Eugene O’Neill.ppt

Eugene O’Neill Eugene O’Neill was one of the greatest playwrights in American history. Through his experimental and emotionally probing dramas, he addressed the difficulties of human society with a deep psychological complexity. O’Neill’s disdain for the commercial realities of the theater world he was born into led him to produce works of importance and integrity. He won the Pulitzer Prize four times. He is the only dramatist to win a Nobel Prize. He is acclaimed founder of the American drama. On the success of these expressionistic experimentations, O’Neill reached out to extend his mastery of the stage and worked up to the summit of his career. Three periods of his writing career The first period Bound East for Cardiff As one of one-act melodramatic plays it describes the dying sailor Yank and his dream about the security and peace which could never exist. Beyond the Horizon It’s his first full-length play which made a great hit and won him the first Pulitzer Prize. Its theme is the choice between life and death, the interaction of subjective and objective factors. Three periods of his writing career The Straw / Anna Christie The theme of Beyond the Horizon could be felt in these two works. In addition, Anna Christie is more of a success because it deploys the developing complexity of O’Neill’s personal vision, showing us that life is a closed circle of possibilities from which it is impossible to escape The second period Eugene O’Neill achieved in symbolic expressionism in this period. The Emperor Jones/ The Hairy Ape All God’s Chillun Got Wings Desire Under the Elms 1) These four plays are daring forays into race relations, class conflicts, sexual bondage, social critiques, and American tragedies on the Greek model. The second period 2) The expressionistic techniques are used in these plays to highlight the theatrical effect of the rupture the two sides of an individual human being, the private and the public. The second period The Great God Brown Eugene O’N