On Tragic Aesthetics In Beyond The Horizon

Eugene O’ Neill (1888-1953) is called the founding father of US drama; he is alsocalled Shakespeare of the United States. As the one who founded the US national drama,the circle of the critics commented him this way “Before O’Neill there existed onlytheatre, after O’Neill there existed drama.”（王宁，1981） In1918, he published his firstfamed work called Beyond the Horizon which is very influential in the field of drama,and besides many famous scholars both domestic and overseas studied in depth both itstheoretical and realistic significance.The work Beyond the Horizon is the debut of O’Neill’s theoretical life, and itachieved great success laden with Pulitzer Prizes. The author’s maiden work createdquite a large stir in America’s contemporary circle, drawing world-wide attention fromthe critics. However, most foreign critics started to study the work by putting the workinto different schools of thought such as romanticism, realism, or expressionism. Forquite a considerably long period of time, they focused on delving into the writingtechniques and the innovation of the formality. Up now, more and more scholars turnedtheir eyeballs to the deep digging of the contents of the work believing that O’Neill’swork is the carrying on and development of the ancient Greek tragedy.The introduction briefly describes the life and the works of O’Neill, relevantcomments and his achievements, the background of O’Neill as well as the researchachievements both at home and abroad and the significance of this thesis.The thesis is mainly divided into three parts; the first part briefly introduces theconcept of tragic aesthetics, namely what tragic aesthetics exactly is, the source of thetheory, the phenomenon of the theory, the three general principles of the theory as well asthe corresponding psychology it can cause. In this section, the reason that people canhave a sense of aesthetics and pleasure will be stated in a very explicit and systematicway, which provides evidence for the assertion offered by O’Neill that tragedy is the onlymatter that embraces the beauty of truth which provides significance and hope for thereal life. All the loftiness is characterized by tragedy. The one half on the way withoutachieving greater failure will not be of superior quality in terms of spiritual ranking.O’Neill made an epoch-making innovation, giving aesthetic content to the work Beyondthe Horizon which arouses the optimistic spirit of people in times of difficulties and setbacks.The second chapter studies the application of the theory of tragic aesthetics in theBeyond the Horizon. Through my analysis, the work analyzed the tragic life of peoplefrom a multifaceted way; it gave expression to the tragedy of the ordinary, the family, thesociety, the fate and love.The work analyzed the passiveness of being an individual entityand the process of being given the social property or belonging. This passive process, tosome extent, makes people driven by fate instead of being the master of one’s own fate,tragedy is produced in such a way. However, the work Beyond the Horizon endowed thetragedy with beauty and joy. The aesthetic image from the work endowed people with thepassion that goes beyond dream and life, which is rarely seen in other tragic works,which is another breakthrough made by O’Neill on the basis of the Greek heroic beauty.The third chapter mainly studied the real significance of the application of thetheory of tragic aesthetics in the work Beyond the Horizon. The significance of literaturelies in the fact that literature has its root in real life; however, it is a kind of form thattranscends the real life. Literature is the processed replica of human life. However, thiskind of literature dressed with the tragic color is not just for entertaining the civilians ordukes or aristocrats; its final goal is to lead people in the real life to look at the worldfrom an idealistic point of view. In fact, any form of life entity is trapped in the tragedy,both people standing on the top of the power hierarchy and penniless beggars. However,hope can bring light to life, spiritual aspect is always carrying more nobility than thematerial realm, for material pursuit can perish while spiritual ideal can endure.The conclusion part summarizes the paper to show the theory of tragic aestheticspresented in Beyond the Horizon which is a showcase to the charm and beauty of thetragedy as well as its function of being the incentive to people’s life. The author of thepaper focuses on an in-depth understanding of the intention of the creation of O’Neill’swork, namely, finding the common ground for the tragedy and the aesthetics. Theachievement made by O’Neill lies in the fact that he found the light in the darkest tunneland gave people a very important lesson. The dawn is the darkest period of time of theday, and people in dark need patience and hope to meet and embrace the sunshine on thehorizon.