Psychopathological Archetypes in Eugene O’Neill’s Plays

NAMAE: ASIM KARIM SESSION: 2004-2008 ROLL. NO: 10 -GCU-PhD-ENG-2004 DEPARTMENT: ENGLISH

G C UNIVERSITY LAHORE 2011

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Psychopathological Archetypes in Eugene

O’Neill’s Plays

Submitted to Government College University Lahore for the award of degree of Doctor of Philosophy IN English Literature By

NAME: ASIM KARIM SESSION: 2004-2008 ROLL. NO: 10-GCU-PhD-ENG-2004 DEPARTMENT: ENGLISH

Supervised By

Professor Dr. Nasim Riaz Butt

GC UNIVERSITY LAHORE

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DECLARATION I, ASIM KARIM Roll No 10-GCU-PhD-ENG-2004, student of PhD in the subject of

English Literature, Government College university, Lahore, Session 2004-2008,

hereby declare that the matter printed in the thesis titled Psychopathological

Archetypes in Eugene O’Neill’s Plays is my own work and has not been

printed, published and submitted as research work, thesis or publication in any

form in any university, research Institute etc in Pakistan or abroad.

Dated: ___________________ ________________________

Signature of Deponent

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RESEARCH COMPLETION CERTIFICATE Certified that the research work contained in this thesis titled

Psychopathological Archetypes in Eugene O’Neill’s Plays has been carried

out and completed my Mr. Asim Karim Roll No 10-GCU-PhD-ENG-2004 under my

supervision. The quantum and the quality of work contained in this thesis is

adequate for the award of degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Dated:______________ ____________________

Supervisor

Submitted Through:

Chairperson Department of English Controller of Examination Government College University Government College University Lahore Lahore

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CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINERS Certified that the quantum and quality of the research work contained in the thesis, titled Psychopathological Archetypes in Eugene O’Neill’s Plays is adequate for the award of Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Internal Examiner External Examiner Signature: ___________ Signature: _______________ NAME: _________________ NAME:___________________ Date: _____________________ Date: ____________________ Chairperson of the Department Signature: ______________________________ Name: __________________________________ Date: ____________________________________

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all I acknowledge the blessings of Almighty Allah Who enabled me to take this strenuous task and complete it successfully. I also owe Him thanks for deputing the Prophets to educate and enlighten the humanity and repel darkness of ignorance. My humble regards are to Prophet Mohammad (peace be Upon Him) who championed the cause of human progression and glory to the utmost limits and who stood for education, enlightenment and expansion of Knowledge to repel darkness of ignorance. I would like to thank my advisor Professor Dr Nasim Riaz Butt (PhD Western Michigan University) who has contributed his energies, experience and knowledge to me and my work during his support through out this rewarding process. I thank him for ignoring my mistakes in the period of research. I’m deeply obligated to thank Professor Dr Nosheen Khan, Chairperson English Dept GC University Lahore for all possible moral and administrative support through my association with GCU and research Period. My humble obligations are owed to my parent whose prayers for my success have always kept me dedicated to my academic and professional development. I specially thank my father Abdul Karim Khan (retired Professor of Mathematics.) who has always persuaded me to excel in knowledge and education. I’m to thank my younger brother Dr Shafqat Karin (PhD Physics) who has recently won Presidential Pride of performance award for his research.. His handwork and achievement have inspired me deeply to excel in education and research. I have done my best to equal him. I must also pay thanks to scores of my students who wish me to succeed in life and education. I know my struggle is going to be rewarding for scores of other students in the future. I also acknowledge the support of my family in my research. I must mention here my daughters (Maryum 13, Aisha 11, and Amna 8) who have always felt proud of my work and achievement. Their happiness as I complete my research is really immeasurable for many reasons. I also acknowledge the support of my friend Mohammad Shafique Asst. Professor Mathematics. He helped me in computer related matters during the research period. In the end I’m thankful to GC University for providing congenial atmosphere for higher education and research. I’, also indebted to HEC for much needed fellowship to have higher education in Pakistan. Asim Karim Dec. 19. 2011

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation articulates psychopathological archetypes in Eugene O’Neill’s selected plays. It applies a four tier strategy to investigate different layers of archetypes in his drama. Artist himself constitutes the first tier of this investigation and includes dramatis personas, specific cultural factors and readers as other three tiers of psychopathological archetypes. Analytical, comparative, textual and critical Methodological approach has been used in the study. The study substantiate that art is a strong reflection of close correspondence between artist’s mental states/psychopathology and what is created. It has been argued that O’Neill’s attitude to creativity is an illustration of how affliction, loss and other psychic factors mobilize the creative process, or permanently fuels the imaginary act. The preoccupation with loss or affliction in any form goes on to reflect specific psychopathological identity of the artist. The study explains this in the light of Freud and Klein’s theoretical /mythic standings on personality development. However, the study also argues that concern with loss and anxiety significantly undermines/limits the work of art in terms of its imaginative, social and representative aspects. The study highlights these limitations as important findings of the discussion in this section of the research. The personas in O’Neill’s are used as second tier of analyses. The study takes them here as independent of subjective identification, and their behavioral disorders have been analyzed from such diverse and post Freudian angles as trauma and post traumatic stress disorder, multi-personality disorder; sexuality related disorders and alienation/social withdrawal. The findings in each case substantiate psychopathological factors/states in O’Neill’s art. The study has also explored that in O’Neill certain elements/institutes in a society are potentially powerful instruments of creating abnormal psychic traits in the individuals. The study has concentrated on religion, racism and mechanized conditions as potent instruments of generating behavioral disorders. In the sphere of religion the study contends that religion with its specific, codified, dogmatic indoctrination affects human mind with certain deviant and abnormal psychic factors. The abnormal behavior generated by racism and mechanized control of independent human self carry the same quality. His treatment of racism as a factor in regressive behavior later on finds powerful presence in the works of Afro-American writers of fiction and drama. Lastly it has been argued that psychopathological regression and pattern as outlined in the author, his personas and certain cultural parameters create an image of behavioral decline and disintegration under emotive and psychic strains that could hardly be cathartic and therapeutic for the readers that classic tragedy manages to do with substantial success. It could only produce such psychopathological elements as psychic strain, depressiveness and psycho-spiritual stasis. Importantly the themes and the treatment of behavioral modes as O’Neill represents may find proactive response from the audience of a particular class; group in a particular condition of western culture, its wider across the culture acceptance can not be taken for granted. No doubt in history one can observe the universal validity and acceptance of literary work belonging to opposing state, but the reason was the corresponding/similar experiences and expressions of feelings and emotions generated by the literary works among the people of opposing states. The analogous helped emotional

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release/catharsis and establish identical cathartic responses. But in the present state of world and regional affairs and the particular frame of traditional culture and reservation to western entity in this region, O’Neill’s art with its own strong and imposing Westernized outlook is sure to increase not only intolerance, but also enhance public and national response that rejects what it represents. There is a need of literature that is universal but that does not destroy national roots.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page Nos.

1. Introduction 1 1.1. Scope and limitations 3 1.2 Psychopathology: Definition of the term 3

1.3 Methodology 4 1.4 Research pattern 4

2. Literature Review 12 3. Creativity and Psychoanalysis 25

3.1 Introduction: Creativity and Drama 25 3.2 Psychoanalysis and creativity 30 3.3Creativity and O’Neill 30 3.3.1 Split Mothers 35 3.3.2 Problem of Representation 41 3.4. Conclusion 51

4. Behavioral Disorders 52

4.1 Introduction 52 4.2 Psychopathological States: Behavior Disorders 52

4.2.1 Sexuality and Behavioral Disorder 52 4.2.1.1Sexuality in Theory and Literature 53 4.2.1.2 Sexuality in O’Neill’s plays 56 4.2.2 Memory, Trauma and Post traumatic stress

Disorder (PTSD) 66 4.2.2.1 Traumatized memory performance

in plays 71 4.2.3 Alienation /Social withdrawal 79

4.3. Conclusion 85

5. Culture and Human Behavior 86 5.1. Introduction 86 5.1.1 Theoretical Positions 87 5.2. Cultural Determinants of Psychopathology 88

5.2.1 Religion and behavioral disorders 88 5.2.1.1 Religion and Drama 90 5.2.1.2 Religion in O’Neill’s life and Art 93

5.2.1.3 Conflict between Religious Control, Religiosity and Desire for Individual Liberation in Mourning Becomes Electra 94 5.2.1.4 Conflict, Adulation and Aversion in

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Long Day’s Journey 99 5.2.2 Racism and behavioral disorder 103 5.2 .2.1 racism and o’neill 105

5.2.3. mechanized conditions and behavioural disorders: 113 5.3 Conclusion 116

6. Readers and Tragic Effect 117 6.1. Introduction 117 6.2 Tragic Effect/Catharsis 117 6.3 O’Neill’s art and Tragic Effect 122 6.3.1. Ethical Crises and problem of Tragic Effect 124 6.3.1.1. Personal Context and Ethical Crises 125 6.3.1.2. Action Defies Moral Implications 127 6.3.1.3. Lack of Progression of Action 128 6.3.1.4. Lack of Social Dynamism 134 6.3.2 Language and Tragic Affect 136

6.3.2.1. Interior Monologue 142 6.3.2.1.1 O’Neill’s Use of Interior Monologue 144

6.4. Conclusion 148 7. Conclusion 151

References 163

Bibliography 181

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) was the pioneer American dramatist. He made

drama in America a serious literary endeavor and rescued it from such dramatic modes of

Naturalism and Realism as in vogue in the contemporary American theatre. Most

significantly, he liberated it from predominantly commercial profit-oriented melodrama

of disproportionate emotionalism and sensationalism. He was as Beard [1] writes

“interested in avoiding realism and pseudo realism that dominated mainstream American

theatre at that time”. Being a pioneer, he embarked on a new and unfamiliar literary

landscape, which unlike poetry and fiction looked for inspiration to European theatre and

theories. American fiction and poetry in particular found its inspirational model in

Emerson’s ideas on transcendentalism and Self- Reliance which acquired almost religious

passion in the contemporary and succeeding American novelists and poets [2]. Bloom [3]

terms O’Neill as “the most non Emersonian author of any estimate in our literature. . . .

