| Eugene O?Neill(1888-1953),“the Father of Modern American Drama”,was an outstanding playwright who made great contributions to American Drama.He was also considered to be the founder of American theatre.Arthur Miller(1915-2005),“the American Ibsen”,was another talented and outstanding playwright after Eugene O?Neill.As an important realistic dramatist in contemporary American literature,Miller gained the reputation of “American Conscience” for the morality and social responsibility that rooted in his works and life.Since O?Neill initiated the tradition of modern American drama,the mainstream themes of American drama throughout the twentieth century were inseparable from family life in modern society.As the most basic unit of society,family is the most fundamental structure on which people rely for survival and development;meanwhile it is also the ethical and moral entity holding people?s emotional life and family life.O?Neill?s Long Day's Journey into Night and Miller?s Death of a Salesman are both realistic works on family issues in modern society.Through detailed comparison and analysis,it can be found that the two plays share many similarities.The two playwrights unfolded their dramatic conflicts through families which are just like the epitome of society.They both exposed the family and social problems faced by common people in an age of extravagance and waste through the description of the tragedy in two middle-class families.The two plays have the same themes: family issues and the disillusion of the America Dream.The characters in the plays have the corresponding relations and the relationship between the characters is interwoven by love and hate.They are both the creators and the victims of tragedy.The two plays reflect O?Neill and Miller?s concern and thinking about family and social issues.These family issues are typical and universal.What?s a real home? Is it a shelter or a snare? What kind of family relationship is it? Love or hate? Ethical Literary Criticism takes literary text as the object of criticism,reading,analyzing and interpreting different life phenomena described in literature from the perspective of ethics,so as to identify its ethical nature and moral teaching function.The audience can draw the ethical ideals and the desired family relationship that the authors wanted to convey and pursue by means of the interpretation of the two plays.This thesis mainly uses the method of Ethical Literary Criticism to compare and analyze the family relationships in the two plays.Based on their similarities,first chapter explains the ethical environment in the works that influence the fate of the characters and family relationships from an ethical perspective.Then,the following chapters focus on the analysis of husband-wife relationship,father-son relationship and mother-child relationship.Family is a paradox to the characters.On the one hand,family makes them extremely disappointed,and on the other hand they are very fascinated by the feeling of being related to their family.The thesis consists of six parts: introduction,four chapters and conclusion.The introduction offers a brief presentation and description of Eugene O?Neill and his masterpiece Long Day's Journey into Night;Arthur Miller and his masterpiece Death of a Salesman;and a brief description of the similarities between the two plays.In addition,the theory of Ethical Literary Criticism is also briefly introduced,laying a theoretical foundation for the following study and analyses.The first chapter takes a systematic analysis into the ethical environment at that time in the two plays,and explains the environmental causes that influenced characters? fate and family relationships in the works from an ethical perspective.The prevalence of materialism,the false of American Dream and the loss of faith constitute the ethical environment on which the two works depend.The second chapter based on the husband-wife relationship described in the two works analyzes the ethical predicament and dilemma faced by both husband and wife.On the one hand,both husband and wife are deeply in love with each other,care for each other and desire the warmth of family.On the other hand,they complain about their loneliness.As a result,both husband and wife have fallen into an ethical dilemma because they have not fulfilled their corresponding ethical responsibilities.The third chapter explains the relationship between the father and the sons in the family,and analyzes the ethical problems lying between the father and the sons from a perspective of ethical identity.Father and sons in the two plays are all confused about their identity no matter at home or in society.The normal family ethical order is negatively impacted by the contradiction between the behavior and identity caused by the confusion and disorder of their identity.It is well known that,fathers have a great influence on their children.So father?s negligence and wrong behavior will cause lifetime disaster to his children.The mutual expectation and disappointment between father and sons is an important reason leading to the conflicts between them.The fourth chapter mainly analyzes the mother-son relationship in the two families.It explains the ethical problem resulted by ethical choice from the perspective of the ethical selection.Different choices could lead to different results.As a mother,she should love and care for her children and give them warmth and support.However,because of their own or external reasons,mother and children face dilemmas of ethical choice,leading to the ethical problem between them.The last part is the conclusion.The family relationships in the two plays are intertwined with love and hate.And this emotion leads to similar ethical problems in the two families of the two plays.The lonely couples owing to the entanglement of ethical predicament;the hostile father and sons result from the confusion and disorder of ethical identity;and the alienated mother and sons because of the dilemmas of ethical choices.Under a specific environment of social development,the influence of various forces on people is concentrated in the family and reflected by the ethical relationship among family members.Through their works,the two writers expressed their personal value judgment and ethical ideas within a specific social context,and thus reflected the social issues.Through a comparative study of the family relations in the two realistic tragedies,this paper reveals the prevalent problems of family relations,and it also shows the authors? ethical ideal: build up equal and harmonious family relations in which members care and respect each other.By revealing the ethical predicaments and ethical problem encountered by ordinary Americans in business society of the early 20 th century,this thesis warns that we must establish correct values and deal well with the relationship between family members under the rapid economic development at present.Through the construction of ethical order,establish a real home where men could obtain the spiritual sense of direction and belonging;make family a shelter where men could feel love and warmth.Families should distinguish the good and the evil,and form an accepted and recognized ethical relationship by staying behavior accord with ethical norms. |
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