A Study On The Sea Images In O'Neill's Plays

Eugene O'Neill, the greatest dramatist of America in the 20th century, is acclaimed to be the founder of American modern drama and greatly contributes to the American drama, culture, and thoughts. In his long artistic life, O'Neill completes about fifty plays which covers many publicly concerned issues, including society, religion, family, and humanity. His plays vividly reveal the conflicts between material culture and spiritual one, and disclose the social cultural crisis of modern America as well as its harm on human heart.The dissertation mainly analyzes the abundant implication of the image of sea, and consists of three chapters.The first chapter tries to systematically and comprehensively analyze the meaning and function of image in western academics and western plays, and hence explore the prototype implication of the image of sea, so much so that the utilization of the sea image in O'Neill's plays can be summarized.The second chapter resorts to the theory of prototype to discuss the abundant implication of image of sea which often shows up in O'Neill's plays. In his plays, this image is complicated and contradictory. The sea serves as not only the symbol of the mystical force that has mercy on human fate, but the inhabitant for human dreams, bearing O'Neill's concern and anxiety over humanity and the human's existential dilemma. He reveals and analyzes the destruction and corruption material-oriented values brought to the beauty of humanity and art through describing the conflicts between human and the sea and human's pursuit of the dream of sea. So the image of sea indicates the industrious search and exploration of O'Neill to the mystical force hidden behind life, to the dream of ideal and the meaning of life.The third chapter inquires into the generational causes of the image of sea and its significance in modern era. The image of sea in his plays is closely related to his unique life experience and western traditional marine culture. Meanwhile, the inheritance and development of this tradition leads to the flexibility of the image of sea's application as well as the abundance and contradiction of its implication. The advanced thoughts on sea revealed in his plays even can serve as guidance for china's modernization.These images of sea in his plays exaggerate lyrical sense and the themes of his plays, and apparently deepen the expression of themes and the disclosure of contextual connotations, moreover enable O'Neill to honestly record all kinds of social evils at that time. What's more, these images also suggest O'Neill's thoughts on social and human issues, which endowed his plays with significant social meaning. Hence, this dissertation surveys O'Neill's plays from this perspective and explores the abundant implication of the image of sea with an aim to appreciate the profound thoughts of his plays and his concerns of life and human's existential state.