Ideal Far Beyond And Reality Right At Hand: A Thematic Study Of Beyond The Horizon From The Perspective Of Reader-Response Critical Approach

Beyond the Horizon is Eugene O’Neill’s first play officially staged to the public and his first Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece.This play established the cornerstone for him as father of American drama.The contradiction of inner spirit is the permanent topic among the works of Eugene O’Neill.Besides,the play primarily describes Robert’s entanglement among the family affection,love and distant dream,revealing the conflict between dream and reality cannot be reconciled even if he tries to address it for the rest of his life.Beyond the horizon has been researched by domestic and foreign critics.Although most scholars have analyzed the play from the perspective of archetypal theory,Freudian personality structure theory and ecological feminism,few scholars aim at analyzing Eugene O’Neill’s play Beyond the Horizon from the perspective of reader-response critical approach.Based on the intensive reading of text,this thesis interprets the play by taking advantage of Iser’s concept of indeterminacy,gaps,appeal structure to ascertain the causes of the tragic fate of the characters in the play.This paper is composed of five chapters.The first chapter introduces Eugene O’Neill and his work Beyond the Horizon,and summarizes the researches made by domestic and foreign researchers about Beyond the Horizon.The second chapter analyzes the important role of readers in literary activities based on the text.In chapter three,the concept of indeterminacy in the reader-response critical approach is applied to analyze the characters’ characteristics in the play.The fourth chapter mainly avails the appeal structure and emotional judgment to analyze the silence between characters and open ending in the text.The fifth chapter is a conclusion of the paper.Through analysis of the play,readers will realize the fact that the play not only touches the soul of human beings but also reflects the belief and hopes of human beings with aesthetic values.Most importantly,readers can project their own values on the protagonist,so as to judge the protagonist’s behavior.The subject related to choice makes readers have more emotional resonance and take time to deliberate the meaning of life as well as the rules of social morality and survival value.