Harmonious Relationship Between The Burst

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), the founder of American modern drama,attracted the attention of literary researchers and critics in many countriesowing to his outstanding achievements on indicting tragedy. In this paper, theauthor understands the writer and his works in three aspects on the basis of hisdrama.Chapter One, the author approaches O'Neill by exposing the background ofhis era, his personal experiences and his religious belief, trying tocomprehensively understand this outstanding writer himself. Supported by theabove analysis, the author proposes that it is the fickle and weary ethos, hisdistressful growing experience and religious confusion that jointly contributedto both the emergence of an aggressive and innovative dramatist and a keyfactor that forming the tragic idea of O'Neill.Chapter Two centers on the disillusionment of harmonious relationship,which can be seen in the relationships among family members, between humanand nature, and between human and society on the basis of O'Neill'srepresentative works written in different periods. When the harmoniousrelationships disappear, what is implied beyond the letter is the writer's deepreflection of nature, society and even human themselves.In chapter Three, the author explores the contributing factor of tragicconsciousness. In O'Neill's works, maintaining that in addition to the writer'sinharmonious family atmosphere and uneven personal experience, socialenvironment and Friedrieh Nietzsche's doctrine mainly constitute the causationof tragic consciousness. On the one hand, in modern society, people arespiritually vacuous, lonely, despairing and confused, which exacerbate theinterpersonal mistrust and the tension among nature, society and humanthemselves. On the other hand, O'Neill strongly sympathized with Nietzsche inhis own tragedy in terms of the critique of Christianity and modern civilization.It is this kind of critique that causes heart quake of the writer and intensifies theresonance in his works.