O’Neill from the start seemed to know that his spiritual quest was to undermine

Emerson’s American religion of Self- Reliance”. He turned to such European dramatists

as Strindberg [4], Philosophers as Schopenhauer [5] and Nietzsche [6-7] for inspiration

both in content and style of his plays. Hartman [8] analyzes O’Neill’s adoption of

Strindberg’s “style and subject matter to native material”, and Blackburn [9] reads

continental influences on O’Neill’s expressionist drama. His association with

contemporary critics Kenneth McGowan, the playwright Glaspell, and George Cram

Cook – the founders of the Provincetown Players, whom he joined in 1915 – transformed

the decadent American theatre into a vibrant art. They particularly liberated American

theatre from the style in vogue in both technique and content. Along with his associates of

the Provincetown and other leading professional production company, Washington

Square, he made use of the two related modern developments in dramatic art. First was

Strindberg’s Naturalism [10] which had already become popular in European theatre. It

helped O’Neill tremendously in introducing overdue naturalism to American theatre. His

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dissatisfaction with the prevalent modes of surface realism in contemporary theatre on the

other hand helped him carry out a revolution in American theatre in the form of his

introduction of popular expressionism in American drama, which had gained popularity

in European art and theatre. Besides, his theatrical innovations also coincided with the

growing vogue in America of Freudian views on sex and [11], Jungian concepts of racial

memories [12] anti Puritanism in morals [13], and middle class materialism [14]. All

these and related factors needed to be expressed in the theatre. O’Neill represented them

on the stage, and so introduced essential western modern content into the American

drama.

O’Neill was also an avid experimentalist. He boldly experimented in form and

content of his plays. His choice of form and content in fact has always been a source of

wide disagreement among the reader and critics. It is therefore, hardly surprising that

there should have been vacillation in his reputation, assessment, and in his appeal to the

ever changing and growing readers. For some, he is melodramatic to the extreme and for

others a dramatist with ambitious yearnings for probing consciousness of characters.

Manheim [15] making a strong distinction between O’Neill’s early and late plays

categorically state that his “last plays represent a marked change from his earlier plays,

both in their art and in philosophical outlook” and by change he means “successful shift

away from the predominantly melodramatic emphasis of his earlier plays”. Moreover, his

outlook on life has no less been a subject of controversial opinions. For some O’Neill’s

distinction lies chiefly in his “determinism to confer upon man a tragic dignity” [16],

while for others his pessimism, his huge despair, and his defiance of American facile

optimism is terribly deplorable. Fambrough [17] reads his early Desire under Elms as a

play that reflects influence of Greek tragedy on O’Neill’s creative dimensions. Frenz and

Mueller [18] have read deeper connection between O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra

with Shakespeare than Aeschylus. Colakis [19] associates his Emperor Jones with

Senecan tragedy. Black [20] uses Greek model of “experience” to declare his plays as

classic tragedies in spirit. Similarly he reads his Iceman Cometh as an embodiment of

Greek tragic Anagnarisis [21]. And Antush [22] apprises the readers of O’Neill

contribution to not only modern theatre in America, but also about laying foundation of

post modern dramatic aesthetics. However, he continues to hold his position as a major

modern American playwright. One Nobel Prize, four Pulitzer prizes and scores of critical

studies in all forms and dissertations attest to the importance of Eugene O'Neill in the

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history of American theatre. The most challenging criticism on O’Neill has come from

the Feminists [23-24].

1.1 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

This study analyses psychopathological patterns in O’Neill‘s plays. The principal

focus for analysis and interpretation will be on O’Neill’s Desire under Elms, Mourning

Becomes Electra , Strange Interlude and Long Day’s Journey into Night as the

psychopathology is the most pronounced and consistent here.

1.2 PSYCHOPATRHOLOGY: DEFINITION OF THE TERM

Psychopathology in the domain of psychoanalysis exclusively focuses on extreme

emotional states, and disturbances that result in strange, extreme, deviant or abnormal

human behavioral patterns abnormal behavior or abnormal states. These conditions have

been classified differently as psychosis and neurosis etc. Willerman [25] in his

Psychology of Individual and Group Differences relates psychopathology to what he calls

“deviant” human behavior that does not involve superior personal or social adaptation,

such as high intelligence, but are characterized by negative, and maladaptive behavioral

features and traits. Schneiderman [26] looks upon psychopathology in terms of “severe

emotional disturbance or profound characterological defects_ and not merely anxieties

and insecurities of mild or moderate severity”.

The deviant behavior falls into different categories with different generating

factors. Psychosis, neurosis, anxiety disorder, and paranoia are its prominent modalities

with further subdivisions. Psychosis, for instance falls into schizophrenia and affective

disorder, and neurosis into obsessive compulsive neurosis, anxiety neurosis, and

dissociative disorder. The last category of neurosis is particularly characterized by

multiple personality disorder in which the sufferer alternates between two or more

separate ego states[27] Schizophrenics display symptoms like extreme disturbance in

thinking, fear, distrust, certainty of one’s worthlessness, inability to feel and experience

pleasure (depressiveness) and ambivalence [28]. Affective disorder is likewise featured

by depressed mood, belief in one’s worthlessness, guilt, and talkativeness [29]. Neurotics

also display prominent traits. Briefly they are: recurrence of unpleasant thoughts

(obsessive compulsive disorder), inability to achieve good contact with reality, and

anxiety (usually of a harmless object or situation).However, the “neurotic persons

suffering from general anxiety disorder are even afraid in ordinary situation” [28].

Paranoia, on the other hand is characterized by “impaired contact with reality,

suspiciousness and jealousy” [30]. These variants of psychopathological behavior are,

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however, mostly the result of clinical observations of the actual patients suffering from

one disorder or the other. In literary text characters are fundamentally fictitious. The text

itself with a few exceptions is not representation of essentially the insane or the morbid

and the writer does not model his characters on the clinically recorded or observed

patients. What appears on textual analysis is likeness of responses and behaviors which

render that particular character to psychopathological identity. Advent of psychoanalysis

as an independent discipline has facilitated interpretation of literary text for of inquiry and

analysis of behavior and personality. The study here focuses on behavioral patterns that

characterize regressive emotive /psychic states that render human personality

problematical, initiate regressive personality trend or disrupts personality growth along

normal lines. The study moves from subjective to objective factors for the

psychopathological behavioral tendency and orientation in the artist and his personas.

1.3 METHODOLOGY

The methodological approach used in this study is critical, comparative,

interdisciplinary and analytical. The text will be the main source of critical analytic and

comparative inquiry into the behavioral disorders.

1.4 RESEARCH PATTERN

Divergence and convergence are the key words that define the pattern of the

study. First the study diverges in to four distinct areas of artist’s psychobiography, his

dramatis personas, culture and the readers; each then converges exclusively on the

variants of psychopathology.

Creativity as a literary activity has been debated quite contentiously by the critics

and theorists. Modern development in psychoanalysis has opened up avenues to analyze

literary creativity as it shapes in the artist mind and thought processes. Viewed from one

perspective that is quite independent of what modern psychology has to say about human

consciousness, artist and literary creativity involve for sure the complex process of

understanding human nature, exploring human consciousness and even unconsciousness,

evaluating his desires, frustration, thoughts etc. Literature in this respect is older than

psychoanalysis itself. Sigmund Freud himself admits his appreciation of literature and

philosophy in laying open the human mind to the readers: “The poets and philosophers

discovered the unconscious before I did” [31]. Sakura develops the argument that the

poets investigated the unconscious much earlier than Freud “and that at its subtlest and

most wide ranging” [32] which makes them what Sakura says “the literary predecessors

of Freudian legacy”. The artist’s probing of human consciousness before the rise of

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modern psychoanalytic critical and theoretical approaches was largely in the nature of

using psychology to study how the whole mind works or as Sakura writes, “for

understanding another human psyche”[33]. It did not address itself to study and analyze

diseases or more properly speaking psychopathological states or primitive experiences

and their effect on developmental, evolutionary and creative aspects of human behavior. .

She is of the opinion that “The primary connection between Freud and the poets is a

shared mythology: a general insight into human nature, confrontation with experiences

neither the poets nor Freud were afraid to see [34] .Nicholas Tingle, Alcorn, and Mark

Bracher likewise support close correspondence between literature and psychoanalysis.

