of human

society with a deep psychological intricacy. His disdain for the profit-making

realities of the theatre world, of which O’Neill was also a product of, directed him

to create works of eminence and integrity. O’Neill frequently wrote from ‘the

bottom up’. His personal emotions and feelings were cruising to realize the

essence of the human traits, which emit outwardly to the realm of society. He

had acute sympathy for American Indians. He met some, when he was ill with

tuberculosis at the sanatorium; O’Neill had multicultural empathy and

transnational curiosities as apparent in his writings about Asia and Africa. His

use of Asides, masks, and expressionistic methods reveals his deep interest to

delve the interior workings of human brain. O’Neill was highly motivated by

Psychoanalysis and attributes adjoined to it; invented by famous psychologists

Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. The main characters and the dialogue
format in O’Neill’s play constituted dual perspective. On one hand, it exhibited

the formal external colloquy, on the other; it interpreted the internal thought

processes and the raw nature of the characters.

O’Neill was born in (star) (October 16, 1888 - November 27, 1953) in a New

York Hotel room to James O’Neill and Ella Quinlan. James was an outstanding

romantic stage artist. Eugene was the last of the three children born to his

parents. He had two elder brothers, Sr. James and Edmund. His exposure to

theatre started since childhood. Since his father was very famous in the theatre

industry, Eugene frequently travelled with his father to many places and stayed

in hotel rooms, but somewhere he disliked such an evasive way of life. While his

father’s success yielded him a small fortune, he felt trapped in his role for most

of his career. By travelling with his father on tours, O’Neill learnt the theatre

from the ground up, but he rebelled against his father’s tradition of pompous

acting and conventionality. Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was one of the most

admired playwrights of all time. His talent for poignant and piercing dramas

sprang from a life marked by challenges.

O’Neill had a miserable childhood and unsettled youth, melancholy was a

part of his character. The first seven years of Eugene O’Neill's life spent with his

parents on their tours and travelled to all major cities of the United States. The

next six years, he attended catholic boarding school where he was opposed to

the norms and unbendable protocols. He also opposed of being taught by nuns

and monks. Eugene grew up in the golden age of the American theatre. His
schooling was done in the boarding school conducted by the sisters of charity in

Mount. St. Vincent at River Dale, where he acquired his primary formal catholic

conducts. His experience at St. Vincent allowed him to gain the catholic qualms,

which are very evident in his plays. He became knowledgeable about the fact

that, in spite of the redemption of man through Christ’s sufferings, the man was

always eligible of free will and freedom of choice; but he also knew that God was

aware of the future of all his creation. The dispute between predestination and

free will was a vital element in the development of O’Neill as a playwright.

Fundamentally, he was inclined to admit that man is doomed, that free will or

no, he will always progress towards devastation. When he was at school, one of

the sisters was so petrified at Eugene and his friends for going to the Wicked

Theatre that, she did not permit Eugene and his friends to receive communion,

the next morning. It was an emotionally torturing experience for Eugene, not

only because he felt that, he had done nothing wrong, but because of the manner

of punishment and scolding which indicated that his father was wicked in the

eyes of the church. This experience left a rigid mark on Eugene, which added to

his lifelong feeling of unworthiness.

The first and deepest unhappiness of his life was that of homelessness -

both psychological and physical. But both the physical and the psychological

homelessness caused by his Irish immigrant forefathers and his theatrical

heritage led to a deeper feeling of spiritual restlessness. This discordance within

his character resulted from his early experiences with Catholicism. The catholic
boarding school, to which the young boy went, was associated with the feeling of

betrayal by his parents.

In 1900, after spending three years at Mount St. Vincent, Eugene entered

De La Salle Institute in New York City. In 1902, he was transferred to Betts

academy, where he was good enough to gain the praise of his father, who had

great aspirations for Eugene. Since this time, O’Neill had read a good deal about

Bernard Shaw, when he was a student at Betts. He also read Ibsenism and

highlighted in red ink, the passages wherein he agreed with Shaw. Apparently,

He used to underline the entire text while reading. Eugene graduated from the

Betts academy in June 1996, which marks him high to allow him to be a part of

Provincetown. Eugene was hardly eighteen and was uncertain regarding his life.

Academically, he was well prepared for college but emotionally he was ill

prepared. O’Neill made no impression on Provincetown, and Provincetown made

no impression on him. Eugene engaged in very little study as possible at

Provincetown, he had embraced heavy drinking with his classmates, who even

labelled him with the title 'ego'. This was because he took himself more hastily.

O’Neill was mentally restless and temperamentally below par for settling down

and studying.

After the problematic life of Provincetown where it was extremely difficult

for O’Neill to continue, Eugene left for the United States, during the time when

his father had gone on tour. Whenever he missed his family very much, Eugene

would send his brother a postcard from time to time. Eugene was so homesick
that he wrote his parents many letters. He said he has never known how much

he would miss his mother, his father and home. There was always a sense of

detachment in Eugene's life. O'Neill married Kathleen Jenkins in 1909. The

following year, Eugene Jr. was born. However, after the failure of the marriage,

O’Neill was disheartened with his life to the extent that he decided to end his life

by attempting suicide. Later the act, he opted for travel and exploration. When

he travelled to Honduras, he found the life of a soldier to be of much

disappointment, where he suffered from flea -bites. He did not like the food

because he said it was as tough as leather. He even went on to say that; God got

the inspiration for hell after he created Honduras. He spent Christmas Day in

the town of Guahuiniquil and thought of it as the most dispiriting and gloomy

day he had ever experienced. Nevertheless, it turned out to be an adventurous

trip. However, this experience of his trip was written in his stage direction for

Emperor Jones. Eugene said "the forest is a wall of darkness dividing the world,

only when the eye becomes accustomed to the gloom can the outlines of separate

trucks of the trees be made out. Enormous pillars of deeper blackness" (Bowen

24)

In 1911, after his exploration in the Honduras, he returned to America. He

was 23. He was still primitive, and liked to drink in bars, recite poetry etc. He

also liked to read his favorite authors; some of them being Jack London, Conrad,

and Kipling, whom he had even quoted in many of his plays. His early sea plays

are known as S. S. Glencairn Cycle. Once again, in 1912, O’Neill shipped out as

an able-bodied seaman. He boarded the American line bound for Southampton,

England, with a pay of 27.50 dollars for a month. It was his last voyage, which

he undertook. On leaving his ship in New York, he got his discharge papers,

which termed him as an able seaman. He was happy to get those papers, as if it

was his education degree. It was the end of his education and his life among

people, with whom he was very close and attached. Years later O’Neill told a

reporter, "they were the best friends I ever had" (Bowen 34)

It was in May 1912, when O’Neill joined "The New London Telegraph". The

publisher of the paper was Judge Frederick P. Latimer. Eugene was the first

reporter that Latimer had hired after he bought the newspaper. Latimer had

praised Eugene to his father, James O’Neill. His father also praised Eugene

telling that he did not only possess talent, but also had a higher order of a genius.

