The Hidden Masks And Tragic Tension

Eugene O'Neil (1888-1953), credited with raising American dramatic theater from its narrow origins to an art form respected around the world, is regarded as"the Father of American Drama". His plays mould a number of characters who are engaged in depraved behaviors. Inhabiting on the fringes of society, they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. Nearly all his plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism. For Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night is an act of contrition and a personal confrontation with his tumultuous family history. That he could translate his anguish into an autobiographical drama of universal resonance and profound emotional impact is a testament to the genius and artistry of the greatest playwright in the history of American theater. O'Neill called it "a play of old sorrows, written in tears and blood"(Floyd, 1984: 531).The four haunted Tyrones in the drama speak as others or behave as others, exhibiting multiple personas, which result in complicated contradictory emotions and the alternations of closeness and alienation among them. The present thesis is mainly based on Jung's persona theories with Chinese psychoanalyst Zhujianjun's persona image anatomization as the analytical methodology. It aims to highlight the impact of multiple masks hidden in the protagonists on the manifestation of tragic tension. Moreover, through these analyses, it helps explore into the tragic roots of the sickness of modern society-----the estranged souls of the modern man and the failure of self-recognitions under the deformed social ideology. In this thesis,"mask", Jung's persona,"Conformity Archetype"and Chinese psychoanalyst Zhujianjun's concepts of"Persona Image"overlap with each other, referring to the various self-images of the protagonists shaped by the overwhelming deformed social ideology, by their families or by themselves. By applying those concepts of mask into the analyses of the protagonists, this thesis reflects O'Neil's internalizing tendency in the application of mask---breaking away from the traditional use of mask as tangible devices and plugging them inward as manifold images of selfhood to practice his modern tragic thoughts---self-destructions. This thesis will commence with a thorough anatomization of the personality structures of the protagonists, disclosing the multiple hidden and internalized persona images. Then it will continue to track the forming processes of those persona images, reflect the psychological imbalance within each protagonist and reveal its destructive impact on their own fates as well as on their relationships.The findings and conclusions of this study, we hope, will not only contribute to the tracking of variations in O'Neil's use of masks in manifesting his modern concept of tragic thoughts, but also to the Chinese dramatic practices in finding the most effective manifesting devices in the productions of theatrical works.