On Con Melody’s Inferiority Complex In A Touch Of The Poet

Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) is one of the greatest playwrights in Americantheatre who concentrates on the creation of plays all his life and lays the foundationof American serious drama. He is an artist with a touch of the poet, nature ofplaywright, soul of sentiment, spirit of quest and emotion of fragility. His work ATouch of the Poet takes the Melody family as a case to describe people’s livingsituation and psychological state in the1930s. Con Melody shows his superiority inevery way; while under the mask of narcissism, there lies his deep-rooted inferiorityfeelings. It is his inferiority complex that results in the tragedy of his whole family.But fortunately, he transcends himself at the end of the play and retrieves his innerself ultimately.This thesis takes Austrian Psychologist Alfred Adler’s inferiority-compensationtheory as the guidance to probe into the cause of the tragedy from the angle of theprotagonist Con Melody’s inferior psychology, and expounds the reasons andconsequences of this psychological distress. Moreover, it reveals modern people’scommon inferiority feelings and puts forwards the way of transcendence.Besides the Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis is divided into four chapters.Introduction gives a succinct overview of the author Eugene O’Neill’s life, theplay A Touch of the Poet, its present research at home and abroad, Adler’s inferioritycomplex theory, as well as the purpose of this study.Chapter One interprets Eugene O’Neill’s inferiority complex from three aspects,based on the author’s distinctly autobiographical tendency in his playwriting.Chapter Two, under the support of Adler’s inferiority theory, mainly exploresCon Melody’s compensation for his inferiority feelings by means of self-idealization,hunger for admiration, worship for Byronic hero and indulgence into illusions.Chapter Three penetrates into the reasons that caused Con Melody’s mentalproblems through three aspects, namely, social reality, familial influence and personalinner-conflict. It mainly focuses on the fierce conflict between the newly emerging bourgeois represented by the Harfords and the traditional old world by the Melodies.Chapter Four focuses on Con Melody’s final awareness of his true self aftersome futile attempts and the accomplishment of his transcendence of the inferioritycomplex through the intercourse with others and some down-to-earth practices.Conclusion sums up the former analysis, and affirms the existence of inferiorityfeelings among people in the modern society, and further points out that people canget rid of the psychological problems to realize their own value with the help of rightguidance and appropriate position.