O’Neill never had any qualms about his capabilities as a journalist. Soon after

October 1912, Eugene had begun to experience spells of nausea, accompanied

by loss of appetite. This condition of O’Neill, depicted in his autobiographical

drama Long Day’s Journey into Night, is in the shadow of four main characters

of the Tyrone family. In the story, the son alleges his father for hiring a cheap

doctor instead of a good doctor who apparently would be costlier. Following his

health problem O’Neill gave up his job of reporters on the telegraph. He was now

so ill that his family provided a nurse for him. After several weeks of illness, he

was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The dispute in the family as to whether O’Neill

should go to the 'State Farm ' for consumptives or to a private sanatorium was

an important feature of Long Day’s Journey into Night.

 In December 1912, Eugene was taken to New York to be inspected by an

eminent lung specialist, who diagnosed O’Neill's ailment as tuberculosis.

Following which, he was admitted in a good sanatorium where he recovered from

his ailment within 6 months. O’Neill returned to his family's summer home on

June 3, 1913. He has described in several ways, the after effect that the six

months stay at Gaylord Sanatorium had on him. he said,

My mind, got the chance to establish myself to digest and evaluate

the impression of many past years in which one experience had

crowded on another with never a second reflection. At Gaylord, I

really thought about my life for the first time, about past and future.

Undoubtedly the inactivity forced upon me by the life at the San

forced me to mental activity, especially as I had always been high

strung and nervous temperamentally (qtd in Bowen 54)

Contemporary American drama commenced with O’Neill’. He was a

revolutionary dramatist. He barred the conventional formula and he always

experimented with new dramatic methods. His plays show how interested he was

in the theatrical revival in Europe and in the plays of Ibsen and Strindberg. The

realism of these writers influenced of French symbolism and expressionism in

The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape and The Great God Brown. In Lazarus

Laughed, Strange Interlude and Mourning Becomes Electra he followed the

conventions of the Greek Tragedy. O’Neill’s obsession with death and gloom

display the influence of Western and Ford, the prominent Jacobean dramatists,
under the influence of Freud and Jung he intensely employs the method of

stream of consciousness and explores the psychic conditions of his main

characters. “His work reveals both strong originality and the effect of forces in

the world outside himself which sometimes help mold and sometimes actually

distort the expression of his own talents. In him, therefore, may be observed both

an individual creative writer and the effect of an intellectual milieu common to

him and his fellows”. (qtd in Kumar 513) O’Neill’s career as a dramatist is a long

record of revolution and experimentation.

O’Neill had a sense of contemporary reality but he was not content by

realism alone. Since he had the soul of a poet, he desired for something far more

momentous and for richer than mere realism. This led him into experiments with

realistic symbolistic drama. Bound East For Cardiff, a one-act play, has symbolic

setting. The foggy atmosphere in the play suggests unawareness and fear. It

must also be kept in mind that O’Neill did not completely overlook contemporary

reality. Desire Under the Elms is a realistic play, set in rural England in 19th

century. The Great God Brown associates modern realism with expressionistic

approach. All the characters are attired with masks, which they at times remove

in soliloquies to divulge their innate traits and behavior’s. The theme of Emperor

Jones is worked out with the help of symbols. The Hairy Ape was a classic

example of expressionism. Expressionism, defined as an attempt to portray inner

reality by the use of symbols, notions and distortions.

 In The Great God Brown, O’Neill tried with the addition of masks as an

experiment in dramatic effects. O'Neill clarified that it is the best means to exhibit

"those profound hidden conflicts of the mind which the probing’s of psychology

continue to disclose to us." (qtd in Kumar 514) In Lazarus Laughed, seven

masked Choruses represent seven periods of life, which is concerned with seven

types of characters. In Strange Interlude, prolong soliloquies are used to exhibit

the unspoken feelings of characters. In the trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra, the

Greek myth of Electra, Crestes and Clytemnestra is construed in the light of the

American Civil War. O’Neill dexterously used naturalistic detail with

expressionistic techniques and symbolism.

O'Neill wrote only one successful comedy, Ah! Wilderness, he was primarily

a tragic dramatist. Articulating his views on tragedy, he stated:

I suppose it is the idea I try to put into all of my plays. People talk

of the tragedy in them and call it sordid, depressing, pessimistic -

the words usually applied to anything of tragic nature. But tragedy

I think has the meaning the Greeks gave it. To them it brought

exaltation, an urge towards life and ever more life. It roused them to

deeper spiritual understanding and released them from the petty

greeds of everyday existence. When they saw a tragedy on the stage

they felt their hopeless hopes ennobled into art. (qtd in Kumar 514)

He believed that tragedy has an intense impact on human life. His view of

life is tragic. Tragedy was his essence of life. The characters of his plays projected
his tragic intensity. His plays are modern but he tried to bring into his work, an

effect in congruence with traditional tragedy. He once remarked, “Most modern

plays arc concerned with the relation between man and man, but that does not

interest me at all. I am interested only in the relation between man and God.”

(qtd in Kumar 514) Thus, his tragedies deal with man's fate, man's destiny, and

man's judgement under God. His conception of tragedy was highly influenced by

Greek tragedy. Like the Greek tragedy O'Neill's plays are lustrous and inspiring.

They can be termed as a carnival of life. In Beyond the Horizon, one can see that

suffering is pivotal for purgatory effect on man. The poetic dreamer Robert

advocates the meaning of suffering in his dying speeches. The sole purpose of

Lazarus Laughed is the celebration of life.

The roots of modern American Drama can be traced back to the Little

Theatre Movement. In 1915, an enthusiastic group of a young band called the

Provincetown players went against the stereo typicality of dramas. The writers

of this group were firm in their mission. Provincetown Players started their

journey informally in the summer of 1915, when a band of ambitious

entertainers and dramatists, including O’Neill, performed a range of one-act

plays in a provisional theatre on an old wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

They performed once again, the following summer to gather much appreciation.

