On Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Tragedies

In the beginning of the20th century, the rapid development of American economy and the turbulence of the country provided rich soil for the prosperity of literature, and there appeared masters like Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) in American theatre. As the founder and creator of modern American drama, O’Neill devotes all his life to the exploration of the "sickness of today." In his works he puts much emphasis on the characters’innermost feelings, and reflects the social reality by the description of their complicated and distorted feelings, of which "desire" is the keynote.To O’Neill, desire is the major motivation of his characters’action. By combining the desire motif with tragedies, the perfect expression of drama, O’Neill creates a series of desire tragedies. His characters have various desires:spiritually, they want care and love, crave for understanding, and seek for identity and belongingness; materially, they, ruined by utilitarianism, exchange their souls for wealth. O’Neill shows great concern to his fellowmen, and calls for them to search for their belongingness as well as the valid meaning of life.The dissertation consists of five parts.In Introduction first a definition of "desire" is provided. In O’Neill’s tragedies, the word "desire," which is rich in meaning, means love, or lust, or worldly craving, or even strong possessiveness. Then efforts are made to show the evolution of his desire tragedies. This part also includes a literature review sorting out the past and current research studies, both abroad and in China, on Eugene O’Neill, which is the foundation of the following study. The significance and purpose of the research is dealt with at last.Chapter One looks into the tragedies caused by desires from two perspectives:family and society. It points out that O’Neill’s creation serves as a mirror of the truth beneath the false prosperity in American society.In his plays of family tragedies, O’Neill mainly reflects and exposes social reality from marriage and other family relationship. First, deeply inspired by his predecessors such as Ibsen, O’Neill holds that the failure of a marriage will, to a large extent, lead to family tragedies. Little can be seen in his plays about happy love and marriage. Poisoned by Puritanism, people have to suppress, even distort, their normal desires for their lovers or spouses, which prevents them from communicating with each other. Estranged, they cannot find comfort and outlets from their marriages. Eventually, love and marriage will go to coldness, suspicion, hatred, and other extremes. Besides, to the playwright, desire affects not only marriage, but also other family relationship. O’Neill depicts, with even the smallest details, the loneliness and misery of people, because of failure to communicate, between parents and children, brothers and sisters. He exposes the psychological trauma caused by suppression and distortion of desires. His family tragedies epitomize those of all American society.In society tragedies, O’Neill depicts the tragic endings caused by spiritual and materialistic desires.On one side, in a society with advanced material civilization, human beings, as the only intelligent species in the world, lose their spiritual support and fail to find where they belong. They dream of the beauty beyond the horizon, and expect to take control of their own destiny, but only to be severely tortured. O’Neill depicts the tormenting pursuits of people from different classes and races when they strive for the recognition of the society. Those who cannot find their identity and belongingness are not exceptions; rather, they are universal of the whole society. Undoubtedly, O’Neill holds a positive attitude to their attempts although they all meet with failures. The reason is that human beings will be reduced to animal level if they attach little importance to their spiritual world.On the other, O’Neill mocks mercilessly the American society with mammonism prevalent. In all his desire tragedies, those about the possessors’ ever-increasing desires for material are the largest in number. Artists pay a high price when they cannot resist the temptation of material, and they lose their souls. As a result, their artistic gifts are destroyed and they are away from their poetic touches once and for all. Businessmen’s crazy worship for money makes them accumulate wealth unscrupulously. It is utilitarianism that leads to their destruction. It is lamentable that those short-sighted and spiritually deformed materialists should be considered as "American pillar of society. Chapter Two interprets the reasons for the desire tragedies from both social and psychological angles. O’Neill’s characters are never out of the control of desires. Motivated by various desires, they strive to achieve their goals.From the angle of the society, according to theories of Maslow and other psychologists, people’s desires are consistent of various hierarchic classes, from simple to complicated, from materialistic