The Influence Of Nietzsche’s Philosophy On Eugene O’neill’s Tragedies

Eugene O’Neill is a famous American playwright.He wrote more than fifty works in his whole life.And he won a Nobel Prize in Literature and Pulitzer Prize for drama for four times.He was honored as the Father of American Modern Drama.His representative works contained Emperor Jones,Long Day’s Journey into Night,Desire under the Elms and The Iceman Cometh and so on.Most of O’Neill’s works are tragedies.About his tragedies,the academy circles in China and abroad both had a wide and profound research,such as his tragic thoughts,tragic prototype.However,this paper would study the influence of Nietzsche’s philosophy on his tragedies.O’Neill declared that he admired Nietzsche in public for several times.It is so apparent that Nietzsche’s thoughts had a big influence on his works.This paper plans to analyze the related works in two perspectives.These two aspects are Nietzsche’s superman philosophy in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits in his work Tee Birth of Tragedy.These two concepts are quite significant in Nietzsche’s philosophy,which are quite helpful to understand O’Neill’s tragic works.And the two concepts are relevant closelyThis paper plans to divide into five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction to Eugene O’Neill and his writing career and the literature review.Chapter two is the exposition of the two part concepts.Chapter three is the analysis on two tragedies-Long Day’s Journey into Night and Desire under the Elms,in the perspective of the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits.Chapter four is the analysis on O’Neill’s other two tragedies-Lazarus Laughed and the Iceman Cometh,in the perspective of superman philosophy.And the last chapter is conclusion of these analyses.