A Comparative Study Of Characters And Themes Between Desire Under The Elms And Thunderstorm

Eugene O'Neill, a major figure in American drama, is regarded as"the father of American modern dramas". His enormous output is in the tradition of realism for which O'Neill won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize three times. Desire under the Elms, one of his masterpieces, has gained tremendous applause after being performed in 1924. Cao Yu, one of the famous modern dramatists, has been praised highly after his first play Thunderstorm, which has been believed to be the first realistic tragedy in China. The birth of Thunderstorm both set up a milestone for Cao to be the first one for Chinese tragedy and paved the way for the development of this literary genre. Eugene O'Neill and Cao Yu are the two leading playwrights in America and China respectively in the 20th century, and their influence is international. Recently, as the development of comparative literature, more and more scholars have been making studies from diverse angles. The thesis attempts to make a parallel study, analyzing the experiences, the themes and characters, to reveal their similarities and differences. The thesis attempts to make a parallel study to reveal their similarities and differences in the experiences, and the themes and characters in their works.The thesis consists of three parts: introduction, the main body and conclusion.The introduction offers a brief survey of the study on these two playwrights in the international world, the approach we resort to, the purpose, creativity and the significance of this thesis.The second part is the main body composed of three chapters.The first chapter is the background information of the two playwrights. First is their family background, including the education and highlights in their whole life. Both O'Neill and Cao Yu are not only outstanding dramatists, but also excellent actors. O'Neill's father is a famous actor for Shakespeare's plays in America, and his backstage is O'Neill's first place to relate plays as well as the initial for O'Neill's drama road. O'Neill said, play, in one way, was an important part of his blood. It is curiously coincident that Cao Yu was fostered in an environment closely related with play. As a three-year-old boy, his step-mother frequented to the traditional Chinese theatre with him. It is reasonable to say that the seeds of love for drama were planted when they were children. Growing up, O'Neill began to write plays formally with his plentiful experiences; Cao Yu read a great many traditional Chinese dramas and western plays and acted in person as a student in Nan Kai Middle School. In Tsinghua University, Cao Yu majored in western literature, reading extensively, which provided plentiful material and knowledge for his later dramatic creation. The similarities in works also lie in the fact that they have similar childhood. O'Neill lived in a family in which his mother was addicted to opium and father was indifferent to his sons and daughters; while for Cao Yu, he lost his mother as an infant. Thus in these two works,lacking mother love and the depressing family are more or less presented. Good works take their root in society and reflect society. The social situations influence the two writers deeply. In America of O'Neill's days, the crisis lurked in every side and economic crisis troubled people. When Cao Yu took his pen, the Chinese people were living in extreme misery: civil wars among warlords and the invasion of Japanese. Both O'Neill and Cao Yu criticized the social reality of the times as other writers, describing the conflicts between Puritanism and freedom, the collision between feudalism and capitalism. It is also true that they both accepted the aesthetics of the western classical tragedies, namely, the ancient Greek tragedies, Shakespeare's tragedies and western modern tragedies. Greece is the origin of western civilization as well as the birthplace of drama. It is necessary to start with Greece when we discuss tragedies by these two playwrights. Oedipus complex is employed in both of these plays, which can corroborate each other; Shakespeare's tragedy which influences generations of readers and writers, is a milestone in western literature. Clearer is that Desire under the Elms and Thunderstorm are influenced in the arrangement of the plot. Besides, Ibsen's realism which touched the social problem of the times and Strindberg's description of the inner world of the characters are embodied in these two works.The second chapter concentrates on the comparisons between Cabot and Zhou Puyuan, Abbie and Fanyi, Eben and Zhou Ping. Though Cabot and Zhou Puyuan are characters from different cultures and works, they both wear the hypocritical moral mask and safeguard the hierarchy system. Cabot's belief in the Puritanism, Zhu Puyuan's keeping of the feudalism, Cabot's obstinacy, Zhou Puyuan's arbitrariness, Cabot's desire for the possession of the land, and Zhou Puyuan's exploitation to the workers, all these form the possibility for the tragic end. Neither O'Neill nor Cao Yu is a feminist but both of the two playwrights impress the readers with the female figures. Abbie and Fanyi are similar in their challenge, courage, desire for freedom, insistence for love and dissatisfaction for their social status. While the male characters in the plays are quite different from these female ones. Eben and Zhou Ping share the childhood without mother-love, and both live in families which are different in essence but similar in some aspects. From Eben and Zhou Ping we can feel the struggle between Dionysian spirit and Apollonian spirit. It is the dual personalities that promote the tragic end. Moreover, the thesis makes a further study in the different tragic ends due to the different personalities. It is the tiny differences in tragic ends that suggest the differences between the East and the West in the culture, value and so on. Through these analyses, we tap the personalities of different characters, and analyze the conflicts in order to appreciate the two works better, which on the other hand provide a powerful support for the comparison of themes in the next chapters.The third chapter analyzes the themes of the two plays. In the previous comparisons, scholars, to some extent, engaged too much in the study of the incestuous love to heed of the multiple themes which forged the two classic works. The chapter discusses the themes from the following three angles: desire, conflicts and fate. Desire under the Elms mainly describes two kinds of desires: one is material desire, and the other is sexual desire which is embodied by the incestuous love between Abbie and Eben, both of which cause the tragic end of Abbie and Eben. In Thunderstorm, the similar theme is figured through different characters. The desires owned by Lu Dahai and Zhou Puyuan should be the material one, while the desires of Zhou Fanyi, Zhou Ping and Lu Sifeng formed the sexual one, both of which lead to the tragedy. Another theme is concerning the conflicts or struggles in the two plays. Conflict is one of the most important components in tragedy. Desire under the Elms and Thunderstorm are filled with conflicts. Due to the fact that different characters own different desires, the characters struggle intensively, which enforces the dramatic effect. Fate, in these two works, is the controlling power for the tragic end. The supernatural force makes a series of coincidences which make the characters to an destructive end. Besides, the defects of characters in personalities also demonstrate the theme of fate. Conclusion is the generalization of the whole thesis, and at the same time clearly points out the breakthroughs made on the basis of the materials and academic studies by the previous scholars and the significance as well as the value, therefore, the thesis will provide a solid foundation for the future studies.