An Analysis Of Racial Issues In O’Neill’s Plays From The Perspective Of Jung’s Psychoanalysis

Since the 1920 s, American drama has begun to flourish with the pioneer American playwright Eugene O’Neill. As an Irish-American, O’Neill was sympathetic with the racial plight and showed great concern to the black people in America. In his life time, O’Neill has taken pains to expose the evilness of racial prejudice and attached great attention to African-American’s emotional and psychological experience. In the past few decades, O’Neill study has been in the ascendant both home and abroad, while only a few has studied O’Neill’s racial works from the angle of psychological analysis. Moreover, up till now no scholar in China has paid due attention to the black character Joe and the racial issue in The Ice Man Comth, which is an indispensable part for our understanding of the racial information conveyed by the playwright.On the basis of close reading of The Emperor Jones, All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The Ice Man Comth, the author tries to analyze O’Neill’s racial treatment in perspective of Jungian Analytical Psychology. The thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter One presents a general introduction to Eugene O’Neill and Jungian Analytical Psychology. And the literary reception of O’Neill’s plays and studies on his racial treatment both at home and abroad is given in this chapter. In Chapter Two, the author analyzes Jones’ evolvement of consciousness from the oppressed to the oppressor in different periods and his forsaking of true self and racial root by rejecting his successive personal unconscious and collective unconscious in his psychic journey in The Emperor Jones. In Chapter Three, black/white binary opposition in All God’s Chillun Got Wings is treated as an unconscious racial archetype inherited in both whites and blacks. Overwhelmed by the psychic archetype, Jim develops his shadow aspect—inferiority complex which causes his successive failures in career and his slave-like role in his marriage with Ella. Likewise, Ella, paralyzed by her racial superiority, fails in admitting the unconscious racial prejudice into the house of consciousness which leads to her failure of individuation. Chapter Four focuses on O’Neill’s exploring of the racial prejudice in the underprivileged group. A seemingly utopia world free from racial discrimination is presented before readers, while at the same time, Joe’s suffering of racial prejudice and his adopting persona is revealed. However, in face of the false equality, Joe begins to question his persona and finally relinquish his white mask. Chapter Five concludes that tortured experience of being discriminated and marginalized by Native Americans, Irish immigrants have developed their own racial collective unconscious, which was deeply ingrained in Eugene O’Neill and pushed him to identify with blacks and other minorities who had similar bitter experiences. Thus, O’Neill was engaged in investigating the fate and psyche of blacks by exploring their psychological course and fate in the white society so as to reveal the sinfulness of racial discriminations.