Hence, with great excitement and conviction, they relocated to a small theatre in

New York’s Bohemian Greenwich Village, to become one of the first of what would

be called an Off-Broadway Theatre. Classified officially as The Provincetown

Players: The Playwrights Theatre, they enacted their own plays, which steered to
high dramatic standards. Over the course of its first six seasons, the

Provincetown Players enacted over ninety new plays, mostly one-acts, by

American playwrights. For these playwrights, the Provincetown Players offered

the first breakthrough to see and hear their plays performed. The company

contributed considerably to foster their talent by whetting their skills; although,

after a few good seasons of performance, some of its associates were paid. The

Provincetown Players were amateur and decisively experimental, but they always

had an enduring attitude of innovation and creative staging’s of fascinating

dramas. All of O’Neill’s early plays staged by the Provincetown players, included

Bound East of Cardiff (1916), The Long Voyage Home (1918), and The Moon of the

Caribbees (1919). “After O’Neill was established as a young Playwright’s to be

reckoned with, the Provincetown Players, plays of this sort probably would not

have been produced.” (Cambridge Companion to Eugene O’Neill 37) the guarding

spirit behind the Provincetown Players was George Cram Cook.

“The Provincetown players, in particular and the Washington Square

players, to a lesser degree, were two little theatres that would figure importantly

in O’Neill’s development” (Water 37) The Washington Square Players was

founded in 1914 to introduce realist and symbolist plays. It was great advantage

to new American dramatists who wrote symbolistic and realistic dramas. They

conferred over sixty productions. Mostly one act plays, mainly by American

writers, including the plays of Chekhov, Maeterlinck, Shaw and Wilde. In the fall

of 1917, the Washington Square players presented O’Neill’s “In the Zone”. They

stood out to be an amateur, volunteer arrangement, although some of its artists

including the business and technical employees received token remunerations.

The Washington Square Players constructed a critical and famous fan following,

but when important members of the organization were involved in the service in

World War 1, the organization was disbanded in May 1918; although, a year

later, the Washington Square Players reconstituted as Theatre Guild, which was

similar to its parent organization. The Guild was primarily attentive of modernist

plays, especially dramas that were anti-realist in nature, even though some of

their famous successes were realist plays.

The new Stagecraft design was introduced in the American Theatre as

early as 1911- 12. O’Neill was lucky to have many first-class directors to stage

his plays that were often difficult to direct and stage in theatres. George Cram

Cook (1873- 1924), the enlightening constructor of the Provincetown players,

creatively staged The Emperor Jones. James Light, who started his profession as

an actor and designer with the Provincetown Players, but shifted towards

directing, staged Different (1920), The Hairy Ape, All God’s Chillun Got wings,

and S.S. Glen cairn. Philip Moeller, who was the originator of the Theater Guild

was considered as a gifted and experienced director. He staged five of O’Neill

plays, including the successful Strange Interlude, and Mourning Becomes Electra.

These plays had a strong psychological underpinning in their storyline.

It is difficult to bookshelf American drama. It's a kind of chemical mixture

formulated out of various elements. The playwrights who produced it, form no

specific school and are the common students of no renowned master, either
native or foreign. There have been individual dramatists like Tennessee Williams

(1911 – 1983) and Arthur Miller (1915 - 2005), who demonstrated to draw up

their own manifestos and assertions of dramatic art and became representative

and indicative before the Second World War. These dramatists are recognized

today as one of America’s most essential and influential dramatists "The Glass

Menagerie"(1945) by Williams and "All My Sons"(1947) by Arthur Miller are

famous plays of family pressures in which the author’s attempt to depict the

right of youth to rebel against the complex world of their parents, is portrayed.

His dramaturgy was involved in portraying the conflict between an individual

and the society. Both the writers impersonated the depravity of economic,

political and social life of the American system into their dramas. Their main

subject matter was disappointment, annoyance and desperation.

Sex and violence is found in Williams plays. In some of his plays sex

becomes an elixir for women, Blanche in the streetcar, Alma in summer and

“Smoke" symbolizes corrupted ignorance. In Williams early play's, references are

made to homosexuality. Williams in Noise, World of reason, are plays based on

homosexuality. Tennessee William was a homosexual himself and the characters

of his plays, resonate his own personality. During his lifetime, at least sixty-three

plays were published. All of Williams’s major plays belong in spirit and in

dramatic technique to the (new) poetic subjective theatre. “His theatre is

concerned with dramatizing the subjective experience of his characters. In

Williams, repeating presentation of themes previously considered untouchable;

of derelicts and misfits, outcasts from a materialistic society; and of the thin line
between sanity and insanity, he has revealed a broken world not often portrayed”

(Vaidanathan 110) William is a poetic realist and his plays are psychological

tragedies.

Arthur Miller is one of the most valued American dramatist and

playwright. He is among the five major American dramatist of International

repute namely, Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur

Miller and Edwin Albee. He is a tragic dramatist of modern times. Miller was a

realistic dramatist of social and moral ethics. He was influenced by the realistic

plays of Ibsen. In All My Sons and The Death of Salesman, he adopts Ibsen’s

retrospective arrangement in which a volatile circumstance of the present, is

interpreted and brought to a crisis by the piecemeal rotation of something, which

has occurred in the past. His plays focus on the battle of an individual, striving

and trying to acquire his fair place in society and his family. Hence, he cultivated

a dramatic technique, which manifested his social purpose. Apart from All my

sons and Death of Salesman, his major works include, The Crucible, A View from

The Bridge, The Misfits and After the Fall. His characters find their origin in the

real contemporary world of today. His plays are realistic, naturalistic and

expressionistic.

Tennessee William’s style was effective, humorous and verbally luxuriant,

while Miller's plays were hard and athletic in style. Arthur Miller touched

American audiences greatly by heart trending plays, such as Death of Salesman

(1942) and The Crucible (1953). Millers’ plays often focused on small
compartments of human disputes. Williams had an emotional closeness with

Strindberg, who gave him keen perception about psychological conflict in the

mind of the characters. His characters are defeated by, their own neuroses. He

emphasized on the conflict between reality and illusion. The characters of his

plays would fall down, if they face the reality of the world. He also shared

Strindberg’s pessimism and theatricality. He used bold theatrical descriptions,

which project psychological transparency, intensity and terror. Williams portrays

many of his principal characters — mainly Blanche and Stanley — with a sense

of sexual and emotional craving, that is, a deep and uncontrollable desire to find

belonging in the arms of another person. Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams

are often thought together because they were contemporaries. More importantly,

both these authors, post the Second World War, remonstrated against the horror

of commercialism. Both of them echoed the evils of economic, social and political

life of the American system.

