Illusion Or Reality:O’neill’s Iceman Cometh And Wilson’s Two Trains Running In Comparison

The thesis attempts a comparative study of Eugene O’Neill’s Iceman Cometh (1939) and August Wilson’s Two Trains Running (1991). Based on a close reading of the two plays, the paper argues that though Eugene O’Neill and August Wilson both deal with the theme of illusion and reality in their respective plays by addressing the living predicaments of lower-class people, they hold almost opposite views and attitudes towards the subject matter. The divergence is due to the dissimilar social milieus in which the plays were written and to the differences in the two dramatists’life experiences, political leanings and philosophies of life.The paper analyzes how the two playwrights reveal their attitudes towards illusion and reality in their plays from three aspects:their views of religion, of history and personal past as well as of the future.First of all, both playwrights deploy a novelistic structure to present the situation of a lower-class group fully and roundly in a realistic style. By endowing the spatial settings with different symbolic meanings, and weaving various religious symbolism into the fabric of their plays, O’Neill contends that illusion is life-sustaining for his characters in a world without salvation while Wilson indicates that it is necessary to confront reality head-on in a world possible of salvation from Yoruba orisas.Secondly, both playwrights make reference to the public history beyond the confinement of the temporary settings, and focus on characters’ accounts of their personal past. Thus, O’Neill argues that since human history would end in chaos and wars, social derelicts could and have to modify their own past as a comforting illusion to make life bearable. Wilson metaphorically compares the current situations of characters with the situations of their ancestors before the Civil War, suggesting that history and the personal past are a series of objective facts and prior events between which African Americans must make a connection.Thirdly, both playwrights create a stagnant atmosphere and depict the characters’ inaction to underscore their clinging to illusion in their plays. But O’Neill uses death imagery and sitting position of the characters to emphasize the fatal result of abandoning illusion and encountering reality. Wilson, however, holds that the illusion of a bright future with good luck is a hindrance to African American progress by revealing the cheating in the number racket and Prophet Samuel’s preaching.Through the comparative study on how O’Neill and Wilson express their attitudes towards illusion and reality, the paper seeks to demonstrate the peculiar role of Wilson in American drama. He inherits the style of realism, and continues the tendency of novelization and the preference for everyday, personal experiences of the down-and-out characters in the twentieth-century American drama. Meanwhile, as an Afro-American dramatist, Wilson records and emphasizes Afro-American culture while avoiding propagating racial conflicts between the blacks and the whites in his play.