An Archetypal Study On Eugene O’Neill’s Plays

Eugene O’Neill is considered as one of the greatest playwrights in America. Hisreligion thought was contradictory. Therefore, the destiny of human and the control ofthe God became the major force of his dramatic conflicts. In addition, O’Neill’sdrama creation was greatly influenced by ancient Greek mythology and the Bible. Hedisplaced ancient mythology into modern life and strove to dig out the root of moderntragedy.Archetype is the typical model of apprehension, and it is also the historicalremains of human life in ancient times. Primary images originate from the sameexperiences of our ancestors that had been repeated again and again. Human physicstructure is formed based on these experiences. Every primary image can beconsidered as a fragment of human life, and they are the remains of our ancestors’happiness and sadness.Those displacements in O’Neill’s plays make it possible of the application ofarchetype criticism in O’Neill’s plays and open up a new field of the research of hisplays. The author of this paper will take O’Neill’s three plays Desire under The Elms,Mourning Becomes Electra and Long Day’s Journey into Night as examples, throughthe approach of archetypal criticism, analyze the archetypes and “event” archetypes inhis plays, including the archetypes of the fog, sea and home as well as the “event”archetypes of Electra complex and Oedipus complex, the conflicts between spirit ofApollo and Dionysus, Medea’s infanticide and the creation of the God. The author will apply Frazer’s cultural anthropology, Jung’s analytical psychology and Frye’sarchetypal criticism to the analysis of these displacements.Through the analysis, we can have a deeper understanding of O’Neill’s thoughtsand his writing. Meanwhile, it will help us to find the root of modern tragedy writing.