Seeking Meaning In The "Hopeless Hope"

Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953), the great playwright of America, who has won four Pulitzer Prizes and has been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1936, made a great contribution to American drama and culture. In the time of O’Neill, the capitalism in America has accomplished the transition from the laissez-faire capitalism to monopoly capitalism, and a variety of social drawbacks protruded conspicuously.Man was trapped in a world of belief breaking, what Nietzsche meant by exclaiming "God is dead" and what Albert Camus declaring "Our belief is lost". Meanwhile, science could not provide a new way to comfort man’s spirit. Many people were obsessed with a depressing mood manifested by their perplexity and hesitation. As a conscientious playwright, O’Neill devoted all his life to digging at the roots of the sickness of society and searching of human’s spiritual home in modern society. For him, depicting of human’s dream seemed to be an applicable means of uncovering man’s inner world. Seeing Eugene O’Neill’s works, we found that dream theme as an indispensible element throughout his whole writing. In O’Neill’ early plays, whose primary characteristic is romantic, the protagonists pursue their beautiful dreams all their lives. However, his late works are tinged with many pipe dreams or dope-dream. Dream, as a way of representing human’s spiritual world, also experiences the process of disillusionment with the changing worldview of O’Neill.Based on the comparison and analysis of O’Neill’s three important plays, namely Beyond the Horizon, The Iceman Cometh and Long Day s Journey Into Night, the present paper aims to analyze the dream characteristic in his plays and explore the reasons why O’Neill pays so much attention to the dream theme, thereby demonstrates the relationship between the daydream and salvation.The thesis is divided into five parts:The introductory part serves as a historical review of Eugene O’Neill research both home and aboard. Meanwhile the aim and significance of this thesis are briefly explained.The body part consists of three chapters. Chapter one mainly focuses on text analysis, and concretely states how the dream theme embodied in the three representative plays of O’Neill. The protagonists of O’Neill have their own dream that may be romantic, impractical or even entirely immersed in illusion. Robert in Beyond the Horizon pursues his romantic dream of the far and secret beauty throughout his life. The Iceman Cometh relates several derelicts that neither adapt nor resist their real life but indulge in the alcohol and pipe-dreaming to get rid of the pain. Similar with them, Mary in Long Days Journey Into Night indulges herself into illusion in order to get over the terrible reality by means of taking drug. It generally reveals the American people’s real survival condition at that time by means of probing their spiritual world. Chapter two mainly discusses the reasons why the author pays so much attention to the dream theme from the social and cultural background and his personal experiences. The two World Wars and the economic crisis of 1930s have made American people wallow in a gloomy mood. Meanwhile the high-development of the science and technology has shaken the status of religion, and brought about spiritual crisis in western society. The last chapter analyzes the final destination of O’Neill’s protagonists of the three chosen plays, demonstrating the relationship between dream and salvation. By means of comparing the different features of dream in O’Neill’s different creating stages, the paper attempts to indicate that the characters’capability of dreaming gradually declines with O’Neill’s deepening understanding of life. Meantime, it discusses the negative and positive aspects of dream in human’s survival.The conclusion part summarizes the dream theme in the three chosen works, and restates O’Neill’s concerns with the meaning of life in his entire artistic career. What’s more, the paper indicates that dream has its realistic meaning at that time, and of course, it also has the negative effect to some extent. Dreaming is an essential means of sustaining a comforting life in the extreme miserable living condition, yet it could not change the painful reality. Only by making choices and shouldering responsibility, human’s life is more meaningful.