“There are certainly many differences between teaching literature and conducting an

analysis”, Write Tingle et al (1986),” but since the aim of both processes is ultimately the

same-assisting humans to become more autonomous and fulfilled-what goes on in one

can illuminate and inform what occurs in the other” [35]. Literary texts are basically a

complex network of meaning. They are inherently and essentially multi layered,

composed of structural network of emotions and thoughts. This complexity of

constituents of a text very much resemble human mind itself, which is composed of ideas,

and psychic and emotive patterns. Psychoanalysis in focusing on the human mind and

matrix of its ideas and emotions at the same time provides a technique for interpretation

of text also. Hence literature and psychology have come to assume an interrelationship of

abiding creative, theoretical and interpretative interest. Wilbern takes the relationship

between literature and psychology back to Greek classical period. “The ancient

argument”, he writes, “between Plato and Aristotle about the value of myth and drama is

fundamentally a conflict between psychological assumptions and mimesis [36]. Wilfred

Guerin, et.al (1992) also look upon psychoanalytical approach in terms of having ancient

historical existence finding important place in theories of Aristotle, Sidney, Coleridge,

Wordsworth, and Shelley regarding catharsis and imagination respectively[37].

The problem of any correlation/interaction between creativity and psychoanalysis

of the artist has been debated equally contentiously among the theorists and

psychoanalysts. Kauffman and Baer [38] for instance have put together thoughts that

those with mental illness particularly female poets are more likely to be drawn to poetry

rather than to other forms of prose due to the personal nature of poetry. They conclude

that “The adage that creativity and ‘madness’ are linked together is by and large

supported by the existing research“. Wooster and Buckroyd [39] in their study of

Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well support the thesis that loss and creativity are

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often linked. First they define loss and mourning as a complex process affecting the mind

and emotions:

Loss in real and metaphorical ways, as we know, provokes anger, guilt, and sadness. The grief of loss is a complex state of mind with different lengths of duration, and in each individual shows different mixes of other constituent affects, such as anger, guilt, and shame, mixed with envy and jealousy as well as frequently accompanying depression with varying degrees of somatic disruptions”.

Then they analyze the problem of co-relation between loss and creativity by probing

some psychoanalytic ideas about creativity. They begin by considering Rothenberg's The

Emerging Goddess (1979) as one of the most comprehensive descriptions of the common

factors in creativity. They then consider the group in which grief, loss, and creativity can

be expressed in different ways. Lastly, they examine Shakespeare, who for them is

perhaps the most striking example of all these experiences and whose middle period plays

All's Well That Ends Well binds together grief, loss, and creativity. It was, however,

Freud’s “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” [40] that became pioneering in relating

psychology to literature. It gives us insight into what Freud thinks about the artistic

creativity. "The creative writer," according to his classic essay on the subject, "does the

same thing as a child at play. He creates a world of phantasy.... He builds castles in the air

and creates what are called day-dreams." The comparison, as Freud conceived it, affirms

that art is a form of wish fulfillment. Wherein he may gratify the desires denied them by

society. In his Gradiva, he writes that the hero of that novel:

. . .had turned completely away from life…. But nature… had infused into his blood a corrective of an entirely unscientific sort-an extremely lively imagination, which could show itself not only in his dreams but often in his waking life as well. This division between imagination and intellect destined him to become an artist or a neurotic; he was one of those whose kingdom is not of this world.

He continues to write categorically that "The motive forces of artists are the same

conflicts which drive other people into neurosis." Fairberg [41] for example, points out

that to some extent we all lead "a life of fantasy," and that our "civilized pursuits" on

some level of sublimation serve to assuage our repressed infantile desires. It follows

therefore that:

Freud saw art . . . as a normal psychic activity . . . [whose] function ... is basically the same as the psychic function of teaching, politics or the practice of law.... This may be defined [in the artist's case] as assuaging the pain of an unconscious conflict by providing a temporary . . . substitute gratification through the agency of a creatively elaborated fancy . . . [which]

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can achieve its psychic results because of the survival in adults of the childhood pleasure in fantasy-making, which is closely related to play.

Fairberg’s statement reinforces Freud’s declaration of comparison between artist and

neurotic. Manheim [42], however, distinguishes between neurosis and abnormality, and

writes that for a Freudian art expresses a "kind of 'abnormality' which is not pathological.

Hallman [43] terms it a biological motivation implying that creative urges occur as

secondary forms of drives and are derived through reinforcements from more

fundamental biological urges”. It also implies that the motivation of adult behavior,

including the artist’s creative activities, is oriented towards the past and determined by

past conditioning”. Freud’s followers, writes Hallman concur in this explanation. Brill

[44] describes the poet as obsessed by pre-genital oral fixations and explains the poems as

a secondary elaboration of the infant’s experience at the mother breast. Engelmann [45]

believes that infantile phobias and perverse gratifications combine to establish our

aesthetic tastes. F. Deri claims that all creative energy flows from pregenital impulses.

Van der Sterrn finds source of creative imagination in oedipal fantasies [46]. Hallman

lists numerous other motivations behind complex creativity to drive conclusion that

strong motives have more than mere energy thrusts. They fulfill aesthetic function which

is transformational as it transforms his primary pragmatic encounters to primary

qualitative ones that in turn lead and fuses into aesthetic response [47]. Wright also

supports id-psychology. The term Id-psychology was not used by Freud himself, but was

adopted subsequently both by the critics and theorists to explain the role of sex as a

determining force in human consciousness. Id-psychology centers on the role of the

sexual instincts as the determining force of individual life. She argues terms it “vulgar

Freudianism” and writes, “The aesthetics of id-psychology is grounded on the notion that

the work of art is the secret embodiment of the creator’s unconscious desires” which is

exposed through the analysis of his earliest childhood experiences through “what is

known in his life and through the fictional characters”[48]. Kris [49] _ego psychoanalyst_

made considerable historical and theoretical contributions in bringing about application of

psychology to literature. He termed id-psychology grossly inadequate to explain the

creative process. His theoretical orientation is that of ego psychology where he moves

away “from the unconscious, infantile sources of creativity focused on by id-

psychologists to concentrate on conscious, preconscious and rational thought process” in

creativity which diminishes the importance of the repression and repressed sexual drives

as the exclusive explanatory concepts of literary creativity. Likewise Schneiderman [50]

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in his interpretative work has strongly emphasized the role of personal painful

experiences, not necessary libidinal in artistic creativity:

Admittedly old fashioned id psychology, with its emphasis on sexual symbolism and its penchant for body language, did not lend itself to a balanced interpretation of art. I, would argue, however, that the psychoanalytic study of literature cannot dispense with Freud’s id-psychology and substitute an ego psychology that attributes complete rationality and conscious control to the artist. Such a view, in my judgment is out of human context.

He continues to say that “under the right conditions, the author’s response to the

challenges of everyday life result in artistic productions of great virtuosity” [51]. He

points particularly severe stress as one of the “important ingredient in generating

creativity” [52]. and that “one has to read one page of any outstanding modern writer to be

struck by the intensity of the personal vision generated by the powerful inter-psychic

forces, neither mysterious nor rational but rooted in human experience, especially crises

and conflicts”[53]. Melanie Klein and Julia Kristeva have further developed these

thoughts on sublimation and artistic creativity in the middle of crises and psychological

traumas. Klein in one of her most important papers “The Importance of Symbol

Formation in the Development of Ego” refers to the tendency by the schizoid-paranoid

subject to engage in creative process in order to displace his ambivalent interest in the

object (mother) and symbolizes them in the world which gives rise to interest in the

outside world. It is because the external world is endowed with symbolic meaning that it

arouses our enormous interest, which is imperative for the purpose of survival. She

writes, “Symbolism is the foundation of all sublimation and every talent, since it is by

way of symbolic equation that things, activities and interests become the subject of

libidinal phantacies” [54]. Kristeva likewise in her Black Sun establishes strong equation

between mourning and its sublimation through creativity. Returning to Freud’s theory of

mourning, she tries to examine the ways in which loss mobilizes the afflicted towards

signification. However she differs from both Freud and Klein in her stress on sublimation

through signs and language. Signs she writes

are arbitrary because language starts with negation (Verneinung) of loss, along with the depression occasioned by mourning. ‘I have lost an essential object that happens to be, in the final analysis, my mother,’ is what the speaking being seems to be saying. ‘ But no, I have found her again in signs, or rather since I consent to lose her I have not lost her (that is the negation), I can recover her in language [55]

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Thus she like her predecessors in psychoanalytic tradition recognizes the connection

between psychopathological disorientation caused by various factors and the creative

process. Elsewhere she refers to the peculiar role of pain in mobilizing the afflicted to the

creative process:

We find ourselves here before an enigmatic chiasmus that will not cease to preoccupy us: if loss, mourning, absence set the imaginary act in motion and permanently fuel it as much as they menace and undermine it, it is also undeniable that fetish of the work of art is erected in disavowal of this mobilizing affliction [56]

which generates “clinical symptomatology of inhibition and asymbolia that an individual

displays sporadically or chronically, often in alteration with so called manic phase of

exultation” [57].These dual responses of what she terms dejection and exultation and

alteration between them “constitutes the depressive temperament of neurotic”[58] . This

is followed by her detailed analysis of Dostoevsky in respect to the dual representation or

responses. Dostoevsky’ “tormented universe” [59] caused more by his epileptic fits than

just grief is reflective of this dialectic of responses. What she writes here is that pain,

grief, loss or whatever the form of pain has the diverse role in creativity. It lies in either

the acceptance or the denial of the underlying pain in what a writer creates. ’Neill’s

creative process has been analyzed in this context of co relation between the artist’

psychopathology and what he creates. It will be argued that the creative impulse inspired

by psychic affliction was not for any attempt on the part of the playwright to resolve the

crises or come to term with it in the spirit of acceptance of loss as has been upheld. It will

be argued that in O’Neill’s art, affliction is persistent and remains unresolved. The

affliction has its roots in the artist’s unconscious longing for the mother as a desired

object. Therefore the study substantiates oedipal configuration of art-artist relation to

investigate the peculiar psychopathological factor in O’Neill’s art. However the nature of

this relationship is rife with complexity and no single theoretical notion can adequately

address it. , The study therefore adds Klein’s [60] stance on personality development to

debate the complexity of this relation and its impact on creativity. Klein’s stance

highlights different perspectives that have not been explored in interpreting O’Neill art.

