Strange Interlude: An Interlude In The Religious Quest Of Eugene O'Neill

In her article included in The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Brenda Murphy draws the conclusion that "the late twenties was the time of O'Neill's search for what he called 'god-replacements'" (Murphy, "Plays and Playwrights" 298). An age following World War I, the 20s was in American history a roaring age, a combination of unprecedented economic boom and spiritual diversity. With the out-worn Puritanism losing its spell and old principles impotent to give an answer and salvation, the optimistic American spirit never encountered with such great confusion and homelessness. Eugene O'Neill, the "modern Moses" (Bigsby and Wilmeth 11) in American theatre, stood out to challenge the Mission Impossible in search for the New One. The premise of this thesis is two-fold: that O'Neill's work is indicative of a lifelong personal religious quest and that a clear understanding of O'Neill's plays can only come from knowledge of his period and biography. The thesis is an initial attempt to reveal the ambition of Eugene O'Neill to draw a full picture of cultural situation in the 1920s' America and to search for a new value to satisfy the need of human existence, which finds full expression in his composition of Strange Interlude, his most successful play in the late 20s. All the major characters in the play are under close examination, through which the thesis digs out their symbolic meanings as the major cultural forces including Science, Art, and Materialism in the 20s and reveals O'Neill's attitude towards them. Then it focuses on O'Neill's design of the ending, suggesting the playwright's construction of a new deity in the image of both father and mother and his hope to find new revelation in the artistic form of the theater.