to spiritual. With the development of industrialization and progress of material civilization, it is highly likely that people will make higher spiritual pursuits, including belongingness, self-esteem, recognition, and self-realization, etc.However, the development of society not only brings material prosperity, but also the consequence of alienation, which is demonstrated in the following four aspects in O’Neill’s tragedies:First, in the capitalist society, the old moral codes no longer exist, and the relationship among human beings features rejection and hostility. Therefore, communication and understanding are dear to them. Second, the individuals, powerless and helpless before the society, are unable to take control of their fate. The confusion and misery result in their desperate efforts to look for the identity. The society is to blame for this. Third, the balance of nature has been broken by mankind’s crazy plundering. Human beings have long lost the harmony with nature and they are opposed to each other bitterly. When they are trying to betray it, they suffer from the consequences. This is mainly demonstrated in O’Neill’s early sea cycles. Lastly, motivated by worldly desires, people value materialistic success higher above anything else, which leads to the spiritual wasteland. O’Neill, though not a psychologist, understands the human psyche deeply. To O’Neill, man is born divided, with the noble and poetic self and base and profit-seeking self in severe conflict. When man is enslaved by the latter, he will be seized control of and become a slave to it. This motif, which is repeated by O’Neill, shows his complex attitude toward the rapid development of material civilization. He looks forward to its progress; meanwhile, he resents the disastrous effect that accompanies the practice of giving first priority to material.Among social factors, another point worthy of note is O’Neill’s exploration of the relationship between man and God. He holds that Puritanism has an unshirkable responsibility for the sickness of American society. The early ideals of Puritanism equated spiritual well-being with economic prosperity, and made clear to the settlers of the country the consequences of indulging oneself in worldly desires and lust. Yet during its process of development Puritanism has been far away from its original. Gradually, with its rigid and life-denying lifestyle, which is against the normal desires, Puritanism not only prevents people from communicating with each other, but also suppresses and distorts human nature, eating into people’s happiness. The puritans who go to another extreme are addicted to greediness and lust, which result in their moral downfall and crimes. What’s more, the belief that God is cold and cruel has led to the atrocity of some of his characters. Taking advantage of the so-called "hard" God, they accumulate wealth avariciously, considering it as the call from God, to such an extent that they even enslave their own family members, which leads to the disintegration of the families.On a psychological level, most important of all, with the psychologists’impact, such as Freud and Jung, O’Neill believes that sexual impulse is the major inner factor leading to the passion of his characters. Following "the Pleasure Principle," his characters are shaped by their sexual instinct. Tragedies will occur when their behaviors are in conflict with the social codes and their desires are repressed and distorted, or when they have been completely enslaved by their desires. O’Neill also makes clear his ideas on family tragedies by his unique interpretation of the "incest" motif. Within an unhappy marriage, if the parents fail to constrain themselves and neglect their duties to their children, which makes them in extreme want of love and care, then the normal family relationship will be spoiled and even twisted. The repressed desires will be expressed in extreme ways and then do great harm to families; hence the family tragedies. Second, O’Neill stresses that people with strong possessiveness will meet their tragic endings when they are trying to dominate others’life. Moreover, Jung’s theory of "Collective Unconscious" is also made use of by the playwright to explain the characters’motivation. In his desire tragedies, O’Neill presents people’s complicated inner world by means of psychological analytical approaches, with sexual impulse and possessiveness, etc., as the chief roots of tragedies.Chapter Three deals with O’Neill’s ideas on ways out of desire predicament. Although universally accepted as a pessimist, he is still confident of the bright side of human nature, and his searchings provide his fellowmen with the "choiceless choice." First of all, O’Neill expects to find an answer from mankind’s self-transcendence. For many times he has expressed his admiration and appreciation of self-sacrifice. On his personal level, he believes that as long as love is strong enough, it can transcend one’s greediness and selfishness. Then one will make self-sacrifice for others and redeem himself. Here love does not mean