| Eugene O'Neill is known as the father of modern American drama. He is marked for his powerful strength in presenting the tragedy of life, the predicament of man's existence; for "the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works". He tries to convey a sense that there are forces behind life which are beyond characters' control and shape their destinies. His acute consciousness of the forces behind and dark vision of human existence fit into the essence of literary naturalism.Literary Naturalism holds to a philosophy of pessimistic determinism, conceiving of man as controlled by his internal forces like sexual instincts, possessive desire, fear, hunger or Oedipus complex, and the outer forces of natural environment, the social and economic environment and circumstances. Controlled by the various forces, man has little over the direction of his lives and remains impotent, helpless. When naturalism is introduced to America, it has a distinction of its own. It has never been so pessimistic as the French naturalism. According to Donald Pizer, the American writers who write in the naturalistic tradition portray man's life as determined, controlled by the various life forces, and they also give an affirmation of individual worth. This dual nature is very typical of American literary naturalism.This thesis is meant to prove that O'Neill has a naturalistic tendency in all the three periods of his drama creation and the higher optimism amid the deterministic pessimism in his tragedies further confirms Pizer's concept of dualism about American literary naturalism. It contains three chapters with each devoted to an intensive analysis of one work in each... |
