Reliance And Transcendence

Although now no one doubts his irreplaceable position in the development of American drama, Eugene O'Neill in his lifetime always suffered indifference and censure in his home country. Even on the occasion of his being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936, he did not receive the due reverence from any influential person in the then American literary circle. In appraising his plays, critics, theatre professionals and academicians were often polarized, with the pendulum swinging between praise and attack. Despite his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for four times, his works were often the common target of criticism for so-called weakness in plot, language and style. Sometimes, they were initially banned on moral grounds or refused public performance for excessively dull subjects. In sharp contrast to all these unfavorable situations he confronted in his homeland, O'Neill's drama, however, swept the stage of other countries with refreshing gales and became popular immediately. The reason that he was so differently treated largely lies in the different levels of literary development of the America and the Europe. As a young nation, the United States was still shallow in literary taste and seemed only capable of seeing the "exclusive demesne" the dramatist ostensibly presented in his drama, while the Europe, long cultivated, seasoned and wise, was insightful enough to grasp the "cosmic significance" beyond. This thesis intends to start from O'Neill's "exclusive demesne" and find its connection with the "cosmic significance", so as to bring to light his play's genuine appeal and refute the once vociferous reproach against his obsession with autobiographical elements.Undeniably, O'Neill's most successful plays all share in the following aspects: the characters are from one family, or belong to the same social unit, coexisting in an enclosed, suffocating "exclusive demesne", typical of a living-room, or a saloon, or a ship hold; the focus is narrowly but intensely placed on several figures and their immediate milieu comprising of minimalistic settings. Likewise, his most unsuccessful works also have something in common: they are all religious or historical plays produced in the middle period of his career, with legions of characters, gorgeous and exotic spectacles, complicated conceptions and too strong emphasis on sensational dramatic effects. O'Neill's failure in these attempts seems to reinforce the argument that he is only good at depicting the "exclusive demesne" and lacks the charisma to master the conveyance of "cosmic significance". Here the nay-sayers about the playwright obviously underestimate O'Neill's creative profundity, recognizable both in his own public remarks and in his drama.The playwright today must dig at the roots of the sickness of today as he feels it - --- the death of the Old God and the failure of science and materialism to give any satisfying new One for the surviving primitive religious instinct to find a meaning for life in, and to comfort its fears of death with. It seems to me that anyone trying to do big work nowadays must have this big subject behind all thelittle subjects of his plays or novels, or he is simply scribbling around on the surface of things and has no more real status than a parlor entertainer. ---- A Letter to George Jean Nathan published in American Mercury (January 1929): 119. O'Neill despises the "parlor entertainer" his father used to be and is whole-heartedly devoted to the quest for the meaning of life, on both a personal and social level. Behind all his seemingly plain "little subjects" looms the "big subject" pigeonholed, in this thesis, under three subtitles which respectively throw into relief the designed coordination between one after another "exclusive demesne" in O'Neill's plays and the all-shared spiritual homeland, social panorama and cultural connotation. O'Neill maintains a heart-felt concern for the world affairs that a serious writer possesses by nature. The...