Drama Of Soul: Studies On O'Neill's Expressionistic Techniques

Expressionism is an art and literary movement, arising in Europe in the late nineteenth century and reaching its height between 1910 and 1925. The appearance of expressionism is a response to several different forces-the inevitability of world war, the rise of industrialization, the new power of capitalism and the spread of modern philosophy and psychology. At that time, many sensitive and upright artists were unsatisfied with the social conditions, so they fought against the society, which they believed, had caused the serious alienation of modern men and distorted their normal relationship with the outside world. Influenced by the great philosophers and psychologists, expressionists believed that the essence of human beings existed in their deep souls, hid in their spirits, emotions, desires and unconsciousness. Hence, they rebelled against the traditional way of writing and required to peel the seemingly objective reality away.The greatest achievement made by expressionists is in the field of drama. Aiming to explore subjective feelings and emotions hidden in human's deep heart, expressionist dramatists always adopt absurd, dream-like and fantastic devices and mix illusions, dreams and fantasies together with reality. They even frequently let dead bodies, mummies, monsters and ghosts appear on the stage. Sometimes expressionists intentionally distort or exaggerate the shapes, colors and appearances of the objects in order to show the chaos caused by the mechanical world. Besides, characters created by them are usually unnamed types. The structure and language of expressionist plays are also distinct from their realist or romantic predecessors: plays are loosely structured in a series of scenes or "stations" with a minimum of causal inter-relationship, and characters' speech generally consists of jerky staccato outburst in a "telegraph" style or longer ecstatic and lyrical addresses.As a literary and art movement, expressionism, though short-lived, gives impetus to a free form of writing and production in modern theater. European expressionist drama spread into America in the 1920s. Drawing on the experiments of European expressionists, American dramatists, especially O'Neill; find new techniques for developing characters and themes. Inspired by expressionistic techniques, O'Neill uses theater as a medium to express his attitude toward life. He employs varied expressionistic techniques and tricks such as sound, masks, interior monologues, symbols and so on. The adoption of these techniques helps to display the characters' inner reality, expose the dramatic themes and create special stage effects. Hence, in this paper the author attempts to explore O'Neill's ingenious use of expressionistic techniques in his plays and demonstrate the effects produced by them.This dissertation consists of six chapters. In the first chapter, the author makes a brief retrospect of the studies on O'Neill both in China and in the western countries, and then points out the significance of writing this paper.In the second chapter, the author makes a general introduction to expressionism from the following four aspects: the background of expressionism, the principles of expressionism, the typical features of expressionism and the critical overview of expressionism.In the next chapter, the author explores the reasons why O'Neill accepts expressionism from three angles: the influence of his family and the society he lived in; the expressionists, especially Strindberg's influence on him; and the influence of modern psychologists and the philosophers.Chapter four and five are the main body of this paper. In these two chapters, the author first lists the striking expressionistic techniques occurring frequently in O'Neill's plays. They are mainly the use of masks, monologues, symbols, sounds and unrealistic settings. Then the author illustrates why O'Neill prefers to adopt them in his writings. Based on the detailed analysis of his several specific scripts, the author attempts to demonstrate the effects achieved by the using of these...