"the Iceman" Ethical Values ​​in Perspective,

Eugene O'Neill is the founder of American drama and won Nobel Prize in 1936. The Iceman Cometh was considered by O'Neill himself the best of all his works. The story of The Iceman Cometh happened in the early 20th-century America. At that time the ethical values of America were changing profoundly, which is fully unfolded in The Iceman Cometh. In this paper the literary ethical criticism is adopted to attain an overall grasp on the drastic changes of the ethical values presented in this play and to show great concern about the state of life of the characters alienated from the society. Based on the relationships between man and society, man and man and man and himself, this paper intends to observe the development of the subversion, establishment and shift to existentialism of the ethical values in the play.The body of this paper is composed of four chapters. From the perspective of the relationship between man and society, Chapter One analyses the alienation of the characters from the society in the light of the ethical values recognized and accepted by the then society; Chapter Two focuses on the characters'subversion of the traditional ethical values from the perspectives of interpersonal relationship and the relationship between man and himself respectively; From the same angle, Chapter Three discusses the establishment of the ethical values which the characters strive to do; Chapter Four interprets the ethical values of the characters from today's standpoint. Through the overall analysis on the ethical values in the play, it is clear that they are diverted into absurdity of existentialism.