An Analysis Of Escapist In American Dramas

Eugene O’Neill,Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller are important playwrights in America in the twentieth century.These three playwrights have different writing styles and distinct focuses in their writing,but the image of escapist emerges and plays an important role in their representative works,which also becomes the major feature of these works.Such "coincidence" makes it necessary to think deeply about the reasons for this common choice,which is worth further exploration:How are these escapists presented in the plays?Why have they made the choice to escape from the real world and what is the significance of their escape?This thesis takes Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night,Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman as the research objects,with the representation of escape,its causes and implications studied.All the three plays are created in the first half of the twentieth century,when the difficult cultural integration between North and South during the social transformation,the cultural and religious conflicts faced by immigrant families who pursue the American dream,and the shadow economic crisis casts on the whole country have caused great pressure to a number of people and families.Mary,Amanda,Willy and their families,as the ordinary people in the wave of great social changes,are unable to cope with these challenges,but they are also unwilling to abandon their life belief,so the only way out is to escape to "another world" to find the meaning of existence.By means of escape,they find their self-created freedom,realize the meaning of existence and real self,and are capable of protecting their inner spiritual values,although these are at the expense of flight from the real world or even deathIn this thesis,chapter one concentrates on the representation of escape in plays mainly divided into three types:getting lost in memory,escaping from the truth and walking towards death.Escapists’ choice of these three types are driven by their eagerness to be away from reality.The second chapter explores the causes that urge characters to be escapists,which are classified into three aspects based on Sartre’s existentialism.They are living plight,inharmonious relationship with others and individual’s life philosophy.The tremendous changes and social conflict in the first half of the twentieth century pose great threat to individual’s living situation and the intimate relationship within the household is also undermined due to the external pressure.At the same time,the individual’s distinct life philosophy from society also leaves little survival space for themselves.Unable to find comfortable zone both in society and at home,escape becomes the means for characters to create a new space for themselves.The third chapter reflects on the significance of portraying escapists in writing.The choice of escape is characters’survival expression.The action of escape is not passive but,in a sense,active,for this action embodies the marginalized people’s endeavor to quest for self-created freedom,seek for the meaning of existence and keep inner spiritual values under the pressure of external and internal world.The research on the image of escapist in the representative plays of Eugene O’Neill,Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller not only reflects the social circumstance,but also helps to further understand the ordinary people’s concern about their own existential problems in the first half of the twentieth century.Meanwhile,the three playwrights’ depiction of escapists also conveys the idea that reality is insurmountable.In the face of living predicament,escape is not a wise choice,and people must stick to the real life and seek the suitable survival space between reality and ideal.