Fitzgerald (1896-1940) often liberated himself to be enchanted with the

rich and the glamorous. From his compilations, one can ascertain that, there is

displeasure with riches and a sense of awareness of the illusion of satisfaction

that riches represent. In short, he wrote about the tragedy of the capitalist

society. Money endows man with power, stature and dignity, which drift him

from the masses, but the rich are not heroic or supernatural. Money acts in the

form of a shield for their vulgarity, treachery and egotism as, The Great Gatsby

(1925) epitomises.
 One of the most significant events in O’Neill’s life came, when he joined

the Provincetown Players. From 1916 to 1920, O’Neill and Susan Glaspell

became the Provincetown Players most successful playwrights. He wrote

numerous one-act and full-length plays for them, many of which reflected his

life at sea, his sexual relationships, his experience at the sanatorium (The

Straw), and his flirtation with socialism (Thirst, Fog). Four of the plays, in

particular, written during this period – The Moon of the Caribbees, Bound East

for Cardiff, The Long Voyage Home, and In the Zone – fall into the category of

O’Neill’s sea plays. In 1914, O’Neill joined G.P. Bakers Academy at Harvard to

take lessons in playwriting. In 1918, he married Agnes Boulton. They had two

children's before separating. He then married Carlotta Monterey. The first play,

which O’Neill copyrighted was A Wife for Life, (1913-1914) which was a one-act

play. In Servitude, (1913-1914) and in Abortion, (1913-1914) a three and one act

play, respectively; he clearly pointed out his preoccupations with the glitches of

his first marriage, that had concluded in a divorce. The heroine of Servitude

wants to declare that independence is necessary for her advancement in life. She

reverts to her husband, after realizing that "love means servitude". Servitude is

short for a three-act play. In A Wife for Life, O’Neill drafts the drama in a similar

streak. He said that, it was the only play, he ever wrote to make money.

The sea plays, which O’Neill began to compile at first, had a very powerful

storyline. In Thirst (1916), he portrayed the character of a West Indian mulatto

sailor, a dancer and a gentleman on a raft, who were dying of thirst. The

gentleman and the dancer are of the view that mulatto has drinking water,
concealed somewhere on the raft. The dancer offers her necklace to the mulatto,

and then her body, in exchange of water. The sailor refuses both, as a result the

dancer dies of thirst. The mulatto takes out his knife and indicates that he is

going to satisfy his hunger and thirst, the man pushes the woman's body into

the sea. The mulatto thereupon plunges his knife into the man. Both men scuffle

and fall into the sea. The necklace remains on the raft, glittering in the spotlight.

Thirst is incredibly melodramatic, and probably said to derive from O’Neill's

readings of Jack London.

Warnings (1913-1914) is about a wireless operator who, while on leave,

learns that he may go deaf at any time. He ships out on a voyage. When his ship

starts to sink, he sends a message asking for help, but he is unable to hear an

answer because deafness has overtaken him. The play ends with his suicide. Fog

(1916) is the best of O’Neill’s, very early plays. It is not naturalistic, for the

characters show the attribute of greed versus idealism. It is more of a

conversation between a businessman, and a poet who are sailing unanchored in

a ship, along with a woman and a dead child. The arguments put forth by the

poet to the businessman makes the audience think about the inhuman capitalist

society, who has no value for humanity. The poet says that the death of the boy

is a blessing in disguise, so that he can be away from poverty and a savage life.

There is a certain beauty in the drama that arises in the production and

foreshadows the expressionism of such later plays as the Hairy Ape. Richard

badger of the Gorham press in Boston published the book under the title ‘Thirst’.

It contained besides the title play, The Web (1913-1914), The Recklessness
(1913-1914), The Fog and Warnings. After Eugene achieved recognition, Thirst

became a collector’s item. It was one of the scarcest modern American first

editions, and a copy has fetched as much as sixty-five dollars.

One of his first plays, which O’Neill wrote during the year at Harvard was

The Sniper (1915), it is a story of a Belgian peasant who has witnessed his family

slain and his land occupied by Germans. He turns his guns on the Germans,

but becomes a captive. The storyline is sentimentally conceptualised, but there

was also a political viewpoint in the storyline; apparently "Bleeding Belgium"

during the World War 1, was an issue which America was concerned in 1915.

O’Neill wrote other plays while at the workshop, A Knock at the Door, A Comedy

of Little Humor, and Belshazzar. These plays were not that effective biblical plays,

written in six scenes.

Late in the spring of 1916, O’Neill wrote Bound East of Cardiff, (1916),

which demonstrated great advancement in the quality of his work. The dialogue

had a compelling honesty and an arena of truth about it. Bound East of Cardiff,

the first Eugene O’Neill’s play, ever to be produced was out at the Wharf Theater

in Provincetown, the same summer. The gracious reception in Provincetown of

Bound East of Cardiff helped to bring O’Neill back to productivity. He authored

more one-act plays, In the Zone (1917), Ile, (1917) The Long Voyage Home, (1917)

Moon of the Caribbees (1918), and Where The Cross is Made (1918). They were

all plays of the sea as, he compiled them beside the sea and entitled under the

name of ‘S. S Glencairn’. Things were looking very favorable to O’Neill during the
phase when he wrote these six, one-act plays, inclusive of “The Rope” Susan

Glaspell quoted,

The sea has been good to Eugene O’Neill, it was there for his

opening, there was a fog, just as the script demanded, a fog bell in

the harbor, the tide was in, and it washed under us and around,

spraying through the holes in the floor, giving us the rhythm and

flavor of the sea (qtd in Bowen 81).

His Provincetown friends were very impressed by O’Neill's

moods, particularly his phases of “black despair,” (82) O’Neill's feeling of

isolation from his fellow man, at times attained appalling heights. He pondered

within, about the fact of him being born as a human; he thought it would have

been much better for him to be born as a fish or a seagull, so that he could

escape the pain and distress, which he endures, by being born as human. In his

lowest moments, he deeply lamented and wondered, if he should have never been

born as a human at all. Besides completing the four sea plays in 1916 -17, O’Neill

wrote a short story entitled Tomorrow. The Rope (1918), was a one-act play,

where O’Neill was ironic about the networking of the New Testament's allegory

of the prodigal son; it is best understood, as a transition for his experimental

study of the New England Culture. Beyond the Horizon (1920), is O’Neill's first

full-length play, and also the winner of 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The

misdeeds of characters due to greed, was one of the main areas of O’Neill’s

writing and the reason for the enduring success of the play. His father, James
O’Neill, who was able to mark with his presence, six months before his death,

took enormous contentment in his son’s success. It was a drama which went

against the theatrical conventions, stereotypy and against the popular taste of

the time. It introduced a new era in the American theatre. Within a year, “The

Emperor Jones” was produced in New York, it followed the similar pattern, as its

predecessor (Beyond the Horizon) but won greater acclaim for its subject matter

and technique. The Emperor jones was beyond the confines of the American

theatre and the imagination of the world. The play was a blend of expressionism

and realism. This play narrates the tale of Brutus Jones, an African - American

man who kills a man and goes to the prison, subsequently breaks away from the

prison to a Caribbean Island and proclaims himself as an emperor. The play

retells his story in flashbacks as Brutus makes his way through the forest, in an

attempt to escape the former subjects who had denied obeying him. The Emperor

Jones won the second Pulitzer Prize for O’Neill and was included in Burns

Mantles, the best plays of 1920-1921.

