The Quest Theme In Eugene O' Neill's Three Plays

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (1888-1953) is one of the greatest playwright of America. With his tremendous contributions to American theatre, O'Neill is sometimes called the father of modern American drama. He is the winner of four Pulitzer prizes, and the only American playwright ever to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotion of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." (Sheaffer,450) O'Neill followed the European theatrical traditions all the way back to ancient Greek tragedies, and dived into Strindbergian domestic drama and Ibsenian social plays. His bold-innovative theatrical experiments have long firmly established his leading position on the world stage. He brought to American stage expressionism, symbolism, masks, asides and many modern theatrical elements.Although the trend of modern literature goes against the tradition, the theme of 'Quest'has not been abandoned. The quest for the ideal is presented through an individual's search for personal fulfillment. The quester not only struggles against the complicated outside world and his inner self, but also against the invisible forces beyond to fulfill the quest for self-completion. This thesis is going to explore the theme of quest through analyzing different quests in O'Neill's three plays:Beyond the Horizon, Strange Interlude and The Iceman Cometh, On the basis of close reading of the plays of O'Neill, one can find that O'Neill's interest in the theme of quest lasts throughout his entire writing career, though his focus shifts in different periods. In the early period, in which Beyond the Horizon was written, O'Neill's focus is on the quest of the self. With the development of industrialization and progress in technology at the beginning of the twentieth century, the tradition of spiritual culture collapsed, modern man lost himself in the process, thus the quest of self became the focus of O'Neill's concern. In Beyond the Horizon, the playwright dramatized the contradictory self oscillating between the ideal and the real in search for the true self. In the middle period, O'Neill is still concerned about the theme of quest, but turns his attention to the quest of faith. The First World War destroyed the social value systems and caused people to lose faith in God. The protagonist of Strange Interlude is one of those who needed a faith to support themselves, trying to search for God replacements after the death of old God. In the late plays, O'Neill shifts his attention to the quest of the meaning of life. These last plays disclose the alienation of those lowly individuals struggling in an indifferent materialistic society. In The Iceman Cometh, O'Neill presents the meaningless existence of the derelicts who have lost all social roles, living on the illusive displacements, trying to find the meaning of existence through pipe dreams.Through exploring the theme of quest of the three plays, it is inferred that the quests are not isolated from each other, although each has a different focus. Instead, they are closely connected and together they reflect the playwright's own internal journey of quest:man's unremitting fighting against the invisible forces beyond. O'Neill's journey of spiritual quest originates from the materialistic society and his own tragic life. Facing the barren world and cruel destiny, O'Neill uses theatre as a weapon to dig out the sickness of the society, and to present the spiritual dilemma modern man encounters. Through his dramatic creation, O'Neill explores modern individual's quest of the self, god and the meaning of existence on a deeper level.