O'Neil's Inheritance And Transcendence Over Greek Fate Tragedy From Mourning Becomes Electra

Eugene O'neil is one of the most outstanding American dramatists not only for his prolificacy in drama but for his accomplishment in bringing serious profound drama to American literature. As a modern playwright, O'neil is good at learning from both artistic ancestors and his contemporaries.Therefore, many of his works have been endowed with the artistic quality of both primitiveness and modernity. The grand trilogy Mourning Bocomes Electra among his mid-period plays is a good illustration to his unique unity. In this play, O'neil adopted a parellel structure to that of the ancient drama Oresteia and tries to interpret the ancient and supernatural sense of fate in Greek tragedies from the perspective of modern psychology. Such an attempt provides the play and the characters with a realistic basis and arouses attention from the author of the thesis as well. How does the psychological power trap the whole family throughout generations? This is the question which needs to be answered in the thesis. At the same time, O'neil gives his heroine much attention in his play, why does the playwright arrange it like that? What does he want to convey to the audience through his characters? These become another point which attracts the author's attention. Based on the researches, the author finds out that O'neil tries to convey his his outlook on fate and life different from that in Greek fate tragedy, that is, to live on bravely when life is difficult to us. Therefore, the author of the thesis draws on modern psychology by the analysis of the main characters in the play in order to answer the above questions clearly enough.Altogether, the thesis is made up of four parts. Part 1 serves as a brief introduction to the development of Greek fate tragedy and three tragic dramatists'outlook on fate. Part 2 mainly analyzes the play's inheritance over Greek fate tragedy from its plot,theme and skill. Part 3 is the main body of the thesis, the main characters in this play are analysed from the perspective of modern psychology.By doing so, the author of the thesis reveals O'neil's repressed"Complexes" as the overwhelming power of human's psychological impulses and their direct psychological effects on the family's fate.Part 4 is the conclusion to the thesis, the arrangement of character and plot displays O'neil's sense of responsibility as a dramatist:the dissatisfactory existence of modern people is his concern, and the enlightenment and hopes that the tragedy brings to people is his aim.