On Traumatic Memory And Tragedy Sense In Long Day's Journey Into Night

Long Day's Journey into Night marks Eugene O'Neill's contrition and confrontation for his entangled family story. The process of the creation is also his torment of inner self. He translates his great pains into an autobiographical drama arousing universal resonance and profound emotional impact, which proves O'Neill to be a genius and the greatest dramatist in American theatre. Long Day's Journey into Night is a play of old sorrows that O'Neill wrote in tears and blood. Long Day's Journey into Night is the most autobiographical and representative play of the playwright. For the playwright, the play serves as review, recollection and summary of the whole life.The present thesis interprets Long Day's Journey into Night from the perspective of traumatic memory. Through a great deal of research and demonstration, the thesis attempts to start with the relation between O'Neill's traumatic memory and his tragic sense, trying to study and analyze the aspects covering O'Neill's formation of traumatic memories, traumatic images and the influence of traumatic memory on tragic sense. The thesis aims to explain the relationship between O'Neill's traumatic memory and his tragic sense, and reveal the various living predicaments of human being and the underlying causes of the tragedy, which helps people out of illusion.This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. Its main contents are as follows:The first part is introduction, which mainly makes a brief summary of the researches on O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night at home and abroad, and then points out the great significance and unique point of view of the analysis on the play.The body of the thesis is composed of three chapters:Chapter One mainly discusses one of the factors that affect O'Neill's literary creation—traumatic memory. O'Neill's traumatic memories and his psychological influence are discussed from traumas in childhood and his family. The madness of the family—mother's addiction, father's overpowering personality, brother's corruption and the betrayal and distrust among them has influenced his psyche profoundly and forms traumatic memories in his inner world. When grown up, in less than three years, O'Neill lost his parental family. O'Neill's works have extremely seriously autobiographic properties. The ego experiences in his writings become colorful arts. The traumatic memory is an important mental and psychological factor which always influences and restricts the playwright. During the next two decades, each play of O'Neill relates death, mourning and abnormal family. He has never really freed from the tragedy, and writing gradually offers him a peace of life. Writing becomes the only way for him to release and cure his traumas.Chapter Two concentrates on O'Neill's images created out of traumatic memory. In most of his dramas, O'Neill employs various images to embody the symbolic meanings, indicate the dramatic themes and portray the protagonist's psyche. This chapter attempts to explore the formation of images based on traumatic memory, as well as the meaning of thoughts, function of art that the images embody. The traumatic images in the play reflect the living state and inner world of the Tyrones, which endows the play with a dense and depressive mood. This chapter focuses on analysis that O'Neill creates characters and represents their psychology through various images. It also explores O'Neill's unique spiritual state embodied by such images. Meanwhile it reveals the main causes of the family tragedy. The excessive pursuit of wealth, status and success, together with the change of the traditional concepts of morality, values and family results in the tragedy.Chapter Three focuses on the tragic sense behind the traumas. Firstly, based on Jung's persona theories and Chinese psychoanalyst Zhujianjun's statement about persona images, the chapter discusses suffering of the Tyrones which reflects the confusion of disillusion and reality that moderns encounter. It helps explore the causes of the family tragedy and the tragic roots of the modern society become clear—souls of modern man are estranged and they fail to recognize their inner self under the deformed social ideology. Then the deep cause is discussed. Tragedy comes from the prevailing materialism in America in the first half 20th century. Thus the impact of the cruel and realistic materialism that permeates American society is attacked. Finally the chapter outlines and analyzes the Tyrones'complicated emotional relationship, which reflects various living dilemma. However, it is kinship and love that makes them forgive and protect each other. The last part is conclusion, which makes a summary to the preceding parts. Long Day's Journey into Night is the record of O'Neill's psychological activities and sublimation of aesthetic and artistic presentation of traumatic memory. Traumatic creation makes O'Neill transcend his self in reality and acquire the wit and courage to face the family tragedy. With imagination and transcendence of art, it provides beneficial reference for people to face a variety of existential plight and fantasy.