| Eugene O'Neill himself and his drama works have profound and unparalleled aesthetic power. They also have permanent and never-ending idealistic meanings. One important reason is that he was good at standing on the shoulders of the masters and absorbed the elite of their ideologies. He absorbed abundant nourishment from Schoppenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Jung, Laotzu, Shakespeare, Strindberg, Ibsen etc . He incorporated diversity and established uniqueness. But O'Neill's unique lies not only in his criticism and inherit, but also in his breaking through and innovation. His ideas are not the repeat of other's, but the show of the era thoughts and the reflection of his creation genius.Eugene O'Neill's medium-term magnum opus is Mourning Become Electro (193 1) and late one is Long Day 's Journey into Nights (1939) . The two heroines of the two works separately are Lavinia and Mary. This text starts from the image analysis of the two heroines explaining the show and variation of the thoughts of Nietzsche, Freud and Laotzu on them. Thus to analyze the multi-sources and creativity of O'Neill's ideology.Eugene O'Neill considered Nietzsche as the only idol. He animadverted and absorbed Nietzsche's thoughts. These mainly are life tragedy consciousness and the exceeding spirit pursuit; aesthetic life attitude; independent morality and creative personality. Because of his experience and environment of his family and society, he thought that life meant tragedy when he was young. His works and thoughts showed pessimism and passive factors from the beginning. But he tried hard to to exceed the fate of tragedy by positive and aesthetic attitude. We can see the influence of Nietzsche from his rebel of the Christianity , pursuing to personality releasing , scorning of the civilization of Capitalism, advocating of Bacchus spirit and the exploring spirit throughout his life. But because of his humanitarianism and pessimism, he gradually cast away Nietzsche's power will philosophy and superman ideology. From "female superman" Lavinia to "spilth person" Mary, we can see apparently that the influence of Nietzsche to Eugene O'Neill is becoming less and less. At last, he went his own way just as he said: "I don't accept his teachings any more."The ideology of Eugene O'Neill was also greatly influenced by Freud and his psychoanalysis theory. The influences mainly are his person's psychology fabric and. unconscious concepts; instinct theory and death instinct; libido theory and complex theory. O'Neill always felt that there was one kind of mysterious power which determined human's fate. He suffered from it and tried to show it in his works throughout his life. In fact this is the unconsciousness in Freud's theory. His plays are also full of death. Some characters are obviously influenced by Erectera complex and Oedipus complex. But eventually he abandoned Freud's pan-sexism. He didn't think libido was the reason of all actions. He paid more attention to the relationship of the human and the God and tried to find out the ultimate value. He sought after the root of contemporary illness and thought the key reason was thatthe primary religion instinct-looking for the meaning of life couldn't besatisfied after the death of the old God. Moreover Protestantism ethic and big industrial oppress humanity. By the change from Lavinia full of libido to Mary having a dream to be a nun, we can see that Eugene O'Neill has already gave up Freud and his doctrines.O'Neill took Laotzu's ideology as his spirit end-result. The influence of Laotzu lies in opposing each other and complementing each other, returning to its root; objection war and thirst for quiet; modest and having few desires. But O'Neill was full of conflicts. On the one hand, he avoided the life negatively. There are skepticism, pessimism and fatalism in his ideology. On the other hand, he took part in the life positively. His life was full of exploring and enterprising spirits. Eugene O'Neill constantly get rid of the stale and bring forth the fresh in his... |
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