A Study On Eugene O’Neill’s Trauma Narrative

In the writings of Eugene O’Neill, the traumatic experiences have so strong expression that the traumatic memory is always recurring and the past lingering. When experiencing trauma, he will transfer these memory into his play, and let the main characters release the spiritual pressure by imagination. In the process of writing and re-experiencing trauma, the trauma was cured even healed sometimes. Therefore, literary narrative has the mental healing effect.If we re-evaluate the tragedy of Eugene O’Neill, who was an American playwright, from the aspect of literary trauma, we can found clearly that the family, culture and society trauma in his plays. On one hand, the characters in the play regard his family members as the prototype. On the other hand, the family trauma which was formed under the effect of misfortunes and pains became the theme of many works of him. Traumatic memory is the indispensible impetus of his plays, and the narration of trauma is beneficial to release, lessen and cure the trauma of the writers. The trauma burdened by the Negros in the play was enhanced from the personal level to society level, which shows the social race trauma and the denouncement to the unfair social system of Eugene O’Neill. The disastrous outcome can be attributed to the loss of crisis awareness and sense of belonging and civilization of people in modern society. Honestly speaking, the main reason why Eugene O’Neill creates play is that he experienced and witnessed the traumas which come from family, society and culture. However, owing to his excellent writing skill and deep consideration about these personal feelings, he successfully advanced these personal feeling into the society level, and endowed them with general realistic and philosophical meanings.This thesis will precede the research on Eugene O’Neill’s trauma narrative in the following steps:in the introduction, I will provide a brief introduction of Eugene O’Neill and his plays and an overview of the study of Eugene O’Neill concerning his plays in abroad and China.In Chapter One, I will introduce the theory of trauma since it is the very basic ground on which I am going to analyze O’Neill and his plays, and Eugene O’Neill’s traumatic experiences from three aspects:childhood, family and society. There are a lot of autobiographical elements in O’Neill’s works. Life experience has become the material of O’Neill’s works of art. Traumatic experience has always been an important psychological factor and mental factor that affects and restricts O’Neill. Traumatic writing is the only way to defuse the pain of O’Neill.Chapter Two contains an analysis of Eugene O’Neill’s traumatic writing. The three parts will concentrate on three kinds of trauma represented in three plays:the trauma of family in Long Day’s Journey into Night, the trauma of race in The Emperor Jones and the trauma of times in The Iceman Cometh. I will also penetrate into the detailed images created out of traumatic experiences. In the majority of his plays, O’Neill uses a large number of images to embody the symbolic meanings, indicate the dramatic themes and portray the protagonist’s psyche. From the perspective of trauma, the author analyzes the realistic significance and the function of the images, and points out that the traumatic writing reflects the writer’s thinking and exploration of the predicament of human existence.Chapter Three focuses on the therapies in Eugene O’Neill’s traumatic writing. Characters under O’Neill’s writing made perverse, negative, and passive responses to traumas. Mary’s imagining and taking drugs, Jones’escaping and enslaving others, and Patrons’drinking and making daydreams in Harry Hope’s, all of that shows their confusion towards trauma. They all failed in their searching for the meaning of life.The last part is conclusion, which makes a summary to the preceding parts. Eugene O’Neill devotes painstaking effort to his play, in which the deep and real traumatic experience he experienced in life was embodied lively. To some extent, the traumatic experience is the record of mental activities and the sublimation of thoughts and arts of Eugene O’Neill. In the process of traumatic writing, Eugene O’Neill overcome himself in real life and acquired the courage and wisdom to face traumatic memory. What is more, Eugene O’Neill provided useful reference for facing various survival difficulties and imaginations for people in modern society by uplifting the art elements of traumatic writing.