O’Neill, had drafted his experiences when he was at, Jimmy the Priest, in

the compilation of his play, which he firstly titled as Chris Christopher Sen, but

subsequently after learning from the American Scandinavian foundation that the

last syllable should be spelled as 'Son'; this play was rewritten and produced as

Anna Christine in 1921. O Neill's stature had immensely improved in the form of

dialogue, which was becoming lyrical and dramatic simultaneously. The

characters symbolized themselves and yet were representative of all that O’Neill

could imagine which was imminent of human nature. It is a story of a girl, who
becomes a prostitute after raped during her childhood. She falls in love and

wants to mend her life in a manner suitable for her to be with her lover, but faces

difficulties in her life, in trying to do so. Anna is a memorable character, one of

O’Neill's truly conspicuous creations. The execution of her character in the

advancement of the play, overpowers the gaudy background in the play. There

is no doubt that Anna is an unforgettable personality in dramatic literature.

The Hairy Ape, written in 1921, was O’Neill's message, of one of his most

important notion, that man has 'lost' his place in the universe and that, the

man’s entity is reclusive from the history, his fellow men, and his cause. With

the barbaric characterization of Yank, O’Neill implies that barbarism is termed

for a man who is ignorant of the rules and norms of the elite class. The Hairy

Ape is a play in eight scenes, where O’Neill acknowledged one of his prime panic,

which agonized him throughout his life, “The Fear of Rejection, or the sense of

Not Belonging" (137). While writing the play, O’Neill in his own dramatic style,

portrays the concept that, man has "lost" his social compliance with nature.

O’Neill wrote Hairy Ape, which was a dramatized philosophy rather than

persuasive drama that involved the depiction of an individual human personality

in converse with the elite class. The Hairy Ape, The First Man and The Fountain,

were all written in 1921. These plays can be termed as plays that were half-

pragmatic and half comical, which included a true middle-class sarcasm. The

plays were romantic in nature, which he wrote in the same year. Only three years

after the production of his first full length play, and on the basis of only four

major successes of that time, namely, Beyond the Horizon, The Emperor Jones,
Anna Christine and The Hairy Ape, his brilliance reached unprecedented heights.

He was then, universally recognized as, America’s greatest Dramatist.

Desire under the Elms (1924) was one of the most acclaimed dramas of

O’Neill. This drama, can be considered as one of the greatest American domestic

horror stories. Every character is awful and everyone loses. O’Neill fulfilled his

stated theorem, he quoted, "There is beauty to me even in ugliness - I don't love

life because it's pretty; prettiness is only clothes-deep, I am a truer lover than

that. I love it naked" (qtd in Bowen152) In Desire under the Elms, characters are

stripped nude, and they are not beautiful, as in so many of O’Neill's plays. The

characters do not fit the slots, assigned to them in their lives; in-fact "they are

larger than life, they are what they are and something more, they are all of us"

(152)

Unlike most creative writers, O’Neill was trying to be vigilant about deepest

thoughts and emotions of the protagonists and of him. Many of his greatest

successes probed and dramatized this inner world. Since, there was intensity

involved in his plays, psychologists and psychoanalysts have been deeply

interested in his dramas. In addition, the concept of ‘Primitivism’ was widespread

around the same time. Primitivism is the rejection of technology and a desire to

return humanity to its raw state. It worked, in many ways, to oppose the Harlem

Renaissance artists seeking to deny any association between African Americans

and primitiveness. Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis, as well as Nietzsche’s

Dionysian philosophy played an important role in shaping O’Neill’s plays. O’Neill

often became interested in the modernist movements of his time and applied

them to his dramas, thereby ensuring his place as the literary archetype of the

modernism.

O’Neill wrote only one successful comedy, Ah! Wilderness, he was primarily

a tragic dramatist; he believed that tragedy had great influence on human life.

His view of man, in general, was essentially tragic. His plays were modern, but

he strove to bring into his work, in harmony with classical tragedy. His tragedies

dealt with man’s fate, destiny and man’s judgement under God. His conception

of tragedy was highly influenced by Greek tragedy.

In Marco Millions (1924), O’Neill placed side-by-side, the utilitarianism of

the orderly world and the romantic and mysterious East. The modern Marco

alias George F. Babbitt alias The Great God Brown, became the archrival of all

things beautiful. Through his drama The Great God Brown, O’Neill, illustrated

that man cannot attain salvation unless he abandons worldly materialism. The

character in the drama accepts the defeat, which his dream indicates, and

reverts to spiritual faith. The character signifies that man renounces the ultimate

goodness in the appetite for practical goodness. Therefore, according to O’Neill,

modern man should decline all belief in materialistic advancement and long only

for an ideal perfection. Therefore, man should disown the material for the pure

and sheer ideal. The early dramas of O’Neill had characterized the ideal

perfection. The latter dramas of O’Neill, criticized the material imperfection. It

remained for the major dramas to illustrate the inner conflict of good and evil,
advancing to the great rejection. The Straw (1919) was a very sentimental play

based on O’Neill's relationship with a woman who loved him, while he spent time

in a sanatorium for the cure of Tuberculosis. The play adhered to the

autobiographical segments very well. Ah! Wilderness (1933), the only comedy,

which he wrote much later, referred to, as the only play, in which O’Neill did not

highlight the attributes of despair and loss, which usually dominates his work;

although Lazarus Laughed (1925) is filled with quiet optimism about Life.

His mid-career plays included, The Welded (1924), All Gods Chillun Got

Wings (1924). Welded, portrays human being's straightforward and honest

initiative in tackling love, and yet remains defeated in his attempts to acquire

the same, because of the ambiguity of life. O’Neill is more realistic in his

approach in Welded. In "Gods Chillun got Wings", O’Neill’s theme is about a story,

where a Negro marries a white girl and remains unhappy. It consists of seven

scenes showcasing the ups and downs in the advancement of the romance of the

heterogeneous couple. It can be regarded more as an expressionistic drama.