the feelings between lovers only; it also refers to the general love among human beings. To O’Neill, love means "sacrifice" and "servitude." Interesting enough, O’Neill has created many a woman image with the spirit of self-sacrifice. To some extent, it helps explain his point of view on women, and reflect his own requirement on them. It indicates that in O’Neill’s plays, women, judging from the moral perspective, are, at least, not inferior to men if not superior. Besides, O’Neill seems to have a special feeling for death. Death can not only help people to make up for their crimes caused by desires, but also purge and purify their spirit. Furthermore, death makes people far away from the harsh reality. The relativity and cycle of life and death tell people it is not necessary to be afraid of death. Rather, they are supposed to take it as an escape from the reality in which dreams cannot come true. In O’Neill’s plays imprisonment is a more severe choice than death. His characters choose to isolate themselves from the world of desires, by which they achieve redemption of themselves.On the other side, O’Neill prescribes "spiritual consolation" for his fellowmen. He treats people’s illusions with compassion and sympathy. He once says that no matter how one may have fallen, there should always be one dream. Even if it has elements of lies, pipe dream is an opposition to reality. It offers life with meaning, and alleviates the harm by the harsh reality, which will be of help for people to live a dignified life. Even if life is a dream, one is not supposed to let it lose its color. As has been mentioned in his plays, these pipe dreams have offered them something for them to live on. Besides, similar to his characters, O’Neill dreams of human warmth and consolation of friendship. In his works one message is expressed all the time:friendship will provide people with understanding, trust and communication. This is a must to existence, and especially to those living at the bottom of the society. Furthermore, O’Neill wants to help people find the meaning of life by his exploration of a new faith. He even expects an answer from the Orient, which values spirit higher above anything else. O’Neill admits that he has benefited much from Taoism, and he draws the conclusion that mankind should eliminate greed and not be poisoned by materialism, which will help them to achieve peace of mind. The final answer lies in one based on the Western religion but with some Oriental elements. To him, it is not more material, but fewer desires that people need. At the same time, it is made clear in his late works that people should set a limit to their desires and recover their original simplicity, as has been put forward by the great thinker Thoreau. This, O’Neill believes, is a salvation of people’s souls. O’Neill expresses his attitude to the tendency of the capitalist society in attaching high priority to material and breaking away from natural laws.In the end, with an informed reading and a comparative assessment of the desire tragedies by O’Neill, the dissertation comes to the conclusion. In his literary career, O’Neill admires the romantic dreams but has a great aversion to the American Dream which calls for people to sacrifice all else to realize the materialistic goals. When he comes to realize the harshness of reality, he overcomes his desperation and expects an answer from the human nature. He sings high praise for self-sacrifice and the power of love. He finds the possibility of transcending reality in death, friendship and pipe dreams, etc. To him, people should exercise restraint to their desires so as to keep souls unstained, for there is only one step between moderate aspiration and compulsive greediness. Desires are a must to one’s life, but one should not be burdened with it and be enslaved by it. O’Neill also holds that man should keep his dream, no matter what form it may take, for even if it can be crushed, there is still meaning for life. By his true-to-life reflection of the sickness of America, he hopes to awaken people’s awareness of how to strike a balance between spirit and material. O’Neill’s desire tragedies are not solely fables on people’s accumulating wealth at the cost of their souls. Meanwhile, he warns his fellowmen of the danger of living on the surface of life for mankind should have nobler aspirations.O’Neill’s lifelong efforts are the unyielding pursuit in the spiritual wilderness. His desire tragedies are not only typical American tragedies, but also universal to the whole world which is characteristic of swift development of material civilization. He persists in enriching people’s inner world, hoping to encourage his countrymen to keep their dignity unspoiled and human nature unstained. They should have their greediness transcended and spirit sublimated. To O’Neill, even if failures are unavoidable, people should accept it as the condition of meaningful existence. In short, one should concern himself about his inner world and stick to his dream, for the truth of life lies in his untiring spiritual pursuit.