Eulogy Of Life

The Father of American Theatre, winner of Nobel Prize in literature and four Pulitzer Prizes, Eugene O'Neill has created more than fifty plays during his writing career which earn him great acclaim and fame both home and abroad. O'Neill's plays examine coldness of an indifferent universe, the materialistic greed of human beings, the problems of discovering one's true identity. His plays truly reflect American people's life and thought, confusion and pursuit in the 20th century and reveal their rich inner world. His great efforts led the modern U.S Theater into the mainstream of the world drama. The Iceman Cometh is a great masterpiece of Eugene O'Neill. This play portrays a group of homeless, pitiable and heavily drunk people at Harry Hope's hotel located in New York in the summer of 1912. The inmates live on free lunch, doing nothing but the cheap whiskey and the pipe dreams. They dream all day and comfort each other to escape the cold and hopeless reality and seek temporary peace in the hotel day after day. Only in this way, their life became somewhat meaningful. In The Iceman Cometh, what O'Neill wishes to inspire his audience is the very love and enthusiasm about life. The author tries to better understand O'Neill's pursuit of art and life through the demonstration of the Apollonian spirit and the Dionysus spirit.The thesis falls into five parts. Chapter one focuses on O'Neill's tragic view in his writing career, his contribution to American drama and a brief review of the researches on O'Neill both at home and abroad. The aim and significance of this thesis are briefly explained in this part. Chapter two generally reviews the Nietzsche's Apollonian and Dionysus spirits. In Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, he highlights two impulses of art: the Apollonian and the Dionysian, which means for man to redeem from the horrible world. Apollo offers man a dreamy world to veil the intolerable life, and the Dionysian convinces man of the eternal joy of existence by confirming every part of life through intoxication. Nietzsche believes that life is essentially an abyss of terror and misery, so people may resort to the Apollonian spirit and the Dionysus spirit to escape from reality. Coincidentally, O'Neill has absorbed Nietzsche's tragic thoughts, especially that of the Dionysian art and Apollonian art. In chapter three, O'Neill indicates that pipe dreams and companionship are the essential means to sustain a meaningful life, and without them, one will have to belong to death. O'Neill tries to convey that dreams alone give man hope, solace and comfort in a fragmented and absurd world. For the failures in the modern society, they have no hope in the real world. Under such condition, humanity desperately need for a life-sustaining illusion to lessen the naked despair of soul-destroying reality. Chapter four states that the Dionysus spirit can give people hope and meaning of life. O'Neill no longer emphasizes the function of"catharsis"as the traditional tragedy requires. He is close to Nietzsche in affirming life with the Dionysus spirit and acquiring a kind of"metaphysical comfort"in his tragedy. Beyond pity and terror, Nietzsche connects tragedy with the strong emotion of ecstasy and overcoming from Dionysian. He always puts his emphasis on the Dionysus art as providing human being with"metaphysical comfort"in the face of the terror and absurdity of existence. Chapter five is the conclusion of this thesis. O'Neill has absorbed Nietzsche's tragic thoughts, especially that of the Dionysus art and Apollonian art to express his optimistic attitude towards life.