The Influence Of Schopenhauer And Nietzsche's Philosophies On Eugene O'Neill's Outlook On Life

As the most famous playwright in the 20^th century of America, Eugene O'Neill's plays have always been focused on by literary experts and scholars at home and abroad. As to the study of O'Neill's outlook on life, it still remains much empty space to research. This thesis is a tentative endeavor to study Eugene O'Neill's outlook on life based on the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.To start with, the thesis gives an overall introduction to Eugene O'Neill and his representative plays. Then, it reviews and analyses briefly the present studies of O'Neill and his works, which still remains at the level of the translations and introduction of O'Neill's works and of the criticisms of his plays in different prospective. For the aspect of his outlook on life, most of the studies draw an absolute conclusion that O'Neill was a pessimist, or an optimist according to the analysis of the characters and plots in his plays or his commentary journals.Then, what follows below is a brief introduction to the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, which had a strong influence on O'Neill's attitude toward life including Schopenhauer's philosophies on tragedy and pessimism and Nietzsche's thought on tragedy and his philosophy of existentialism. Schopenhauer espoused a sort of philosophical pessimism that saw life as being essentially evil, futile, and full of suffering. The way out for man was the denial of the will to get eternal tranquility through the aesthetic activity—the highest form of art—tragedy. For Nietzsche, he emphasized the importance of the will to power and concluded that the spirit of the god of wine or the rebirth of the spirit of the god of wine through the destruction of individuation was the spirit of tragedy. His declaration of "God has died" overturned the old European conventions and ideas. He posed to re-evaluate all the contemporary values and morality with the rejection of nihilism.Based on the philosophies mentioned above, the thesis probes into O'Neill's outlook on life in different periods of his dramatic writing, which is manifested in his representative plays at the same time. Throughout his life, O'Neill's life outlook was quite complex. In different stages of his life, O'Neill viewed life differently because of the influence of many factors. In his early time, influenced by Nietzsche, he rejected his religious belief rebelliously, trying to seek the meaning of life with much concern about man's living condition, which was shown in his sea plays as the pursuit for dream and the affirmation of the spirit of the god of wine. During this period, optimism was his basic attitude toward life and the tone of his tragic plays. When it came to the second period of O'Neill's literary creation, O'Neill looked at life and the world differently with a complex reaction toward the reality. From him and his plays, we can sense both an optimistic feeling of Nietzsche's philosophy and the marks of Schopenhauer's pessimism. Especially in his old age, O'Neill became even more pessimistic, which was manifested in his plays in the way of self-rejection and the denial of life. He became an absolute pessimist though he never gave up hope for the modern society.