A Study On Protagonists' Tragedy In Beyond The Horizon From The Perspective Of Freudian Personality Structure Theory

Eugene O'Neill is globally recognized as the father of modern American drama and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936.As the only American playwright who received this honor,and also the one who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times,he has been much studied in and out of America.With vivid plots and complicated personalities,his plays have ushered in a new era of realistic plays,and gave the audience a brand-new sense of life,totally different from the previous imitating works before him.From the early last century till many years after his death,his works remained popular all over the world.Analytical perceptions of his works range from theories of tragedy,realism,expressionism,ecology,to feminism,post colonialism,deconstructionism,existentialism etc.Some scholars take a comparative study of his plays with the oriental Taoism.Among the critical methods,psychoanalysis is one with less popularity.As his early masterpiece,Beyond the Horizon was created in 1918 and premiered in 1920,earned him the first Pulitzer Prizes,marked the new period of his literary life,and established his position in American drama and literary history as well.This play has received extensive attentions from numerous scholars at home and abroad since it was staged.However,the previous studies only focused on such aspects as the conflict between reality and dream,tragedy theory,archetypal method and feminist analysis.Therefore,the author of this thesis intend to re-interpret this renowned play from the perspective of Freudian personality structure,in order to probe into the causes of the tragedy from the layer of the protagonists' inner world.Freudian personality structure theory is often applied in literary criticism.Based on Freud's theory,an individual's personality structure 1s composed of id,ego and superego.The id obeys the "pleasure principle",the ego operates based on the "reality principle" and the superego is driven by the "moral principle".The healthy personality is a balance among the id,ego and superego,while the imbalance will lead to an individual's abnormal personality,which results in a tragic life.The thesis is composed of six chapters:the introduction chapter,four main chapters and the conclusion.The introduction part mainly gives a briet introduction to Eugene O'Neill,his major works,literature review on Beyond the Horizon at home and abroad and study method,objectives and structures of this dissertation.Chapter Two gives an introduction to the foundation and development of the Freudian personality structure theory.Some important concepts of the theory are briefly introduced in this part as well.In the following three chapters,this thesis analyzes the three protagonists Ruth,Andrew and Robert from the perspective of id,ego and superego respectively to explore the inner causes of their tragedy.Ruth is manipulated by id,Andrew is lost in ego,and Robert renders himself a slave to superego.In general,their personalities are imbalanced,which caused tragedies to themselves and their whole family.Both the choices and the process of self-transformation of the three people in the face of the dilemmas are fully corroborated by Freudian personality structure theory.The dominant personality in their personality structure will determine the character and personality of the protagonists,which is also the focus of this thesis.The conclusion is the summary and generalization of the thesis.This thesis does not judge the character as good or bad,but analyzes their personality structures in an objective perspective and points out that the profound cause of their tragedy lies in their failure to face and deal with mental problems,that is,the problem of personality structure analyzed in this thesis.With the high level material civilization in our society,people are easily tempted by the illusions which are not realistic,which will deprive them of the sense of belonging,and eventually leading to their tragic fate.In order to prevent such tragedy from happening,a sound personality is of great importance for all people.