Eugene O'neill 's Broken The "american Dream"

Facing the social crisis and spiritual crisis of the twentieth century, the figures in many plays written by Eugene O'Neill can do nothing but apply alcohol, drugs and daydreams to seek their self-salvation in that society. Although those measures are not the fundamental solution to their problems, they are the unique outlet to save themselves. All these indicate that in the then American society, the common masses had no ability or possibility to change the reality and all their seeming measures for salvation were useless. The paper, through analyzing the addiction of the figures in O'Neill's plays to the daydream and their broken American Dream, reveals the inevitability of the broken American Dream in the background of the social crisis and the spiritual crisis in the 20th century. Therefore, the paper concludes that the disillusion of Amercian Dream is not merely the sadness of the ordinary Americans but also the tragedy of the whole American society.