| Eugene O’Neill is one of the greatest playwrights in America, who virtuallyestablished the modern American theatre to some extent and was regarded as “theFather of American Drama” by some drama critics. Mask as an important means ofexpressionism has a great weight in O’Neill’s plays and also played an indelible role.O’Neill is the master of drama who uses masks most in his plays. He has successfullyapplied masks in many plays. O’Neill believes that mask is full of dramatic effects; if itis used properly, it can achieve more exquisite, imaginative, thought-provokingdramatic effect than any actor’s face mask.The Great God Brown is one of Eugene O’Neill’s middle-stage plays in whichexpressionistic features and techniques and multiple themes are explicitly demonstrated.This play wins universal praise in the American theatre. The thesis deeply analyzes theexpressionism techniques—masks used in The Great God Brown. The use of mask inthis play shows O’Neill’s exploration and insistence towards his practice of the maskplays. It also reveals the psychological, mysterious and abstract values that O’Neilladvocates in his mask plays.In the introduction part, the thesis mainly introduces O’Neill and his literatureachievements, the summary of The Great God Brown, literature review and the thesisstatement. Through the analysis of the research situation home and abroad on O’Neillfinds that applying the mask of expressionism to analyze The Great God Brown will bea new research perspective.Chapter One is the theory foundation. First is the introduction of the background,features and the main viewpoints of expressionism; and then the summary of the originand development of mask; at last it connects expressionism and mask to interpret theapplication of mask in O’Neill’s drama creation.Chapter Two is the classified analysis of several kinds of masks in The Great GodBrown, it includes the defensive mask, Brown’s greedy mask, Margaret’s self-centralmask and Cybel’s love mask. Masks in this play represent the heroes’ inner confusionand suffering from all kinds of contradictions and pressure, it embodies the process that Brown changes from purity to greedy and further reveals Dion’s journey distorted fromthe ancient Greek god Pan into Christian devil, which finally leads two protagonistsboth Dion and Brown to the death.Chapter Three further explores the important functions and symbolic meanings ofmask in The Great God Brown, mask is indispensable not only in promoting thedevelopment of plot, revealing the conflicts between life and soul of the characters,changing the relationships between the characters, but also in expressing the compoundpersonalities. This thesis explores the symbolic meanings in the play mainly from threeaspects of mysterious power, confrontation between the inner world of feeling and thematerial world and isolation and death. Mask covered a layer of mysterious veil on thewhole play to make it full of mysterious power; While confrontation between the innerworld of feeling and the material world between Dion and Brown is the main factor thatBrown covets Dion’s mask, and mask appears as the third party to reconcile thiscontradiction, it seems to have solved this contradiction, but actually it leads them todeath; Mask leads the characters to isolation and death step by step in the developmentof the play, every character in the play is isolated, because after the masks the trueselves are not known, and the death for Dion and Brown is the liberation and salvationof souls.Chapter Four introduces the elements influencing the Formation of O’Neill’sdrama mask theory. The ancient Greek mask culture, African culture and eastern dramaand Edward Gordon Graig influence O’Neill’s mask theory.At last it draws a conclusion that the use of mask makes the play a milestone inEugene O’Neill’s life of writing plays. Self-searching can be always found in EugeneO’Neill’s plays. Based on such a theme, The Great God Brown impresses readers andaudience to a certain degree. |
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