| Compared with other artistic forms, plays are subject to times, which are sensitive to and often keep in step with changeable social environment. When it comes to Chinese drama, one point we can't ignore. That is the foreign influence. As we all know, modem Chinese drama itself was imported from the west. So comparison is indispensable when we talk about it.Cao Yu is the greatest playwright of modern Chinese literature. His Thunderstorm is the first play of many acts in China. Ever since its publication, we view striking similarities between Thunderstorm and O'Neill's Morning Becomes Electro. The present author analyzes the above two plays from four respects: background information, themes, characters, and style, to present the influence of O'Neill on Cao Yu.The first chapter is background information, which consists of the two playwrights' education, their life experiences, and social and literary backgrounds in the corresponding countries. From the analysis, we know the two playwrights have a lot in common. They were both fostered unconsciously by their family. Cao Yu spent his childhood with his stepmother watching ancient Chinese drama, while O'Neill's kindergarten was his father's backstage. The seeds of love for drama were planted even before they began schooling. They kept on polishing their writing skills as they grew up. When they took their pens, Cao Yu and O'Neill virtually faced the same social and literary situations. Both countries were in their darkest periods in history. China was all in wars: civil wars among warlords, and the Japanese invasion. As O'Neill wrote Morning Becomes Electra, it was the onset of the great depression. Literary circles in America and China at that time also shared some similarities. In America, there was actually no independent professional theater outside of the highly commercialized "Great White Way". Plays on stages were from Europe, and even the chief actors were imported. The same thing happened in China, Hong Shen once remarked: we faced five difficulties: no scripts,no actors, no money, no theater, and no audience. Both playwrights were pacesetters for play writing in their own countries.Chapter two is O'Neill's thought and its influence on Cao Yu. The author also discusses the themes of two plays. As O'Neill took his pen, the stage was filled with imported stuffs, which he was really sick of. O'Neill introduced a rather new world to the American theater. He combined his realistic knowledge of life with an overriding philosophical concern about the relation of man to the Universe. O'Neill's respect and admiration to the unknowing force and the love for life impressed Cao Yu much. Among all foreign dramatists, save for Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill has perhaps had the most decisive influence on the Chinese stage, exerting a profound impact upon the development of modern Chinese drama. The two plays share the same three themes. They are as follows: love cannot leap over social gap, the stranglehold of the past on present, sin of fathers. In the two plays, they both describe love among people of different classes. Masters and their maids fall in love to give birth to children. Human instinct emotion may lead to sexual lust. However the social differences have deformed their relationships, which are the roots of tragedies. When these men and women are in love because of common desire and lust, the social gap has already in their way. The deformed love results in hatred and revenge.In the two plays, fate springs out of the family. However it is not a God or other super beings to decide these characters' fates but their own desires. Everyone wants to accomplish his/her own dreams but another is in the way. No one succeeds; death conquers all finally.The male members in two plays suggest another prominent theme: the father as the sinner. Fathers in the two families created fortune and enjoyed themselves while they committed crimes at the same time. As a result, every one in the families suffered.Chapter three is on O'Neill's styles and technique, and their...
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