In her interpretation of child psycho- sexual development, Klein refers to paranoid-

schizoid conflict towards the mother and its impact on personality. Thus she rescues the

child from Freudian oedipal love, but her stance is equally pessimistic and creates

ultimate negative impression of personality. Importantly, she refers to factors other than

sexual drives which in her opinion are anxiety, induced by fear particularly of

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annihilation. Here in O’Neill it will be argued that the vital conflict towards the mother

figure projects the paranoid-schizoid position of the artist. . But the preponderance of

affliction is so definite and absolute that it goes a long way to “menace” or undermine

“imaginary act”. The study contends that the menacing act restrains imagination from

achieving transcendence from the loss and achieving universal representation. It also

raises other problem relating to intellectual appeal of tragedy, denouement of crises to

initiate repair and desirable tragic effect and achieve transference from the stage to the

audience on the ground of personal experience particularly in diverse cultural scenario.

The following areas in the study will be debated with reference to O’Neill’s art

and creativity:

1. Art reflects artist’s psychopathological identity. Psychopathology here in

O’Neill’s case is conditioned by the unconscious. The study elaborates in the light

of Freud and Klein’s theoretical notions on personality development.

2. The study also emphasizes that preoccupation with the unconscious and subjective

creates its own archeology of limitations and constraints on such a type of art. The

most significant limitation is related to that of representation as a concern of the

tragic art. Therefore O’Neill’s dramatic art with particular mental states as it

unfolds needs to be placed in the broader field of art and creativity to determine its

appeal in terms of its representation and appeal.

3. The proponents of relation between loss/affliction and creativity have ignored to

highlight the regressive effect of persistent pain, loss and depressiveness on the

created works of the artist. The study highlights these regressive effects on

O’Neill’s art, and stress the need to liberate art from preoccupation with the

unconsciousness as a means towards specific subjective ends.

Chapter 4 analyses diverse deviant behavioral patterns of O’Neill’s personas. In

the first place the study here in this segment takes his personas independent of

autobiographical identifications and focuses on their different psychologically regressive

disorders from multiple stances. The aim here is to project in line with the overall pattern of

research annoyingly depressive and regressive psychopathological images in O’Neill’s art

that practically permeates the behavioral template of all characters with varying intensity.

Chapter 5 undertakes evaluation of the role of certain societal factors in causing

certain deviant behavioral disorders. The study in continuation of the pattern to locate

psychopathological patterns in O’Neill’s plays, aims in this chapter to search connectivity

11

between society and possible role that some social factors play in causing deviance in

behavior and generating psychopathological disorders in individuals. Thus it does not

merely show the connectivity between art and social customs, traditions etc, or allow art to

reveal what lies at the heart of society, but studies the role that social institutions and

factors play in generating specific behavioral problems of diverse nature and descriptions.

Now society is composed of various elements/institutions. Depending upon preference

accorded in each society, social determinants of behavioral deviance and regression range

from micro institutes like home and family, to macro ones like ethnic belongingness or

differentiation, race, religion, economic conditions etc. In some cases economic factor

instigates ruthless and destructive struggle for prosperity to the total denial of ethical,

cultural, imaginative, intellectual and artistic elements. The study, however, concentrates on

religion and racism as producers of extreme emotional and psychic disturbances and

deviance. Significantly analysis of such cultural factors as religion in producing deviant

behavior acquires greater relevance in the backdrop of the current national and international

focus on possible relation between religious radicalism and negative/extreme behavior.

In Chapter 6, the study includes debate on the role of O’Neill’s grim drama with its

predominant focus on regressive human behavior and resultant pessimism on the readers

of diverse cultural background. It will be argued that the effect produced is contrary to

positive cathartic effect. The conclusions have been drawn in chapter 7.

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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE SURVEY

Literature as a human creative effort contains two integrated values. First it is an

embodiment of an author’s faithful response to imaginative, emotional, intellectual and

inspirational requirements and compulsions of the artist. Secondly and importantly a

literary work is an integral part of total human effort in creativity. In this context, it opens

itself to meanings and interpretations that go beyond the constricted personal orientation

and sometimes assume an altogether different proportions and meaning. This second part

or aspect has made literary work an endless source of ever new meanings. O’Neill’s

mammoth literary work produced variety of responses among the critics. Generally

speaking body of critical, theoretical and historical work concerning O'Neill art is very

extensive. This review of literature will focus specifically on works which reflect

O’Neill’s concern with creativity, dramatization of emotive and psychic states, cultural

factors in creating psychopathology and the impact of predominantly grim dramatic

image in the plays on readers /audiences. The bulk of critical study on O’Neill begins in

1950’s after publication of Long Day’s Journey into Night in the form of biographies,

O'Neill's private correspondence, full length studies and articles. This review will

examine the book length studies of O'Neill in chronological order. Significant articles

will also be examined. Moreover, this review will not examine criticisms of specific plays

except for the purposes of identifying trends in O'Neill criticism.

Critical approaches to O’Neill address some of the important and recurrent

questions and areas that could be broadly referred as autobiography, psychological

aspects, different oriental and occidental influences, intellectual and literary kinship, and

melodrama among other related subjects. The subjective/autobiographical nature of

O’Neill’s art has been highlighted in several studies. Alexander [61] for instance is

strongly of the opinion that the plot, character and imagery of O’Neill’s plays have been

shaped by a “specific nexus of personal memories brought into activity by pressing life

problem”. This factor, she argues links his dramatic career into a single unified whole.

13

Likewise Sheaffer’s [62-63], Bowen [64] and Bogard [65] uniformly establish close

association between his life and the dramatized world in his plays. Importantly this

association between life and art goes back to his early amateur plays. Walton [66] for

instance reads a close correspondence between his life experiences and his first twenty

five plays following his association with Province Town Players from 1914-24, all

dealing with “folklore and folkways of the sea traditional sailor concepts and patterns of

conduct he had learned from two years of firsthand experience aboard ocean going ships

and in water front area before beginning his career as a dramatist”. He includes O’Neill’s

Beyond Horizon, Diff’rent, Gold, Anna Christie, the Hairy Ape, and Ancient mariner

among his first act plays in this category that deal with personally experienced sea ways.

Kushner [67] also observes close working of personal experiences at sea and the early

plays. “He was a writer-explorer in the tradition of Melville, foremost of American

seafaring mythologists, for whom, as with O’Neill, the ocean is a vast incubatory of

metaphor”. Eisen [68] follows the same thread. However, contrary to many critics who

make a distinction between O’Neill’s early experimental plays and his later works, he

closes the gap and suggests that “all O’Neill’s plays show his effort to work with his

father’s legacy as an actor in melodrama. Prince [69] in his Review of the work supports

Eisen’s stance of seeing unity in O’Neill’s “themes, styles, and techniques” in association

with Nineteenth Century melodrama traditions. This detail reveals O’Neill’s pervasive

obsession for dramatizing self and also near ones especially mother, father and elder

brother in his plays, which has exposed O’Neill as a man and artist to multiple theoretical

and critical interpretations. The self as it appears on textual analysis acts as the main

mobilizing force of his creative impulses and his unconscious being in traumatized state

for the reasons discussed below, the art itself assumes an absolute depressive image.

