A Study Of Eugene O'neill's Novelistic Tendency

Eugene O'Neil has always enjoyed the fame as the “father of American drama” and his works have been popular among scholars both at home and abroad.Through the study of O'Neill's works,O'Neill's novelistic tendency can be found from some perspectives.Eugene O'Neill himself also expresses his interest to inject the characteristics of novel-writing in play-writing.During Eugene O'Neill's writing career,his three representative plays Strange Interlude,Days Without End and Long Day's Journey into Night can represent the characteristics of his writing career in different stages.This thesis takes these three works to respectively represent Eugene O'Neill's early,middle,and late period on his novelistic tendency,which shows Eugene O'Neill's efforts on novelizing drama.Eugene O'Neill's works,especially the three plays adopted by the thesis,can reflect the characteristics of novel-writing from the perspectives of dialogue,conflict and theme.From the perspective of dialogue,what can be found is that during the early period of his writing career,O'Neill tries to arrange the stream-of-consciousness style in his play,then in the middle period,he splits the protagonist into two parts,and finally in the late period,the dialogues in his play achieved the resemblance as their counterparts in novel.From the perspective of conflict,what can be found is that in the early period,O'Neill tries to shake off the shackle of traditional melodrama,then in the middle period,he tries to cut down the number the conflicts.In the late period,he successfully internalizes the conflicts of the play into the background of family and handled them properly,triggering the lingering thought of readers.From the perspective of theme,what can be found is that at first O'Neill tried to explore broad themes as a novelist in his play,but the lack of profound discussion led the play to be superficial.Then he tries to shrink the themes into a core onereligion,which is unsuccessful.Finally O'Neill manages to fuse the theme into the family issue,which is deceptively simple and thought-provoking.Follow Eugene O'Neill's tendency to combine the elements of novel-writing with play-writing,we can draw a conclusion: Analyzing Eugene O'Neill's works based on his fusion of novel-writing and play-writing is a worthy perspective,which can lead us to a deeper understanding of O'Neill and his works.The reason why Eugene O'Neill enjoys high reputation and makes a huge contribution to the enrichment of world literature lies in his spirit of craftsmanship and courage of creativeness.