Study On The Modernistic Features Of Eugene O’Neill’s Later Realistic Dramas

Eugene O’eill’s writing career can be divided into three periods:the early period, the middle period and the later period. But the later period stands for his best creation. In this period, it seems O’Neill have given up on modernism which he loved in the middle period, but back to his eyes on realism which he used in early times. He created six dramas in his later writing period and all belonged to realism. However, these realistic works are totally different from the early ones, not only from the display of drama themes, but also from the narrative styles and the writing techniques. They are more deep and mature. And these kind of deep and mature things are just what the modernistic features reflected in the later works.Based on the previous studies, this thesis gives a discussion to O’Neill’s six later dramas, which includes themes of dramas, narrative styles, writing techniques and art thoughts. And over this, it tries to reveal the reason why these later works shows charm permanently.Except for the introduction and the inclusion parts, this thesis divides into four parts. The introduction part introduces O’Neill’s all later dramas and studies on him, and gives a proof why later works called "realistic dramas" which based on the theories of realism. The first part gives a detail about the theme of modern people’s crisis of faiths and alienation which shows from the later realistic dramas. And through the study on the heroes’ spiritual crisis, it reveals the helplessness and the frustration of modern people and the totally loss of "new god" which O’Neill always searched before. The second part analyzes the narrative styles used in the later works, that is:to weaken the plot of stories, to poet the language of dramas, to imagery the description of environment. These points just reveal the difference between the later works and the early works and the writers’ fantastic story making-up capacity. The third part discusses the two modernistic techniques:the symbolism and the internal monologue. It tries to prove that the techniques which used in the later works is not only what continues and deepens to the early works, but also is one of the reason why the later works attract the readers always. The fourth part analyzes the Pessimism and the Nihilism thoughts which linked with the writer’s life experience and the later works, in order to reveal the shocking power which these two modernistic thoughts give the later works. The inclusion part concludes the whole thesis, and points out that just because the combination between the surface realism and the deep modernism, the later dramas could be called "can not be climbed" mountain.