Struggling In An Existential Predicament

This thesis studies two of Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical plays,Long Day’s Journey into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten.1Focusing on the topic of predicament,this thesis analyzes six major characters in the two plays from both the cultural and the psychological perspectives in an effort to explore the personal and universal significance of the two plays.This thesis is divided into four chapters.Chapter I studies the existence predicament of the two women,Mary and Josie.Trapped in patriarchy,both Mary and Josie are forced to play the stereotypical gender roles of mother/whore/wife.Circumscribed in such roles,they are unable to pursue their dreams or fulfill their own expectations,which lead to their deep sense of loss.Their sacrifices and sufferings in playing such roles reveal the limitation of the patriarchal construct for women and also expose the miserable existence of women in patriarchy.Chapter II explores the tragic poverty complex of the two fathers,James and Hogan.As victims to the Great Famine in Ireland,both James and Hogan have inherited a paralyzing fear of poverty.Such fear,aggravated by their miserable immigration experience of starvation,grinding work,eviction and discrimination in the racially intolerant Yankee culture,develops into their extreme stinginess and their excessive zeal for land acquirement which eventually lead to their family and personal tragedies.Regarded as miniature dramatizations of the Irish diaspora in America in the nineteenth century,their tragedies mirror the survival predicament of the Irish minority dominated by the mainstream Yankee society.Chapter III studies the Oedipal dilemma of the two sons in Journey,Jamie and Edmund.Brought up in a dysfunctional family,the two brothers in the Tyrone family have developed a similar Oedipal obsession for their mother.Denied emotional support from the morphine-addicted mother,they either turn to whiskey or whores for revenge or seek a total oblivion in nature.Regarded as the representatives of Oedipal sons in O’Neill’s cannon,their life-in-death state represents the tragic existence of the Oedipus complex sufferers in general.Chapter IV analyzes the six characters’ struggling in their predicaments.Though depressed and sullen,these characters are by no means fatalists but heroes who are courageous to confront the reality and to struggle for a way out.Their struggling,their battles against entrapment reflect the courage of men in sufferings and express the universal longings of men to instill their life with a meaning.Their courage and fighting spirit itself have won them a sense of dignity and honor.This paper concludes that in spite of autobiographical elements,both plays have transcended personal concerns and exposed the existence state of various unfortunate groups in the society.In dramatizing the six protagonists’ predicaments,O’Neill manifests his deep understanding for his dead and beloved family members as well as his immense pity for human pathos.Ending up with the women’s rebellion against patriarchy and transcendence,the fathers’ redemption through confession of their sins to their children and the Oedipal sons’ resurrection through the darkness of death,the two plays give full expression to the positive energy in the depth of O’Neill’s soul and also offer a glimmer of hope for all the misbegotten people in the modern world.