Critics and interpretations of the fifties have looked at his plays largely in terms of

autobiographical elements. Chapman [70] terms his play Long day’s Journey “the only

beautiful play” that he wrote. The play, he writes, is about O’Neill himself and his family,

but the behavior of each with respect to other adopts a general pattern, “they become

humanity looking for something, but not knowing exactly what it is looking for”. Kerr

[71] terms the play Long Day’s Journey “a stunning theatrical experience” as well as an

effort at self dramatization. However, being a short article, it has not been able to deal

with author and his psychoanalyses of the characters at greater length. Bogard’s Contour

in Time: the Plays of Eugene O’Neill [72] is a work of immense importance on O’Neill. It

covers up O’Neill’s entire dramatic carrier, and has been a source of citations in different

14

books and articles written on O’Neill up to now. His pattern of analysis is historical, and

psychological. At the historical plain, Bogard tries to cover up the entire productivity of

works as they were authored in the sequence of time from early efforts in 1913-14 to the

last efforts in 1940s which resulted in such master pieces as A Touch of Poet, The Iceman

Cometh, and Long Day’s Journey. He divides O’Neill’s works into ten different phases

taken up in ten chapters. Bogard’s main thrust is on evaluating the works as an effort at

self understanding and quest for identity. Pushing aside theoretical and practical stage

limitations and doctrines writes Bogard, O’Neill carved for himself independent course

that lacked the technical perfection, but showed his deep involvement in his artistic

creativity. He has titled the last chapter of the book “The Door and the Mirror” which is

about plays written at the end of a tumultuous carrier. Bogard’s analyses of Long day’s

Journey in this chapter are in keeping with the general pattern of the book. It brings out

the autobiographical and psychological aspects of the author (O’Neill) and the characters

respectively to the light without exclusive reference and focus on any particular

theoretical stance. His psychological analysis of the characters revolves around their

behavior, their oscillation between past and present, living in dreams and illusions. In his

analysis of Long Day’s Journey, he refers to the term “double” to explain the duality roles

and position that Edmund adopts in the play. Mary’s character and her guilt, illusions, and

her escape from life’s responsibilities have been given more importance than other

characters. Bogard’s overall attitude towards O’Neill’s creative efforts in theme and style

is on the whole one of approval, and he believes that O’Neill’s vision had become

compatible with philosophy that was to govern the thought and action of the present

world. Floyd’s The Plays of Eugene O’Neill: A New Assessment [73] is an important

autobiographical study on O’Neill. She divides the whole dramatic cannon into four

groups and each begins with a biographical introduction that is aimed to allow readers to

comprehend the autobiographical nature of his plays. Chotia’s Forging a Language: A

Study of Plays of Eugene O’Neill [74] is another important study on O’Neill, written with

deep compassion and sympathy for his achievements. He is paid rich tributes for his

realism whose limits he extends by “exploring areas of human experience which continue

to be of pressing interest to us”[75]. In the first part of the book, Chotia analyses

O’Neill’s quest for form and his experimentation within the context of the American

theatre in which he worked. After examining specifically linguistic context of

contemporary interest in American vernacular and its function in drama, she focuses on

the examination of language of selected plays. O’Neill’s use of language in middle years

15

is discussed with respect to Mourning Becomes Electra, and Strange Interlude, which is

followed by exhaustive discussion on the use of language in search of form in Iceman

Cometh and Long Day’s Journey. In her exploration of the distinctly dramatic elements in

his language, Chotia asserts that O’Neill’s language has the power to make “the strongest

demand on our experiencing faculties, and thereby to become a vital part of our

imaginative lives”. Equally important are her assertions that it is the language that brings

out the ambivalence in the emotions of all character. “O’Neil”, writes Chotia “juxtaposes

some of the cruelest denials with moments of brief sympathy”. Chotia’s emphasis on

language here as a means of revealing the psyche of the individual and group makes her a

part of larger structuralists theoretical notions which signify the superior role of language

in constructing human identity. Moreover Chotia unlike most of the writers on O’Neill

analyses the characters, their dialogues and what they express as an independent dramatic

creations meant to serve the interest of the play and not as a part of O’Neill’s

autobiography or attempts at self dramatization. Carpenter’s Eugene O’Neill [76] is also

an important contributory work on O’Neill. Patterned on what has become a tradition in

full length studies on O’Neill, he studies O’Neill historically, dividing his achievements

into time sequence from what he calls early romances to the final plays which he titles

“Journey beyond Light.” The analysis of the plays in their historical evolution is preceded

by a detailed study of O’Neill’s life which had become a vital source of his plays and is

captioned as “O’Neill: The Tragic Agonist.” The preliminary discussion is followed by a

discussion of what he calls the pattern of O’Neill’s tragedies. The early plays are referred

to as “Romantic Dreams”, and plays like Strange Interlude, Lazarus Laughed, Mourning

Becomes Electra, have been termed not only as the most successful dramas, but also as

“the human tragedy of modern man”. The final tragedies are referred to as “soul’s ascent”

from the depth of denial found in what he calls human tragedy to be found in plays like

Mourning Becomes Electra. Long Day’s Journey, he writes, describes the “purgatorial

life of Tyrone family”, who learn finally to understand the reason of mother’s addiction.

A Moon for Misbegotten, he writes, suggests the “final peace that results from a strange

holds of O’Neill’s plays individually as well as collectively shows him extremely

predisposed to O’Neill and affirms his stature as a great tragedian. Besides, he believes

that after initial exercises of identifying himself emotionally with one of his characters,

O’Neill in his latter tragedies transcends both the action and the passions which he

describes, so that his characters, he believes, seem to live out their tragedies without the

help or hindrances of the author. The final dramas, Carpenter writes, ceased to be

16

romantic and become transcendental. His Long Day’s Journey is concerned, Carpenter

terms it “the climax of O’Neill’s development”. His stress here is on bringing out

conflicts between father and sons, but more importantly the destructive conflict between

Edmund and Jamie, which he terms “conflict between two philosophies of life, between

cynical negation preached by Jamie and the tragic transcendence of the negative by

Edmund”. This analysis as such imparts as Carpenter believes true tragic dimension and

fate to Edmund and that the play is basically concerned with Edmund transcending the

negation and moving towards spiritual transcendence in the true tragic spirit. Berlin’s

Eugene O’Neill [77] marks another attempt in the long series of works written in

sympathetic consideration of O’Neill’s dramatic achievements in theme and

characterization in particular. His approach to O’Neill’s work like Carpenter and others

before him is essentially historical. “He [O'Neill] ransacked”, writes Berlin, “his memory

. . . he wrote out his agony and guilt, he used theatre as a vehicle for remembrance and

self analyses and self forgiveness. . . .one can say that O’Neill’s drama is a Theatre

working on memory”. Next Berlin looks for O’Neill’s appeal which he finds in the

emotional quality of his themes and characters. The intensity of emotions and his belief in

emotions to be true guide, writes Berlin, brings O’Neill close to Nietzsche, whose

philosophy “strongly acknowledged the emotional, non rational, rapturous, Dionysian

side of man”. Berlin also interprets profuse drinking in O’Neill’s plays as an attempt to

come close to truths of life because “intoxication can touch the truth of life more easily

than can the rational mind”. From the historical and autobiographical perspectives,

Berlin’s work studies the growth of the dramatist from early experiments which he titles “

Beginning” which then leads to the analysis of the plays in “The Early Twenties”, “The

Late Twenties”, “The Thirties”, and “Endings”. In the last part he takes up naturally the

analysis of Iceman Cometh, and Long Day’s Journey. The latter for him constitutes the

extension of Iceman Cometh, because both plays, he views, deal with illusions that a

person sustains to endure life. But despite autobiographical nature of the play(s), Berlin

strongly believes that the play like Long Day’s Journey is great not because it provided

O’Neill with catharsis for understanding and forgiving his parents and brother, but

because the play being a true work of art transcends personal drama and releases

moments of large emotions in us. Bigsby’s Critical Introduction to American Drama,

1900-1940 [78] is not a work specifically concerned with O’Neill as the title suggests, but

reflects an important development in interpretative studies on O’Neill. Bigsby’s analysis

is marked by dispassionate critical method which helps the reader to evaluate O’Neill in

17

the light of modern development in psychology and philosophy. Bigsby clearly

emphasizes that O’Neill’s works reflect his absolute preoccupation with his personal past.

In his analysis of Long Day’s Journey, he specifically focuses on the retreat of the entire

family from their responsibilities into past and most importantly into language, “His

characters live through the words which they utter. Language is detached from reality and

becomes the only house they can inhabit, infinitely preferable to action, to fact, to a

genuine engagement”. Bigsby’s second book Modern American Drama, 1940-2000 [79]

also contains a chapter on O’Neill, titled “Eugene O’Neill: Endgame.” Here he criticizes

O’Neill for his incessant experimentation both in themes and styles, without trying to

settle to any particular method or mode, “the church of his drama was constantly being

reconstructed to different faiths, faiths which he served with total commitment, only to

abandon them for others”. Like his previous work, Bigsby here too refer emphatically to

O’Neill’s world as the world on the decline, “O’Neill’s characters in his last plays are

caught in decline.”

Along with these full length studies numerous articles emphasize the

autobiographical nature of his plays. Walton as referred above (p.10) reads a close

connection between his life experiences and his first twenty five plays subsequent to his

association with Province Town Players from 1914-24. Kushner likewise (p. 10) also sees

close working of personal experiences at sea and the early plays. “He was a writer-

explorer in the tradition of Herman Melville, foremost of American seafaring mythologists,

for whom, as with O’Neill, the ocean is a vast incubatory of metaphor”. Robinson [80]

explaining the grim past that shaped O’Neill’s vision of “primitive Masculinity” refers to

several crises that are spiritual and related directly to his mother’s dope addiction. These

biographical studies refer to strong personal details that worked as a source of thematic

and character model for his plays.

