EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA IN THE PLAYS OF EUGENE O` NEILL by dr. ram sharma

Existential Dilemma in the Plays of Eugene O’Neill

The present research paper proposes to study O’Neill’s attempts to (re)locate the true being in his characters and their existential dilemma. He is one of the twentieth century writers who ponder over and depict the socio-psychological reality of his characters. He highlights the traumatic experiences of twentieth century man that remains caught in the scheme of things. On the whole, his explosions are modulated into a consciously satirical mode accompanied by a chilling but effective distaste. At a time when writers chose to come out of the jolts of World War II and the Holocaust, O’Neill focuses on the existential dilemma of postmodern consciousness of contemporary man engulfed in, what Hamlet of Shakespeare says, “to be or not to be” problem.

Various critics have attempted to study O’Neill in the limelight of myriad perspectives and background highlighting his numerous aspects as a twentieth century playwright. Most of the critics have scrutinized O’Neill in the purview of tragic tradition and adjudged him to a fellow writer of the same tragic tradition speaking against the prevailing socio-political environment. They have focused on the playwright’s concern and distaste for a variety of pretensions and hypocrisies prevalent in the society. Some critics however have also explored O’Neill in the perspective of World War I & II and the Holocaust that created havoc all around. They have also ventured to study his fictional characters from palpable human perspective that sees man as a being caught in the scheme of things. There is yet another group of critics that has examined O’Neill’s plays in the background of numerous critical theories. There is nonetheless dearth of criticism that evaluates O’Neill’s plays in the background of postmodern consciousness of contemporary man and his existential dilemma that reduces him to nullity. Though there are stray articles on the presence of existential streaks in the writer’s work, a full length study on this aspect in his drama is imperative and needs immediate attention. It is with this perspective that this research aims to investigate O’Neill and his attempts to locate the true being on one’ self and his existential dilemma inherited in the postmodern consciousness of contemporary man. Synopsis: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, a Nobel laureate for Literature (1936), is one of the few American playwrights of the twentieth century to have acquired world stature and reputation. He has been hailed as the voice of America and a Walt Whitman in the canon of twentieth century American literary scene. He has rightly come to be regarded as American Shakespeare for the vast and myriad shades of life that he presents in his plays. The American drama prior to O'Neill was detached from life and culture and suffered from anemia and lack of intellectual substance. It was O'Neill, a restless experimenter, who, though deeply influenced by the classical drama, started modern American drama. He was an incisive analyst of the American society as well as human situation. Like a genuine artist committed to his art, he wedded the aesthetics of dramatic form with the ethics of human values. With deep sincerity and honesty he achieved a synthesis between theme and form, between purpose and design. O'Neill, popularly known as the father of modern American drama, is a dramatist of great imaginative power. As a twentieth-century man, he employs the ancient idea in twentieth-century terms��"in the conditions of modern living and in the language of psychoanalysis. In his work, the transfigured modern values and symbols come from psychology. Although he was influenced by Freud, his imagination was stimulated most by the work of Jung who sees man's primary need not in the desire to satisfy physical or emotional necessity like power, security or love, but in a longing for a meaningful life��"for a sense of order in the universe to which man can belong. Jung and O'Neill are mystical in the same sense. As a mystic, O'Neill has explored in his plays the relationship between man and God. The duty of the modern playwright, O’Neill asserts, was to dig at the roots of the sickness of today, the cause of which was the death of the old God and the failure to find a new one. Without God, life has no meaning and the fear of death cannot be comforted. In the modern times, the term "behind-life" relates to O'Neill concept of Fate which plays a very significant role in the classical and Shakespearean age and it suggests the existence of an external, supernatural force ruling man's life and he calls it Fate or God. O’ Neill’s work is more uneven in quality than one finds in any other dramatic writers of his standing. He has written some half-dozen plays that demand full regard from the readers for their numerous exotic qualities; a much larger number that have failed to keep the interest they once aroused, and some, too, for which it is difficult to find a merciful comment. The causes of this extreme inequality are various: there is a melodramatic streak in his work, which leads to the ‘daring’ theme, the crude theatrical impact; there is, too, a most intimate relationship between his writing and his personal experience, which in several instances made it difficult for him to achieve a sufficiently rigorous practice of self-criticism…there is, when he tries to offer us wisdom, a jejuneness in his thought which reduces his work to the level of the popular sermon. O'Neill gave new dimensions to modern tragedy with his adroit use of myths and symbols and served as a link between the ancient classical and modern tragedy. He was deeply influenced by Greek tragedy and because of its religious rituals he tried to recreate the Greek spirit in his plays. Like the Greeks his plays also contain a moral purpose. O'Neill has also been described as a "dark writer" whose plays are pessimistic in nature. But this pessimism, an informed reader knows, is always coloured by a ray of hope��"even a "hopeless hope." His tragedies are highly optimistic, exulting more than depressing. The ‘prophet of doom’ turns out to be a ‘prophet of hope.’ Tragedy, according to O’Neill, has the meaning the Greeks gave it. To them it brought exaltation, an urge towards life and even more life. It roused them to deeper spiritual understandings and released them from the petty greed of everyday existence. The point is that life in itself is nothing. It is the dream that keeps us fighting, willing-living. O’Neill’s creative work is filled with an overpowering strength dominated by sincerity and a mastery that is unceasingly being perfected. He knows how to tear the guilt and fancy trinkets from contemporary Western European and American culture and with exceptional depth and truthfulness to discover its personal, internal upheavals and irreconcilable conflicts. With his creative imagination and his special sculptor's feeling for dramatic material, he knew how to give his scenes a universal encompassing strength. They exist as in actual life. Eugene O’Neill also wrote materialistic plays mixed with symbolism and melodrama. Melodrama in his plays is of two kinds��"one resulting from the improbability of character and situation and the other resulting from some overpowering obsession which destroys surface reality as well as truth of the character. O’Neill’s one ambition was to be considered as a ‘poet-dramatist.’ This was an artistic necessity for him if we take into consideration his matter as well as his point of view. If he was felicitous in creating verbal poetry, he created ‘a poetry of theatre.’

