Wandering On The EDGE Of Love And Sorrow

On December 13, 1953, two weeks after Eugene O'Neill's death, New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson mourned: "A giant writer has drooped off the earth; a great spirit and our greatest dramatist have left us, and our theatre world is now a smaller, more ordinary place." And many of other critics expressed their appreciation of the man and his work, and most of them used the word "great". Years after years, the great playwright might soon have been forgotten. But three years after his death, Long Day's Journey Into Night, a drama "written in tears and blood", was first published and produced. From then on, O'Neill seems to return to act out his own life's personal tragedy. And so different from that of "our greatest dramatist" or of "a great spirit", a new role has been formed in our mind - the role of a tormented agonist of his own life.It is known that the young O'Neill sows his wild oats, and experiences many colorful adventures at sea and in foreign lands. His life before the mask and life in a tuberculosis sanitarium contributes to his drama. He cheerfully admits to monumental drinking bouts in his youth, and he even describes his attempt at suicide as a kind of riotous farce. But with the publication of his final autobiographical tragedy, these youthful adventures and escapades take a new, darker meaning.As the Father of the American Modern Drama, O'Neill contributes a lot to the development of American drama, and he is also the only playwright who gets Nobel Literature Prize in America. From 1913 when his first play A Wife for the Life was published to 1943 when his last play A Moon for the Misbegotten was finished, there are 50 plays written by him and he wins Pulitzer Prize for four times. Except for Ah, Wilderness! produced in 1933, which is a comedy, nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism. Most of his plays tell the suffering of common people in America, and these common people's pains induct the readers' consideration about the life and society, meanwhile, these pains disclose the difficult survival of modern people especially of the little. Most of O'Neill's characters have to face the question whether to choose to die in the cruel reality or to survive numbly in an illusive dream, which is similar to Hamlet's fate.This thesis mainly consists of three chapters. Chapter one discusses Predestination of Mary in a male-constructed society. Long Day's Journey Into Night is about a tragedy of the Tyrones, especially of Mary. Living in her own dream is Mary's choice. Albert Camus said that to choose to live in their illusion is the escaping way of those people who were in hot water. Escaping is a never-changing game. The typical escaping behavior is "hope". In O'Neill's drama, "hope" is an illusion. Because the hope can conceal the vacuity of reality on a certain degree, and can build a meaningful fairyland of their survival. Mary is such a person who chooses to live in stupefacient so as to escape from the cruel reality in O'Neill's play. It's hard for Mary to face the burden from her marriage and family, and to adjust the conflict between the dream and reality as well; so she has to hocus herself by drugs to immerse in the memory of her beautiful life of her girlhood and also in her Utopia to seek a temporary large charge of psychological balance.Chapter two analyses Mary's tragic fate expressed in this play. When female's self-desire is oppressed as a sexual object in a consolidated patriarchal society, they ordinarily revolt against these oppressions through their bodies. Hysteria is such a kind of resistance against female who was oppressed, and a cry for help when they fail to revolt the bondage of their social character as well. On this point of view, the abusing of drug can be regarded as Mary's resistance of the rules of patriarchal society. Mary chooses to prey to the Virgin Mary but not male god, which shows that she has already liberated from the oppression forced by male-dominated society. While abusing drugs indicates that she has lost herself after being set free.Chapter three describes the combination of the tragedy of the author and the tragedy of the characters in the play. Tragedy is the meaning of life. Both of the author and Mary have no belonging either on a physical home or on a mental "home" - faith, which cause their isolation in the society. The whole play of Long Day's Journey Into Night is describing the helpless of the family, and how they release the pain by drinking and taking drugs. O'Neill once said that "this is a play of dream. The philosophy is: no matter how degenerated you are, even in the bottom, you would still have a dream, the last dream. I know it because I see it."People need extremely a kind of illusion to sustain their life so as to lighten the desperation taken by reality. The real thing which is hidden behind the illusion is the miserable plight of being manipulated by fate. The remarkable success of Long Day's Journey Into Night produces a strong effect on the popular imagination. O'Neill illustrated this human's misery profoundly in his play- Long Day's Journey Into Night.