From psychoanalytic perspectives these studies provide some interpretative angels

that stretch from the author to the personas in his plays. Bowen [81] integrates his

analysis of O’Neill’s biography around the concept of “curse” that Bowen thinks hang

over the destiny of the family, manifesting itself in disease, neurosis and addiction. He

also dilates upon their core familial problem that gave rise to familial discord which he

believes sprang from alienation and isolation from each other. Watt [82] uses “Double” to

investigate fragmentation between “fear of life and fear of death” in O’Neill’s characters

in the light of Otto Rank’s The Double (1914) and Trauma of Birth (1936). Bogard [83]

has also used Rank theory of Double to study fraternal rivalry for the Mother as object of

18

love from oedipal perspectives. Mann [84] likewise analyses O’Neill’s personality in his

Long Day’s Journey as a reflection of two distinct selves. He uses Abrams’s view of

creative autobiography to explain “simultaneous presence of author’s two selves that

create “a rich self portrait of the artist by allowing us to experience the older self

returning in time to re-enact and mediate upon the discovery of his younger self of his

life’s work”. His younger self in the play is “naïve, immature, two dimensional Edmund

Tyrone” who provides a great deal of understanding about his parents, and brother and

the specific reasons that “spawned their guilt and anger. Initial psychoanalytic

investigation into O’Neill’s creativeness were made by Engel [85] on the premise that his

plays are continuous dramatization of the inner struggle between life and death with

temporary exaltation of life in such plays as Lazarus Laughed “in which the later was

destined to win because of O’Neill’s innate pessimism”. She particularly writes about

O’Neill’s dramatization of father and mother. Father, she writes is usually in the image of

stern, hard God, and mother as the loving God of Nature. Both represents antithesis

between “Christian renunciation and pagan loving acceptance. Similarly Manheim’s

Eugene O’Neill’s New language of Kinship [86] offers insightful co-relation between

O’Neill’s creativity and the determining influences on his creative urges that in

Manheim’s views were “his mother’s dope addiction, death of his mother and his brother

Jamie. Alexander’s Tempering of Eugene O’Neill [87] is another important account of

correlation between O’Neill’s personal and artistic life. Alexander in her book focuses on

certain key relations like father and mother who contributed to the making of the artist as

well as his education. Alexander’s Eugene O’Neill’s Creative Struggle: the Decisive

Decade, 1924-1933 [88] and Black’s Eugene O’Neill in Mourning [89] are other

important analytical studies which address this correlation from two different

perspectives. Alexander in her Creative struggle grounds her analysis in this work on the

assurance that the plot, character and imagery of the plays that she has selected for This

factor, i.e., Interpretation have been shaped by a “specific nexus of personal memories

brought into concern with the personal in turn necessitated recollection and recreation of

what actually transpired in his traumatic life at different stages. Therefore his creativity or

the creative process in his consciousness rotates strappingly around the past and

memories and are charged with repetition and reiteration of extraordinary nature and

sequence. She sees this pattern in terms of “opportunity to confront and solve a pressing

life problem”. Her account assumes moral aspect when she argues that, “indeed the way

in which O’Neill confronted in these nine play [written during 1924-33] his intense

19

problems in love and marriage shows the same curious combination of knowing and not

knowing at the same instant, and the same constant evolution in his thinking brought by

his actual knowledge of what refused to report itself in explicit reasoning”. Her blend of

autobiographical and psychoanalytic becomes obvious as she highlights strong oedipal

nature of O’Neill’s relation with the mother as a desired object and is a reflection of the

role of the traumatized past on the present. For instance she analyses Strange Interlude

as a play about O’Neill oedipal and sexual conflicts through the personas of Charlie

Marsden and Nina Leeds. In her commentary on Mourning Becomes Electra she writes ,

“He certainly knew that in Carlotta he had selected , for the first time a wife with his own

mother’s beautiful dark eyes and his ‘mother’s long and straight nose. . .He dedicated the

first galley proofs of Mourning Becomes Electra to Carlotta ‘with a large kiss on her long

nose’” . Black also suggests a close relation between O’Neill’ personal life and what he

created. He sees a pattern in the playwright’s career that hovers around personal tragedy,

especially the death of his father, mother, and brother that drove him deep into his work

and to a greater understanding of himself. “O’Neill spent most of his life in mourning”,

says Black, and “loss inspired O’Neill’s creative acts of repair”. He contends, “Through

the exploration of the family portraits and themes, O'Neill does the work of mourning that

goes on at a glacial pace and encompasses most of the playwright's working life”. His

grief, writes Black was so intense that it transcended the creative dimension of his

personality to touch other aspects of his life: “His drinking increased and his relation with

his wife and children deteriorated”. But writing remained a safe mechanism for his as it

helped him contends Black to “tolerate living”. He further elaborates the repairing and

nurturing role of creativity in these words:

A freshet of activity so often follows that the act of making is believed by many to serve reparative function But it does progress, writes Black as one can follow in the plays his resistance to grief and his erratic progress toward accepting his losses. The months surrounding James O'Neill's death were a remarkably fertile period for the younger son. Between spring and fall of 1920, O'Neill wrote Gold, Anna Christie, The Emperor Jones and Diff'rent. The themes, characters and actions show the influence of James's death.[iv] The creative fecundity, exceptional even for O'Neill, must have shielded him from the full impact of the loss of his father, as well as filling the void left by the death.

His Long Day’s Journey writes Black similarly demonstrate the playwright’s urging to

come to term with loss.

By the time it is finished, he knows better than ever that they are lost; and the dedication testifies to the sadness he finally lets himself feel. No patient waiting, no efforts to understand or tolerate or earn it will bring him the love from his mother

20

and brother that he needed. What he learns by the end of writing Long Day's Journey is that they simply could not love him as anyone needs to be loved. That is the terrible understanding he has resisted over the decades.

Mortoon Jr. [90] gave another preservative account of the co relation between O’Neill’s

specific psychic states and what he created in such important plays as Mourning Becomes

Electra and Long Day’s Journey. Unlike the other critics, Moorton specifically reads

oedipal dynamics at work in the plays terms with the idealized mother, dramatized

through effective strategies like the use of Greek myths in Mourning Becomes Electra

and realistic characters subtly executed in Long Day’s Journey. Splitting of self into

multiple personas is also used writes Moorton to disguise original identities of the family

members. In Mourning Becomes Electra, he writes:

the Oedipal dynamics of O’Neill family can be forthrightly portrayed because the original identities of the characters are well disguised by being split into multiple personae simultaneously identified with archetypal characters from Greek myth and fictionalized characters set in postbellum New England. In contrast, the characters in Long Day’s Journey are transparently drawn from members of O’Neill’s family; therefore he feels constrained to represent the sexual tension between them in a realistic, that is suppressed manner so subtly executed as to elude detention by those unaltered to their presence .

This study substantiates the existence of depressive and destructive oedipal dynamics in

artist’s relation in the familial context, but also highlights the complexity involved in

this matter and limitations inherent in the approach. The study therefore adds Klenian

perspective on personality development and child mother relation to explain the

complexity. It also asserts that O’Neill struggled with the problem throughout his life

and his art meaningfully reflect the crises and the struggle that failed to settle down or

move towards the resolution or repair as Alexander and Black contend. This factor

imparts a characteristic dark and depressive account to whole human effort on the stage.

It also account largely for his personal psychopathological disintegration. The study also

asserts that artist’s preoccupation with the interior of his mind in his art from specific

perspectives is bound to create intellectual, imaginative and representational limitations

for his art.

In the sphere of O’Neill’s characterization there are no great deals of separate

studies available. Most of available studies analyze his personas as autobiographical

representations. Elliott [91] for instance refers to this tendency “to create characters out

of his own life experience” with respect to his Great God Brown that in fact remained a

general pattern of his whole dramatic career. He explains O’Neill’s personas in Great

21

God Brown as both alter egos and altar egos. First he says that O'Neill's repeatedly

creates characters largely based on his own self and then allows them to try on various

identities and “experience various possible solutions to the question of how to find

meaning in a world without God or a substitute divinity”. In Great God Brown he sees

this pattern as:

O'Neill uses characters as both alter egos (a kind of second skin or face created from pieces of himself and given dramatic life on stage) and as altar egos characters that he sacrifices on the new altar, the stage, in the new Temple, the theatre. In The Great God Brown, this process can be seen most clearly in the characters of Dion Anthony and William/Dion Brown, figures who share many of O'Neill's own biographical characteristics and who begin the play as alter egos but end as altar egos for O'Neill, sacrificed to appease the God O'Neill cannot find; sacrifices that highlight O'Neill's spiritual quest for a personal, loving God in which to believe.

Richardson [92] also dilates upon O’Neill’s exploration of the phenomenon of character

in Great God Brown which he thinks is the least appreciated achievement of the author.

He explains it through his analysis of Great God Brown where one comes across different

modes of characterization that are employed, developed and then replaced by others.

Therefore “any univocal model of characters will soon be stymied; only more flexible,

multivalent paradigm will illuminate the full extent of O’Neill’s experiment with bodies,

psyches, figures and actors”. Others have analyzed such important personas as Cabot in

Desire under Elms, Lavinia and Orin in Mourning Becomes Electra, Mary and Edmund

in Long Day’s Journey, and Hicky in Iceman etc. Most of the interpretations are

psychoanalytic ones. But the personal and the familial context of all these characters is a

dominant motif. Mary is very obviously Ella Qiunlan O’Neill [93-94]. Ephraim Cabot is

described as O’Neill’s spontaneous poet [95] is representative of O’Neill’s own poetic

nature; Lavinia and Nina are representation of Mary [96], while Alexander [97] reads

O’Neill himself particularly his experience with prostitutes in Nina in Strange Interlude.

