Dysfunctional Family: A Study Of Three Major American Plays

Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller represent the best of modern theatre in the 20th century America. Their plays are distinctively modern in the art of constructing a highly charged tragedy around the lives and activities of common men in common families. In their most representative works Long Day's Journey into Night, The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman, the issue of family and relationship that exists between members of the family becomes a common concern. By investigating the problems of individual family members, of family member relationships and of the family-community relationships, the paper tries to explore how the sociological changes were affecting the urban lower middle-class people and their family relationship in a variety of ways including employment possibilities, feminine identity, potential marriage partners, social mobility, community environment and how the family was transforming as an outcome of the historical and cultural changes in early twentieth-century America.The main body of the thesis consists of three chapters, with each focusing on one play plus a contextual discussion on the other two. Chapter I"Bugs in a Jar"examines the four individuals of the Tyrone family in Long Day's Journey into Night. The analysis is sub-divided into two generations. Family members of the Tyrones are pressured by social, physical and psychological extremes of their experience and they suffer from their unfulfilled life of the past and present. Haunted by the past with their dreams shattered, parents fail to play their familial roles well and children feel hard to find life meaningful. Chapter II"Personal is Familial"deals with family relationships in The Glass Menagerie. Both marital and parent-child relationships in the Wingfields are examined under the rapid social and economical changes during the 1930s and 1940s in southern America, which had a great impact on the living conditions of the lower middle class of America. Chapter III"Familial Failures under Social Force"focuses on the last play Death of a Salesman, in which the Lomans are betrayed by their dreams. Willy is the victim of American Dream while he, symbolic of the dream of the whole family, destroys not only himself but also the hope of the other Lomans. As a basic unit of the society, the tragic family situations may also be seen as a commentary on the social fragmentation occurring in America today. Modern American Dream as a result of materialism and consumerism is considered a major source of sufferings of modern family. America had experienced great transformation at all levels in the early 20th century. Modernity brought social progress but it also posed a tough reality for a great majority of modern people in America, since it broke their dreams, changed their lives and threw them into suffering and confusion.