O’Neill's career from 1925 to 1936 included plays like The Great God Brown

(1928), Strange Interlude (1928); a Pulitzer Prize winner. Dynamo (1929), Days

Without End (1934), and Mourning Becomes Electra (1931). These were plays of

full length. These plays corroborate O’Neill's experimentation with theatrical

technique. In 1917, O'Neill met Agnes Boulton, a successful writer of commercial

fiction and they married on 12 April 1918. Over the next few years, the couple

had two children, Shane and Oona. He continued to suffer from depression and
his state of mind, was even more traumatized. His parents and elder brother

Jamie O’Neill an alcoholic, died within three years of one another, 1920-1923.

After a year, O’Neill's domestic situation had become precarious after meeting

actress Carlotta Monterey. O’Neill was so impressed with Carlotta, that she

seemed a woman with sophistication and self-reliant. She possessed great talent

for organization and had sympathetic attitude. He juxtaposed Carlotta’s traits

with Agnes instability and superficial sociability, which persuaded him to end

the relationship with Agnes and marry Carlotta. O’Neill underwent great

emotional upheaval during his split from Agnes. In 1925, O’Neill had completed

The Great God Brown, it was that time when, the daughter of O’Neill, Oona O’Neill

has been just two months old and his second wife Agnes Boulton had shifted in

a rented house along with her children while Eugene stayed in New York. Family

life had always made Eugene nervous. It was very difficult for Eugene to adhere

to family pressures and bindings. He was an extremely uneasy father. The

relationship between him and Agnes was never peaceful.

One of the most significant plays of O’Neill is the Trilogy, Mourning

Becomes Electra (1931) which recounts the Oedipus and Electra myth with

Freudian Psychosexual longings, replacing destiny as the compelling factor in

the lives of the characters. He wrote Lazarus Laughed (1925), in an effort to come

to terms with the question of living in the present or living with the idea of the

future judgement. The drama was a long philosophical meditation with lot of

actors making up the masked chorus. Strange interlude (1928) was one of the

most ambitious plays O’Neill had undertaken in his career. It was enormous in
length and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1928. Although O’Neill had

completed the play in 1923, it was not produced at Broadway until

1928. Strange Interlude makes tremendous use of soliloquy in its style and

technique, in which the characters divulge their inner thoughts to the audience.

Regardless of his award of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, O’Neill's

eminence decreased steadily in 1935. It was not until after his death that the

plays of his last period gained popular appreciation and acceptance. The plays,

Iceman Cometh (1946), Long Days Journeys into Night (1941), A Moon for the

Misbegotten (1943), A Touch of Poet (1935-42) and More - Stately Mansions (1953)

were plays written during his last period. These plays are by large

autobiographical in content, but deeply tragic in resonance and style. Tension

between father and son was of innate curiosity to O'Neill. His preoccupation with

the father who threatens the life or spirit of his son brings the story of the

sacrifice of Isaac to mind. The Old Testament concept of family inheritance,

blood-ties and birthright, known in the story of Abraham often, builds O'Neill's

generational disputes.

O’Neill’s plays were written from an intensely personal point of view,

deriving directly from the disfiguring family’s tragic associations of his mother

and father, who loved and tormented each other. Both Desire Under the Elms

and Long Day's Journey into Night depict generational conflicts. In the former

play, the harshness of the puritanical father prevails; while the later play ends

with the sense that the sacrifice can be avoided by turning away. The son lives
on to become a poet. In both the dramas, the precarious equilibrium between

hatred and love, strife and reconciliation between father and son is visible. The

father and son are portrayed as foes and yet potential friends. Their relationship

is fueled with anger, crudity, revenue and hatred that grace O'Neill's

dramatization of father and son.

Michael Manheim studies the character of O’Neill in accordance with his

Long Day’s Journey and states, "O’Neill thus makes yearning for unity between

the man and nature. The Sum and substance of Edmunds confession" (Eugene

O’Neill Language of Kinship 1982 np) Through the colloquy of Edmund in Long

Day’s Journey into Night, O’Neill tries to portray, that he had started to sense

things more powerfully because of the sordid experience of his childhood. Eugene

O’Neill's dramas had amassed great momentum and acceptance in the world of

theatre, which confirmed to be the future of American theatre. Eugene O’Neill

was gifted with artistic consistency and energy to change the theatre industry in

America, since he was literally born "into" it. O’Neill was acquainted with the

dramatic world since his childhood through his father who was already an

integral part of the mainstream theatre. O’Neill brought to the stage, the richness

of psychological intensity that rarely was seen before in American drama. His

colloquy was conscious to the regional and ethnic vernacular and the intensity

within his characterizations were rarely been leveled by any other dramatist ever.

O’Neill’s dramas examine his alcoholism, his life at sea, his father’s

disappointments, his mother’s drug addiction, his brother’s suicide by alcohol,

and his own imperfection. His social dramas try to portray a conventional

American family who was consumed with materialistic need. His plays probe the

American Dream, race relations, class conflicts, sexuality, human aspirations,

disappointment, estrangement, psychoanalysis, with such a thoroughness and

intensity, that his contemporaries could barely speculate. He wrote about the

affluent and the underclass. His plays take account of the contemporary

relationships and the human frailties in the relationships.

O’Neill was deeply compassionate towards the working class. In 1916,

O'Neill wore his sailor's uniform for his first entry into the theatre. At the age of

28, five years after his sea voyages, he used his old American Line jersey during

his return to Provincetown. During his audition with the Provincetown Players,

O’Neill costumed himself as a seasoned seaman, carrying a sailor's back-pack

full of plays. The Players wore flannel shirts to intermix with the working

class. O'Neill's outlook was contemplative. His clothing implicated physical

labor. He was inwardly a poet and playwright, but outwardly, a sailor. He was

well groomed and solemn between the sea and land while associating him with

the working class. O’Neill considered it as leisure to be able to know the working

class.

