Destructive forces in the plays of Eugene O'Neill Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Schaffer, Pauline Wright, 1911- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 06/10/2021 10:04:29 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/319095 DESTRUCTIVE FORGES IN THE HAYS vo GF^EUUIEB 0sNEILL ..’■■■■ ■■' by - Pauline Wo Schaffer. oNY -;'vA'thesis ' ' . ;0 submilffced1 *b the faculty of the . Department of English in partial fulfillment of : ’ the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate College v ' University of Arizona 1 9 4 9 Approvedr . & o" 6 e>! Director of Thesis. Date 5- ^ TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PACE INTRODUCTION ................................ iii I. PURITANISM ................................ 1 II. ILLUSIONS.................................. 3.5 III. MATERIALISM................................ 64 IV. A SENSE OF G U I L T .......................... 84 V. CONCLUSION .................................. 114 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................ 11? 198232 INTRODUCTION : • - The subject here £ The Hairy Apel is the same ancient -' ohe that always was and always Will be the one suhjeet for drama ^ and that is man' and his ■struggle with his own ’ fateo The struggle used to Jbe'With the ;gods s -but • it is - : , now with himself g his. own past , his attempt wtQ. belong Hugehe 0 $Heillvhappiness, whieh: eomes from living life fully, is the most .important achievement of the indl- ' vidualo: Those forces thens internal or external which . stand in the: way. of the happiness of his characters are de­ structive c The intervention of the gods or furies destroyed ; the ancient Greeksc . Psychological, social, and economic forces destroy modern man.- In neither case does'man have very much freedom of action0. But there is one point of dif­ ferences The Greek gods were supernatural and Impregnable *' ■ The destruct ive forces in th e . modern .world are man-made- and •. vulnerable, though only .slightly, so<>, ,h a dh It is the purpose of this. study to analyze O^Neiil’s. characters in relation to certain psychological, social, and economic forceS and to trace the 'destructiveness of these forces on the characters. For purposes of simplification . these f orces’ that have a villainous eff ect upon the charac­ ters of 0 °Neill will be classed under the general heads of Puritanism, Illusions,' Materialism,'and A Sense of Guilt, - ' Barfett EL .Glark, Fugene 0 9Neillo The Man and His Plays (Hew York: Robert Ho-MeBride and 0Oo, 1929}, po 127. ; and a chapter will be devoted to each,. These-forces are re<= Xated in m n y ways <, The machinery of; all is man-made and artif icial ; In many eases a distinct line of demarcation seems arbitrary, for these forces in modern society are the work of centuries; and. age has worn -away the f ehces that . separate ;theai;";-,.'libral:s:’';%ave': intermarried with' rellgion and ,;v both have met^ clandestinely, with economics o. 1.:.. ' . .It is not the purpose -- of this paper to show that O'Neill set about deliberately to show the destructiveness of these forces0 Unlike Ibsen, O'Neill is not. a social re- . former» His preoceupatidn is with presenting a picture of - life, and he does not ascend a soapbox for any cause« The purpose of this study is to show that these.forces tend to . ‘ destroy O ’Neill’s characters. : It would be impraoti.cal to trace the ravaging effects of these forces. On every char- ' acter in 0 5Neill 9 s plays beeause the report would, become too long and repetitious. 1 Since this is true,' the present . study will be devoted 10 ;a detailed analysis - of one play. Strange Interlude,. and' pertinent examples will be given from the other plays o: In the third chapter.j Materialism, the emphasis will be shifted from- Strange Interlude to Marco , Polo, The Great God Brown and The.■ Hairy Ape,' for in .these three plays ^G’Neill’s references to -materialism are "more - ; obvious than in Strange Interlude. In the fourth chapter, A Sense of Guilt, 'O'Neill's latest play. The Iceman Gometh, wili; be analysedo. V" t h • ^ V • • ^ Stranfee Interlude: has "been chosen not only because the teohnique of having the characters reveal their thoughts ' along with their speeehes ■ jnakes a study of their inner selves more reliable,. but be.Gause 0 'Neill has , taken time to develop his; characters in this play very carefully and fully» The only other play in which fhis is done is Mourn° - ,ing Becomes Electra0 I n ,this plays however, the mission Of - ; the playwright to build a modern version of the Electra : : f story1 Sometime s eahs ed:: him t o - think more of the . f ormula >. :than of -the characters0 In Strange Inieflude the emphasis . ; ■ is on the characterization. It is one of O'Neill' s f inest : plays, and was heralded as. such bysome Of his severest > " ; * cfiticsf t It ;is thevmelting pot" for the most persistent ideas of all his other plays. George Jean Nathan commented : on the play as : f ollows f ■ t vf ft - . p - In the.play which he calls strange'~Interlude .t. Eugene .0 'Neill, has written the finest, the profoundest drama of his entire career, a drama, I believe, -that ' ; , has not beOn surpassed by any that^ Europe has given us . in recent years" and certainly, by none that has been pro­ duced in America. Into this work he has poured his f accumulation of dramaturgic, skill-, his mount ing ability: - ■ v : in the flow and fire- of/dramatic English, his increas- _ : ing invention and all the wisdom of life,:with all its admixture of hopeful cynicism and hopeless exaltation, . that he has garnered since first he set himself to eon- . ; vert the American theatre into something worthy of the attention of intelligent men and women . ; seifitsuj the liberties 0 'Neill takes ■ ? George Jean Nathan, ”0 'Neill®s Finest Play," ■'.■AA e r i c a n ::lfero.ur.^,<;. 21: - (August „1927:1, p » 499, with '.dramatic foriru - • ifliat O ’Neill has done, theiig is; to take a story which „ oo demands that brooding .subtlety of treatment impos­ sible in ordinary dramatic form, and he has made out of it something whie-h not only'holds every one of our fac­ ulties employed but remains g: like one of- the greatest ' ' mbderh novels-$ . to tease the mind. 'with the sense that there will be» for a long time to come, new discoveries to be made in the memory of its labyrinthine passage r o,o He is gifor example,.the first to dare to make use in .. the drama of'that introspeetion without which it would be impossible to imagine the - existence:of a large parte ': - of modefn literature , a.nd he is the first to employ this newly-won knowledge of the unconscious, not in such a way as to make - it the foundation o f :a highly- simplified pattern, like that of The silver Cord or -it Hidden, but in such a way as to make it east over all the events that uncertain^ flickering light which,it; sheds in the 1ife'around us » i i Strange Interlude , conquers a new province for the theatre „ 0 » Strange • Interlude is Mr, 0 8Heill’s best play03 . ' : : Bernard DeYoto in a diatribe,against O'Neill at the time of his receiving the Nobel, price, systematically de-- bunks every play;G’Heill.has ever written but says, "Pro­ bably the Nobel award was based on Stf ahge Interlude, and ; . Beeome s Electra and yet these plays only emphasize what the others have made, clear? Here all the strains meet - - " ’ 4 " : and blendo o o ;o"; In examining the materials indicated by a six-page bibliography which I compiled on information about O'Neill 3 Joseph Sood: Krutch, "Strange Interlude 9 t? The Nationy- OZVI. (February 15, -1928) , p. 192, : ' y Bernard DeYoto, "Minority Report" Saturday Review of Literature, ZY (November 21, 1936) s p 0 'l6 = i : 'vti:- C ;; V i; ■ - : to be found in booksy'periodicals and newspapers„ I diecov­ ered very little on tiie subject matter of this thesis„ Most of the published material is concerned with his plays as theatre hat her than as dramati c literaturee A great deal of space is also devoted to comparing his personal experi= : ences with those of his characters. Attempts to evaluate him in American and in world literature perhaps come nezt in the amount of space consumed* -and there are many contro­ versies over whether, or not his plays are real tragedies. Three complete books have been published about O ’Neill. , One of these5 is predominantly biographical9 and a second is primarily devoted to proving that O ’Neill’s characters are always punished when they violate moral laws. The thirdj however, is; concerned with, the destructive -power of social, and; envirOn^htai forces’in the plays of 0 ’Neill, ■ : / and was eztremely useful in this’study. It- is the work of Sbphus KV Winther, Eugene 0 ’Neill, A Critical Study.^ Wintherp a close triend; of O ’Neill* has written a compre= - hensive analysis of O ’Neill’s work and the philosophy behind it.: His book is quoted freely in this study* particularly ■5 m a r k , :0£„ olt. ■ .. ^ : 6 Elchard Dana Skinner, The Poet’s Quest (Toronto: Longman.’si 193-5) = v/l'-:; V : .;1/ ; - : ’ v;; ; 1 ■ ? Sophus IC. -WintherEugene O ’Neill, A Critical , Study (New York: Random House, 1935) o ", : in tka chapters on "The.Destructive Power of the Romantic Ideal" and "The Anathema of Puritanism." ; '.