The introductory chapter of this study focuses on the life of O’Neill and how his creative sensibility got shaped by the numerous forces around him. There will also be an attempt to dissect the playwright’s works in the limelight of the opinion of different critics. This also includes various critics’ method of investigating the playwright’s dramatic output in the purview of postmodern consciousness of twentieth-century man who, what Prufrock of T.S. Eliot says, measure his life in coffee spoons. This chapter also attempts to highlight the real meaning of ‘being’ in relation to existentialistic philosophy and the meaning of existential dilemma. This chapter will finally spell out the approach to be adopted in discussing O’Neill and his depiction of existential dilemma in his plays.

This chapter focuses on the first phase of O’Neill’s literary career up to 1920. The chapter will deal with the plays of this period, viz. Bound East for Cardiff, Thirst, Beyond the Horizon, The Emperor Jones and Anna Christie. There will be a focused study on the contours and shades of existential dilemma of the characters and also how they attempt to find meaning in their otherwise dwindling life. A simultaneous attempt will be to discuss the plays in question in comparison to some of the important works of other writers of this period for a sharp analysis.

The third chapter underlines the existential dilemma of the characters of second period of O’Neill as a creative artist. There will be a detailed discussion on the plays written between 1921 and 1930 and the representation of the existential dilemma of postmodern consciousness of the characters. With a close look at the plays of this phase, viz. The Hairy Ape, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, Desire under the Elms, Marco Millions and Strange Interlude an analysis will be done on how the characters remain involved in the labyrinth of choices and try to come out the mud of life. There will also be a focused reading on the problem of existence of these characters in connection with their moral and ethical values, individual subjectivity, and freedom. There fear and dread along with their anxiety relating to their problematic existence will also be dealt with in this chapter.

This chapter discusses the last plays of O’Neill and the traumatic experiences of the characters that remain engaged in overcoming their existential dilemma. Plays like Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah Wilderness!, Days without End, The Iceman Cometh, A Moon for the Misbegotten and Long Day’s Journey into Night focus on existentialistic dilemma where man finds himself condemned in his freedom and choices. Without any determinism, O’Neill seems to suggest, man is free that carries no values or commands to legitimatize his behaviour. He is left alone, without excuse and remains condemned as he escapes bearing any responsibility of creating himself. His perfervid individualism, according to Amis, drags him into the mud of life which intensifies his anxiety, dread, and an awareness of death.

The final chapter will sum up the main findings of the study. An attempt will be made to arrive at certain conclusion as to how the characters in the fictional world of O’Neill suffer existential dilemma. This chapter will sum up the Playwright’s world out-look that gives this representation a coherence and sharp colours. His characters, the study may come to the conclusion, as human being are subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and absurd universe in which meaning in not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by their actions and interpretations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources: O’Neill, Eugene. The Plays of Eugene O’Neill. New York: Random House, 1954. ------. A Moon for the Misbegotten. London: Jonathan Cape, 1960. ��"��". A Touch of the Poet. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957. ��"��". Beyond the Horizon and Marco Millions. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1960. ��"��"��". The Great God Brown and Lazarus Laughed. London: Jonathan Cape, 1960. ��"��". Long Day's Journey into Night. London: Jonathan Cape, 1962. ��"��". Nine Plays by O'Neill. New York: Modern Library, 1941. ��"��". Selected Plays of Eugene O 'Neill. New York: Random House, 1967. -------. The Plays of Eugene O’Neill, Vol. I, New York: Modern Library, 1982.

About the Author

DR. RAM SHARMA IS SENIOR LECTURER IN ENGLISH