"Gold Thread" And "Clothes": A Comparative Study Of Mourning Becomes Electra And Thunderstorm

Scholars have long been focusing their attention on the relationship between O'Neill and Cao Yu. There're many similarities in plots, characters, dramatic techniques and the tragic views in O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra and Cao Yu's Thunderstorm. By a comparative study of the two plays, this dissertation tries to gain a better understanding of the two plays and the two playwrights' creative thinking. After a brief introduction to the playwrights and the plays, the dissertation compares firstly the tragic views reflected in the two plays. Their tragic views can be traced to the same origin: the ancient Greek Tragedy. However, they melt in the plays their own idea as well as national and social content so as to make their works unique. Secondly, the characters are successfully created in the two plays. The dissertation attaches importance to the comparison of Lavinia, Christine and Fan Yi. It was the suffocated environment they lived in that molded their complicated dispositions and led to their tragic endings. The last but not the least, both O'Neill and Cao Yu employed skillfully symbolic images to intensify the tragic atmosphere of their tragedies and the tragic fate of their characters. The visual and aural symbolic images, such as the Mannon house, the Zhou house, the mask-like face, the blessed islands and the thunderstorm are under comparison for better appreciation of the dramatic techniques of the two playwrights.