Normand Berlin, in O’Neill's Shakespeare (1993) explores, attributes far

beyond implications and references. He laid emphasis on the probing of

fundamental, essential and the instinctive bond of O’Neill with Shakespeare,

which Berlin finds quite evident in O’Neill’s creative imagination. The works of
Shakespeare influenced O’Neill. Berlin recognizes many small elements of

Othello in O’Neill's works. It is one of the many Shakespeare’s plays that O’Neill

carried the whole within him. The character of his hero father in the role of the

"Moor", - was one of James O’Neill's best-played roles. O’Neill was sensitive

towards the characters of Shakespeare. The Plays of Othello, Macbeth, and

Hamlet greatly inspired O’Neill. Berlin states, "Of course, it would have been

impossible for O'Neill not to have been influenced by Shakespeare,"

acknowledges Berlin, but this is an influence of an unusual and extraordinary

sort, “"a family romance" that transcends their obvious differences—a romance

that "takes in all O'Neill's life and art." (Michigan Publishing np)

O’Neill’s dramatic development, is broadly be classified into three

periods. The first period of development was from 1913 -1919. The Thirst series

includes Thirst, The Web, Recklessness, Warning, Fog, and Bound East of Cardiff.

The Moon Series comprise of, The Moon of Caribbees, The Long Voyage Home, In

the Zone, Ile, Where the Cross is Made, and The Rope. During this period, O’Neill’s

advancement from the field of one- act melodramas to the much nobler kind of

drama. This advancement made him compile plays that were mostly realistic.

His sea plays have shown remarkable transition since his first production in

1914. All the plays in this group, were compiled near the sea. These plays show

the author's grasp of the material, his power to describe the character and his

poetic imagination.
 The second period of development of Eugene O’Neill was from 1919 – 1927.

O’Neill wrote plays ranging from Realism, Naturalism and Symbolism in full

length, which was the need of the period. He experimented with different forms

and dramaturgy. The plays included were Beyond the Horizon, The Emperor

Jones, Diff 'rent', Gold, Anna Christine, The Straw, The First Man, Welded, All

God's Chillun Got Wings, Desire Under the Elms, Hairy Ape, The Fountain, Marco

Millions, The Great God Brown. His dramatic realm enlarged and the subjective

element in his work improved. In the depiction of characters, O’Neill was more

successful in representing the humble folk.

The third period of O’Neill’s advancement was from 1927- 1929. He wrote

plays like Strange Interlude, Lazarus Laughed, and Dynamo. O’Neill continued

his experiments in form, by engaging in psychological novels. Since then, he had

written many autobiographical plays of enormous eminence. His dramas were

prone towards political and psychological aspects. His plays also had religious

underpinnings, even though he had reservations towards the rules and

regulations imposed by religion. It can-be ascertained that his potential as a

playwright was unique.

There is very little comedy in any of his plays. The dramatist had led

himself away from the dungeon of mythical hopes and dreams. Hence, it can-be

regarded that he has always been a victim of the slavery of his past. O'Neill

utilized this trait of him, as the very essence of compiling modern drama. He saw

the potentiality of a new world in which men will recognize their human
limitations, abandoning all yearning for supernatural attributes and embrace

the brief span of life on this earth as good in itself. O’Neill can be fundamentally

considered as a passionate lover of humanity, a man to whom life is tragic,

exciting and adventurous. He was a craftsman of compelling power and an artist

in intent. Psychological and moral distress paves the way for spiritual and social

dilemmas. The more O'Neill's character’s wish for higher ideals, for spiritual

fulfillment, intellectual or moral freedom, the more involved they become in

wrecked relationships and addiction. O'Neill was a finer thinker than has often

been acknowledged. He wrote not just out of his own pain and harm, but also

that of his nations. He portrayed America's modern collapse in a framework of

classical tragedy.

“No other American and few writers in history have written their greatest

works at the end of their careers” (Black, 1999, 170). A common criticism of most

American artists has been that, they deteriorated and were unsuccessful in

developing beyond a certain point and all too often, they have regressed. Among

O’Neill's American contemporaries who also won the Nobel Prize was Sinclair

Lewis, who clearly deteriorated after writing Arrow smith. Similarly, John

Steinbeck regressed after writing Grapes of Wrath, Even Melville, whose earlier

quest resembled O’Neill, wrote Moby Dick in mid-career and after that only minor

compilations. Among his contemporaries and compatriots, O’Neill continued to

grow spiritually and improve artistically at the very end. Until his concluding

dramas were published, he had seemed to belong to an earlier generation. “In

the 1920's he has given historic exposition and verbalization to the "modern
temper" (170) with absence of faith and spiritual complexity. Black opines that

many of his plays were autobiographical, but beyond biography, his life as a

whole was a series of dramatic stage, which always had an enduring mission.

While O’Neill's struggled with the disputes of his individual life, of his family, and

of his times, these personal battles recapitulated the universal problems of the

dramatist’s long journey through all time and places.

O’Neill’s decelerated drastically in the 1930’s. The charming comedy, Ah!

Wilderness was produced by the Theatre Guild in 1932, which staged for 289

performances. The Guilds production of Day’s Without End in 1934, gathered

many critical judgements and views, which collapsed commercially, staging for

a mere 57 performances. O’Neill was filled with dismay and sorrow,

professionally during this juncture. O’Neill was also afflicted with illness and

family emergency and drew back from the hurly-burly of Broadway. It was only

during 1946, with the production of The Iceman Cometh, was an O’Neill play

displayed in New York. In the interim, Broadway went through a thorough

change. Affected by the economic pinch of the great depression and debilitated

by Hollywood’s growth on its talent and by its own organizational strain,

Broadway’s stock plummeted. The Theatre guild, despite pecuniary hitch and

internal grooves remained afloat. The social and political confusion of the time,

give way to new theatrical grouping, new dramatic voices with varying subject

matter. “With the onset of World War II, theatrical productions rebounded

slightly, but the American Theatre would never recapture its glory days of the

teens and the twenties” (Water, Ed Manheim 49). Artistically O’Neill was
disconnected from these vibes and chiefly forgotten by the theatrical world. “Only

after his death would there once again develop an American theatre both able

and eager to embrace his plays” (49).

As far as O’Neill's love life was concerned, O’Neill had three marriages. The

first one could be regarded as a nonsensical union of two youths out of eagerness

without any forbearance of the matrimonial responsibilities. The second

marriage to Agnes Bolton vouched for the most fruitful and contented periods of

his literary career. While the marriage lasted the longest are with Carlotta

Monterey. In 1944, O’Neill was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which had

entirely shattered the hope of his recuperation. The final loss of his creative

power resulted in increased disappointment and annoyance. While he had been

writing the later plays, his third wife Carlotta has acted as a patron and guardian

of his talents, by keeping away reporters and nonessential visitors away from

O’Neill. She had shielded him both from the allurement of the world and of his

own nature. But in 1946, when O’Neill found himself unable to work during the

later stages of his life, he started engaging himself into new activities. Beyond

the professional activity, he suddenly found new contentment and delight in

social affiliations, both with old friends and with new acquaintances. For the first

time, he fancied the egotism of being a literary lion, but Carlotta, jealous both of

his old friends and new acquaintances, and no longer able to control or protect

him, became unsettled with O’Neill. At last she abandoned him and subsequently

both suffered complete physical and nervous breakdowns. Ironically, both got
medicaments from the same hospital. They eventually recovered and were finally

reconciled.

