Exploring Alienation In The Adding Machine By Marcuse’s Theory Of Alienation

The Ameican playwright Elmer Rice is world-famous as a pioneer of expressionist techniques in modern American drama and a master of the dramatic art. Ranking only second to Eugene O’Neill, Rice is considered as the most important American dramatist of the20th century by critics. His well-known masterpiece The Adding Machine is among the first American expressionistic plays. The Adding Machine anticipates the impacts machines and technology have upon the souls and psyches of working people, which greatly influences later works by Edward Albee and Arthur Miller.There are without adequate reseaches on Elmer Rice at home and abroad. Most treatments of Elmer Rice in China appear as short introductions in studies of modern American drama, but previous researches on Elmer Rice and The Adding Machine provide some general background information. Some scholars interpret that this play reflects the dehumanized situation human beings facing in the process of industrialization. However, few studies have given detailed attention to the alienation manifested in the play and the causes of alienation from the perspective of Western Marxsim.The play explores the alienated situation of workers within advanced capitalism. Rice’s portrayal of alienation highly resonates with the humanistic philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s theory. Based on the existing research, this thesis is intended to make an intensive research on Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine through Herbert Marcuse’s alienation theory in order to enrich study on Elmer Rice both in China and abroad. So the thesis examines the alienation manifested in The Adding Machine by analyzing how alienation involves the separation of workers from their work, the isolation between people and alienation from man’s own humanity. Moreover, this thesis analyzes the reasons of alienation that are short of communication, lack of spiritual support and sexual repression. The solution that Marcuse puts forward is to set up a non-repressive civilization, which is a naive and Utopian revolutionary ideology. Thus, through Marcuse, there are no effective ways to make a profound change of the alienated situation.