An Analysis Of Desire Under The Elms From The Perspective Of Trauma Theory

Eugene O’Neill is one of America’s greatest playwrights and the winner of Nobel Prize for literature in 1936. O’Neill’s creation has been active. If the creation of other playwrights has experienced a rise and fall, O’Neill’s creation has remained enduring. The magic power of his creation lies in the fact that he never ceases seeking for improvement in his writing art in step with the spirit of the times. Most of his plays have an inseparable relationship with his family and the times that O’Neill lives through. No matter those collective traumas drive from the transitional society and personal traumas drive from his own family, traumatic experience has become the origin of his creative writings. Desire under the Elms is one of his greatest dramas, readers and researchers see it as Eugene O’Neill’s unconscious autobiography. Since it is published, many scholars have studied it from different perspectives. Based on the previous study, this paper interprets the play from a relatively new perspective of trauma theory.In the Desire under the Elms, O’Neill depicts, with even the smallest details, the loneliness and misery of people, because of the disparity of parents, and failure to communicate between parents and children, brothers. He exposes the psychological trauma caused by expansion and distortion of desires. O’Neill was in the same predicament in reality. O’Neill’s traumatic memory is the origin of his tragic creation. O’Neill also comes to realize that drama should be made fully to expose the social conflicts and family problems. Through a great deal of research and demonstration, this paper begins with the relation between O’Neill’s traumatic experience and protagonists’ traumatic experience, analyzes the symptoms of collective trauma and the personal trauma in Desire under the Elms, explains the origin of trauma in order to better understand the tragic and hopeless characters, and their inescapable struggling in contemporary life.This thesis is composed of six parts. The first part is an introduction which gives an overview of Eugene O’Neill and the play of Desire under the Elms. Then the literary critics of Eugene O’Neill and Desire under the Elm at home and abroad are introduced. Finally, the author makes a statement of the emphasis and theme of this thesis.Chapter one is a general overview of trauma theory, which lays the foundation of this thesis, including the concept of trauma, collective trauma and personal trauma and development of trauma theory.Chapter two through a close reading of the text, the author points out trauma reflected in the main characters, including collective trauma and personal trauma. O’Neill condemns the protagonists’ selfish materialism, and he provides researchers a good case to study the collective trauma of a materialistic society. Every protagonist in the play feels anxious and unease in their heart. Their inflated desire makes their personality divided, their soul twisted. They become collective alienation. They live in tragedy and produce others’ tragedy.Chapter three the author analyzes the origin of O’Neill’s trauma and main characters’ trauma from two aspects. One aspect is the origin of collective trauma that caused by the transitional period of American society and that may directly or indirectly involve with the same group, such as O’Neill, Eben, Old Cabot, and Abbie. The other origin is dysfunctional family. To deeply understand the traumas reflected on the main characters in the play, it is necessary for the reader to know the traumatic experience of O’Neill, because his traumatic experience contributes a lot to his writing and it is the motivation of his shaping the protagonists who have similar traumatic experience as him.Chapter four discusses the way of recovery from trauma. Through the creation of these character images, O’Neill achieves the task of healing his trauma. In the Desire under the Elms, self-salvation is the means of self healing for the main characters. So far as O’Neill is concerned love can transcend one’s lust and greed, and as long as it is strong enough. Then one will make self-sacrifice for others and redeem himself. Eben and Abbie will be the best example of self-salvation, who transcend their possessiveness at last and achieve their spiritual revival. In addition, this part tries to tap its aesthetic value of traumatic literature. Desire under the Elms as a traumatic literature has its radically distinctive charm. The sorrowful beauty of traumatic literature makes a deep impression on the readers, arouses sympathy and increases more attentions to these disadvantaged groups in the society.The last part is a conclusion that summarizes the main idea clarified in the previously mentioned parts. The study on Desire under the Elms from the perspective of trauma throws the lights on the understanding of main characters in the play, and the analysis of Desire under the Elms from the angle of trauma can help the people to find out the roots of trauma in their daily lives.