But the studies with the exceptions of a few passing comments on the abnormal behavior

of some of these personas like Orin and Nina have not exclusively focused on O’Neill’s

characters as independent stage figures. Similarly their behavioral patterns have remained

unaddressed. The study in this section evaluates O’Neill’s prominent figures

independently of auto biographical association and highlights their deviant behavior

mostly from post Freudian perspectives. It refers to modern and post modern theories of

trauma to analyses traumatic and post traumatic disorders in O’Neill’s personas in some

plays like Strange Interlude and Long Day’s Journey.

22

Inclusion of cultural parameters in creating deviant behavior marks another

extension of studies on O’Neill. As O’Neill’s fort lies in dramatizing emotive and psychic

states, his primary focus is on individuals. Social concerns have generally remained

peripheral and unaddressed in his art. Critics with a few exceptions have concentrated on

the thematic and structural aspects of his art.. Diggings [98] is among very vocal

advocates of cultural and social aspects of O’Neill‘s drama. He minimizes discussion on

autobiographical dimensions of his art and attempts to illuminate O’Neill’s views on

American society and culture by “drawing upon a range of pre twentieth century

philosophical and political thinkers including Lock, Jefferson, Emerson and Thoreau with

particular attention to Nietzsche”. Throughout the work Diggins argues about various

desires, but most frequently he refers to material possession like ownership of property

that has become impetus for degeneration and destruction in O’Neill’s plays. John Orr’s

“Eugene O’Neill: The Living Tragedy”, and “Eugene O’Neill: The Life Remembered” in

his Tragic Drama and Modern Society [99] are two important contributory articles on the

social appeal of O’Neill’s work. His approach has two broad and overlapping

characteristics. Like other critics, Orr focuses on the autobiographical nature of plays, but

the autobiographical dimension in O’Neill’s art, but also declares that his art has assumed

broader social relevance O’Neill’s art, he states has to be understood with respect to

James migration to USA and subsequent hardships that his father had to face in the new

land. Plays like Hairy Ape, writes Orr represents that phase of economic hardships for the

laboring class whose cheap labor has made America the most industrialized nation in the

world, but without benefit to cheap labor. It in fact proved devastatingly hostile to the

cheap labor itself making their lives worse than life in hell. Emperor Jones and All God’s

Chillum Got Wings have also been taken up and discussed from social perspectives. Here

writes Orr, the playwright “proceeded from the tragedy of the solitary hero to the tragic

portrayal of social relations”. In the second article, social perspectives of the plays like

Desire under Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra have been emphasized.. Long Day’s

Journey has been analyzed as a family play. The autobiographical factor, however, does

not detract its social relevance. The play is concerned with displacement of a family

under the profound impact of capitalism on the American way of life. “It is not enough to

say that Tyrones are not a typical bourgeois family. There is more profound sense of

displacement at the centre of the middle class life and family in general. Raleigh [100]

has also analyzed some of O’Neill’s plays from broader social perspective. For instance

he sums up the cultural significance of Long Day’s Journey in terms of Irish Catholicism:

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. . . Long Day’s Journey is more impressive as a cultural document than it is an autobiographical document. Furthermore, its distinctive qualities are given, not so much by family, as by culture, or by family culture, since the two can not be separated. The culture is, of course, New England Irish Catholicism, and it is this that provides. . . . the character types, the interrelationships between characters, the whole attitude towards life that informs Long Day’s Journey and gives it meaning.

Raleigh goes to explain typical Irish characteristics that saturate all “four haunted

Tyrones” which becomes the cause of familial disintegration. Raleigh’s account of typical

Irish characteristics is preceded by his assertion that the Irish immigrants never

assimilated themselves into mainstream American society and values. These settlers,

writes Raleigh, brought Ireland to American rather than leaving it behind, and in

America, they remained as clans, as “outsiders” ruled by the Protestant culture, “The Irish

remained Irish and did not get assimilated for several generations, sometime for a half

century or more”. The Irishness in America formed them into closed units, avoiding

general social contact and remaining confined to their inner family cycle. The typical

Irish characteristics are outlined and later elaborated as:

Excessively familial; non communal; sexually chaste, turbulent; drunken; alternatively and simultaneously sentimental and ironical about love; pathologically obsessed with their betrayals, religiously blasphemous; loquacious. . . . To these nine characteristics should be added a tenth, which was an emergent, post-feminine phenomenon, namely a tendency towards less and later marriage on the part of the young men and a tendency, therefore for these young to remain at home with their father and mother.

His one act plays with black cast and expressionist masterpiece Emperor Jones have also

been studied in relation to the prevalent racial issues in American culture. Poole [101]

analyses The Emperor Jones as a play that constantly undergoes shift in black and white

discourses without privileging either to reflect modernist awareness of racial complexity.

Abdo [102] summarizes the conflicting opinion on the representative nature of Brutus

Jones in Emperor Jones. For some, she writes Brutus is the representative of the Afro-

American in general, “a member of the collective, to which he must ultimately submit”.

She herself, however, interprets him as an individual struggling for his identity “who

attempts to better himself and successfully make his mark in the world”. Shaughnessy’s

Down the Nights and down the Days: Eugene O'Neill's Catholic Sensibility [103] is very

important study on the cultural aspects of O’Neill’s works. Part one of the book, "The

Reluctant Apostate is concerned with O’Neill’s early youth, his family, his Catholic

education and regulation at a time when the American Catholic church had become the

centre of life and religious focus for its adherents. Shaughnessy places O'Neill as an

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individual artist within this strict Catholic tradition. The author also touches on O'Neill's

adverse reception by most of the Catholic press, especially the leading Catholic

newspapers and journals. This part concludes with a brief reflection on The Great God

Brown, Lazarus Laughed and Strange Interlude. In the next part, "Catholic Sensibility

and Thematic Development," he takes the reader into the main thematic core of the book.

Here he deals with O'Neill’s major plays, including the seldom produced Days without

End. Along with sin, guilt and redemption Shaughnessy focuses on theme of relationship

as substantive centers of O’Neill’s concept of Catholic sensibility that works and he does

through the entire range of O'Neill's work. Referring to O’Neill’s desertion of faith

Shaughnessy makes it clear that his sensibility throughout life remained clearly a Catholic

one and could not “truly elude religion’s net”. This study, however, contends that

religious education and religious doctrine in O’Neill’s life propelled rebellious attitude

against the very religion in the as and art are means to deviant behavior. It analyses that

religion/interpretation of religion in the artist and generate certain well marked regressive

behavioral trends and observable in both the artist and his fictional characters.

Drama is inherently dialectic as it involves definite and persistent communication

between the actors/personas and the audience/readers. Classical tragic effect theory

adequately explains this communicative relationship. O’Neill’s art has no doubt been

studied in comparison to Greek tragic art, but little has been written to debate and analyze

what could be the impact of O’Neill’s psychic drama on the modern day

audience/readers. Some of the questions that this study highlights are: Does it provide

cathartic relief? Can it be equated with Greek tragic art in the sphere of exercising

cathartic effect? What are the areas in O’Neill’s art that obstruct cathartic effect on the

reader/audiences? What role cultural differences play in obstructing cathartic effect? The

study contends that O’Neill’s dramatic art make little provision for cathartic relief to the

modern readers, particularly of diverse cultures. On the contrary it obstructs cathartic

effect for variety of reasons. The study includes absence of moral vision and use of

monotonous language as two other potent factors for obstructing cathartic relief to the

readers in addition to overall dark and depressive account of human life, relationships and

personality.

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CHAPTER 3

CREATIVITY, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION

3.1 INTRODUCTION: CREATIVITY AND DRAMA

Creativity as an important area of aestheticism has remained a debatable issue

among the theorists, critics and artists since the ancient times. Nature of creative process

that shapes a work of art in the artists’ mind and imagination has been debated frequently

to determine and ascertain how creative process works and hat shapes it in the artist’s

mind and imagination. The debate as stated earlier above has its origin in Plato and

Aristotle’s diverse philosophical inquiries on art. Generally the debate pattern upheld by

critics and theorists can be divided into two components of subjectivism and objectivism.

The exponent of each has come out with certain and definitive at times vague,

hypothetical, generalized notions (Eliot, for instance) on the nature and process of literary

creativity. The classics and the adherents of objectivity have generally emphasized the

objective nature of literary creativity or creative process. Aristotle [104] upheld the

notion that poetry is universal in the particular and, “not relate things that have happened,

but that may happen, i.e. that are probable in accordance with probability and necessity”.