O’Neill was compelled by the same conflicts and problems that agonized

his early years. He desired the companionship of children and friends. He wanted

to reconcile with his children to have good contacts with Eugene Jr, and with

Shane and Oona, but Oona offended Carlotta in many ways. She married Charlie

Chaplin, who was a close friend of Carlotta's previous husband and a man as

old as her father. This act of Oona compelled O’Neill to disown his daughter.

Shane had already suffered from the family curse of drink and dope, but Eugene

Jr. had attained success as an eminent scholar, and had won his father’s

admiration. But, his radical politics, much like his fathers in youth, offended

Carlotta, and the father was coerced to choose between wife and son. He chose

Carlotta, and Eugene Jr, committed suicide. Apparently the alternate name of

tragedy turned out to be O’Neill. O’Neill did not incorporate into his dramaturgy,

the attitude of disrespect to the worldly and practical affair, neither was he an

escapist in the romantic sense of the term. Being an existentialist, he bargained

with life in a very realistic and authentic manner. As a dramatist, his

commitment was to the loyal dramatization of human character.

When Eugene O’Neill died in 1953, he reserved his mandate before his

death that he be buried without commemoration, and that the tombstone over

his grave be inscribed with the simple word "O’NEILL". A decade later, the most

complete biography of him was entitled simply "O'NEILL" “Both the man and his
dramatic achievement were unique. There was something monolithic about him,

but there was also something protean". (Carpenter p1) O’Neill was somehow

greater than the sum of all his work.

There were revolutionary objectives and motifs in the beginning of the 20th

Century in the discipline of drama. These revolutionary motifs were implemented

with the backdrop of psychology, which has been formulated in the late

Nineteenth Century. The emergence of such psychological stance and ideas

influenced the creativity of literature, during that time. Technicality and

deductive explanation was not easy for a novice to understand. The

methodological and organized method that was available for the common man

to read during the Elizabethan and Victorian era was replaced by the

disorganized and confused world. Hence a new methodology had to be followed

by the dramatists in order to keep the audience’s interested in the literary works.

Therefore, the contemporary dramatist or novelists had to scan methods and

topics suitable to the present environment. The concept of psychology highly

influenced dramatists to incorporate the same in their dramas, which dealt with

the interior of the human psyche. Psychological dimension offered various

intricate associations of the human mind, both conscious and unconscious. The

complications and convolutions of the human mind were dealt in a very subtle

manner. Most of the Twentieth Century literary works were concerned with the

correlation between psychoanalysis and literary analysis. The maneuvering from

the conscious realm of a person to the unconscious, from the tangible to the

intangible were established. These establishments had outstanding links with

the conceptualizations of Freud and Jung, who were clearly regarded as the

pioneers of modern psychology and psychoanalytical expressions.

The psychological theories of Freud and Jung influenced O’Neill’s

conception of the tragic hero. The unconscious takes the place of fate or destiny.

He shared the belief with Jung that human actions, motives and the problems

related with them issue not from man’s personal unconscious but from ‘the

collected unconscious’, shared by the entire race. O’Neill deftly illustrates the

working of the collective unconscious in Emperor Jones.

In O’Neill’s play’s the conflict takes place within the mind of the

protagonist. It is the struggle of the conscious will to assert itself against and

unconscious will. The struggle ends tragically in death or insanity. Tragedy

arises from man’s inability to know himself. Yank in The Hairy Ape is rudely

shaken out of self-confidence when a society girl describes him as filthy beast or

hairy ape. He feels that he belongs to nowhere. In his pursuit of self-discovery,

he is killed by the brute. In their pursuit of self-discovery O’Neill’s protagonists

often suffer from an illusion about themselves and create a false self-image.

Thus, they suffer from fatal or tragic flaw which ultimately results in death or

insanity. Nina in A Strange Interlude and Lavinia in Mourning Becomes Electra

are victims of neurosis, which leads them to sufferings and downfall. Blundering

self-deluded protagonists in Beyond the Horizon and The Hairy Ape head

inevitably to destruction. O’Neill attempted naturalistic treatment of classical

themes in Desire Under the Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra. O’Neill’s
modernity consists both in the ideas he expressed and in the techniques in which

he wrapped the ideas. Gassner writes “His response to the vogue of depth

psychology led him to modernize further both dramatic form and content by

attempting to manifest subconscious tensions. The means he adopted for this

purpose carried him into areas of experimentation which only venturesome

playwrights dared to enter and where only adept ones could survive.” (qtd in

Kumar 516)

The mental agony and the repressed emotional turbulence of the dramatist

and his characters are evident in the framework of the play. Even though O’Neill

was greatly motivated by the theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, he did

not blatantly incorporate them into his plays. His complete use of Greek forms,

themes, and characters, blended with his own acquaintances of life, firmly

creates a myth, paving way for psychological truth that are in line with the

Complexes of Electra and Oedipus. This synergy showcases staunch

observations of psychoanalysis. The critics had no contention regarding the fact

that, O’Neill’s, plays were greatly stirred by the psychological formularizations of

the 19th century. The current play demolishes people’s cosmetic sophistication,

demeanor and countenance, to bring out their originality in the crudest form.

There are many conspicuous instances in Desire under the Elms' where we are

notified of the persistent struggle of the subconscious psyche to liberate itself as

a result of repression in its raw form. The intention of Eugene O’Neill clearly

portrays the intention of coalesce of modern psychological aspects into his

contemporary adaptations of the ancient mythic characters. He renovated the

Greek characters, by creating his own myth out of those characters and giving

dimensions to the characterization so by applying his psychological stance.

Hence, the characterization of hidden disputes is of primal importance to O’Neill.

In the light of what has been observed earlier, it is evident that O’Neill was ably

assisted by dramatists like Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, who were

instrumental in the origin and the development of twentieth century American

Drama. The present study aims at O’Neill’s contribution to American Drama and

how he came under the influence of Greek tragedies and the psychoanalytical

theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung will be examined in every

chapter with reference to the selected plays. In the ensuing chapter, an attempt

is made to enumerate the important psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud

and Carl Gustav Jung which influenced the contemporary writers to a large

extent and heralded the advent of Modernism in twentieth century literature in

general and Eugene O’ Neill in particular.