Heath [105] contends that the term universal in Aristotle implies that single action of

tragedy or epic is taken as something that involves plural agents. “In other words”, writes

Heath, “a plot arises when plurality of agents, each saying and doing the kind of things

that such persons would necessarily or probably say or do, interact.” In theories of drama

advanced in the 20th century, Naturalists pursued a vision that stands essentially for

adherence to objective truth/reality lying outside the confines of self. As a literary

movement Naturalism had its origin in the realistic literary traditions in vogue in 19th

century literature principally in fiction and was characteristically influenced by Darwinian

scientific thoughts as embodied in his classic The Origin Of Species (1859) and

transformed into literary terms by the French Emily Zola who continued to exercise

deeper influence o later generation writers across the continent. Revolting against the

popular romantic or more properly speaking melodramatic modes of literary/dramatic

presentation, the naturalists on the authority of Zola tried to show that “powerful forces

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governed human lives, forces of which we might not be fully aware and over which we

might have little control__ the forces of heredity and environment” [106]. Lehan [107]

summarizes Zola’s theoretical perceptions as a belief that a novelist could function as

scientist “observing nature and social data, rejecting supernatural and trans-historical

explanations of the physical world, rejecting absolute standard of morality and free will

and depicting human experience as a deterministic and mechanistic process”1.

Naturalism, writes Lehan also included preeminence of setting and temperament over

character and strong association of plot with theories of evolution. As a literary

movement naturalism [108-110], writes Lehan unlike the preceding romance fiction

“moved us away from the distant historical past to the more immediate historical

present”. Zola, for instance, Lehan continues to write dealt with the what he calls

“topical” issues of the times that were concerned with such problems as the peasants’

greed for money or their movement from land to city as well as the “fate of urban worker,

the corruption of high-society prostitute, the rise of department store, the function of

urban market, the fate of new industrial worker, the rise of steam engine and rail road

system.. . . . Ironically as civilization became more and more pronounced, society became

more and more corrupt . . . beneath all the trappings society was festering mass of

infected sores. Styan on the other hand highlights Zola’s concern with working out the

consequences of birth and background on his characters who were preeminently ordinary

people. The dramatist’ task in this background was to present on the stage “a replica of

the world we live in” [111].

These thoughts had significant bearings on modern European drama and resulted

in modernizing traditional methods of studying the character. Previously as Gaskell writes

the character was studied from theological, ethical or political presumptions that did little

to explain “the way men are shaped by their inheritance and by the world they live in”

[112]. The basic claims that this movement made on the dramatic representation was to

highlight the idea that “the physical world alone is real, and that our knowledge of it

comes wholly through the senses” [113]. The world that the senses create is therefore, not

1 Lehan (1984 ) has explained Zola theoretical stances in his “Zola”, writes Lehan (1984) “believed that the same forces which determined the individual were at work in society. The Naturalist’s view of the individual, the family, and the crowd had a logical correspondence in culture and history itself. . . . what Zola was suggesting was,. . . that modern man had been displaced from any thing like natural environment, had lost contact with his instincts, and a more rudimentary and basis sense of self, and had become more and more distanced from the rhythm of natural life. Naturalism influence American art, fiction and theatre enormously.

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only intelligible but alterable as well and the man who abodes it is “like all other animals,

a finite creature whose acts are largely determined by heredity, by biological drives

(sexual instinct, for example) and by an environment in which he struggles to exist”

[114]. Greater dramatists of the naturalist theatre like Strindberg [115-117] and Ibsen,

however, did not subscribe to these views in totality. Hereditary factor and environment

did receive some understanding from them, but they emphasized different things in

dramatizing human predicament. In reality they delved deep into human psyche to reveal

tension and conflicts over there. Strindberg for instance opposed the prevalent approach

to mere surface realism in theatre and strongly supported naturalism that looked for

natural conflicts down deep in the emotional and psychological plains. “So, Strindberg

determined to have his own plays deal in fundamental truths, like those of sexual

relationship, the psychological conflicts of wills and the bearing of the past on the

present” [118]. His Miss Julie is a psychological pattering of deadly conflict between

Miss Julie’s sexual drives and Jean’s desperate urges to rise above his class. Miss Julie is

the mistress of aristocratic class, but it is Jean who is the master in sex war. Burstein

[119] argues that, “Both [ Julie And Jean] are motivated by strong internal( in Julie’s

case, almost unconscious) forces which propel towards their fate – underscored by social,

sexual images of rising and falling, cleanliness, and dirt, life, and death”. Likewise Ibsen

developed traditional parameters of naturalism. He does not deny the role of heredity and

environment in human life, but places greater focus on what George Steiner has aptly

termed as “cancers of the soul” [120]. Therefore tragic element in Ibsen mostly arise from

the “unstable soul” [121] and main antagonists are hypocrisy, sexual passion, marriages

of expedience, vested interests; and hardest of all, the past, either of the society or of

oneself2. This exploration of the inner self of the man has, however, blurred the clear cut

division between the objective naturalism as propounded by Zola and the subjective

drama [122] and align both Strindberg and Ibsen with the expressionist movement in

literature which unlike the interests of Naturalism in outside world, offers a projection of

the life of the mind.

The proponents of subjectivity on the other hand have concentrated on the artist’s

own life as lived in his emotions and imagination; thoughts and sensibilities as the

2 For Ibsen concept of tragedy, and theatre see, Arestad, Syerre. “Ibsen’s concept of tragedy” PMLA, Vol. 74, No. 3 (June, 1959), pp 285-297. Ibsen, theatre, and Ideology of Modernism Moi, Toril, 2004. Washington: Theatre Survey (45: 2), 247-252). Kenner, H. Joyce and Ibsen’s naturalism in Johnston, B. Ed. Ibsen selected Plays, Aton Critical Edition, London: Norton, ((2004), pp. 550-556.

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predominant if not the exclusive source of literary creativity. Inspired deeply by German

philosopher Immanuel Kant, the English romantic critics, poets and theorists have dilated

upon the specific role of imagination and personal sensibilities of the artist in the process

of literary creation. Kant as Kearney and Rasmussen [123] write “made romanticism

possible by separating aesthetic from the moral and scientific”. Here, however, for the

purpose of highlighting his thoughts on subjectivity, only his views on sense experience

and how human mind creates or structure or interpret it have been taken into

consideration. Kant’s understanding of nature in its simplest terms is wholly related to

human perception and how human mind constructs it. Independent of that it has no

existence or appearance. He begins his discussion by distinguishing aesthetic judgment

from cognitive or logical judgment. An aesthetic judgment quite unlike cognitive

judgment where actually perceived concept is applied to the object, states how the person

who makes the judgment is reacting to the observed object. Kant writes in his famous

Third Critique:

If we wish to discern whether anything is beautiful or not, we do not refer the representation of it to the object by means of understanding with a view to cognition, but by means of imagination . . . ., we refer the representation to the subject and its feelings of pleasure or displeasure. The judgment of taste therefore is not a cognitive judgment, so not logical, but is aesthetic___ which means that it is not one whose determining ground cannot be other than the subjective.

His belief in the primacy of human mind in what it perceives proved instrumental in the

long terms in weakening the claims of science to describe the world of reality as it is

perceived. The world we see about us, in fact, is a world our mind creates. Time and

space are not features of reality; they are forms of human perception. As for as literature

is concerned, his arguments strengthened subjective approach to literature. The full

impact of the role of imagination and subjective reflection emerged in the 19th century

Romantic literature and criticism. In the domain of dramatic art these views on

subjectivity definitely proved instrumental in the growth of modern subjective drama.

Kant’s ideas in particular influenced Schopenhauer who had a remarkable bearing on the

development of modern drama. He appreciated Kant’s understanding that the world that

we see is the result of how human mind perceives it. Schopenhauer, however, goes deeper

than what Kant had stated. Unlike Kant the world that we perceive is not the product of

human mind as such. On the contrary it is the construction of individual mind. His

arguments, in fact take the reader for beyond Kant, who held that the world, though a

representation is a p representation of human mind, not of the individual kind. Kant in

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other words assumed that human mind is similar and therefore people construct and live

in common world. Schopenhauer does not make this assumption. He nowhere it is true,

explicitly rejects it, yet the opening of his book__ the world is my representation__

challenges the Kantian hypothesis of common world at once. This mood offers abundance

of support for the subjectivism, and it is this subjectivism that can be found in the

Expressionist drama. In modern and postmodern narrative and discourses, subjectivity

has come to acquire plurality of meanings simultaneously. It has become as Hall writes a

“critical concept” that “invites us to consider the question of how and from where identity

arises, to what extent it is understandable, and to what degree it is something over which

we have any measure of influence or control. In view of the innovative unpremeditated

extension of literary and cultural criticism in the modern and postmodern theoretical era

this question, writes Hall, has assumed great importance and relevance for the students

and critics of literature. The inclusion of literary works other than the traditionally

pondered and read such as novels, poems and plays, writes Hall, has further broadened

the scope of literary texts which have also no longer remained confined to providing

“entertainment and instruction”, but have become a closely linked to ideas that are

“politically driven and connected to agendas well beyond aesthetic understanding”.

Therefore writes Hall “in exploring subjectivity we are exploring the ‘self’ as a text, as a

topic for critical analysis, both in and beyond its relationship to the traditional texts of

literature and culture” [124]. Freudian and post Freudian psychological and philosophical

theories have considerably broadened the scope of understanding about the nature of

subjectivity or self in modern literary texts. Freud’s explorations of human mind in its

historical perspective of growth, maturity and societal adjustment became instrumental

and pioneering in developing the psychology on modern lines. “Freudian psychoanalysis”

as Pamela Thurschwell writes, “provides both a theory of history of the individual mind_

its early development, its frustrations and desires (which includes sexual, or what Freud

calls libidinal, desires)_ and a set of therapeutic techniques for recalling, interpreting, and

coming to terms with that of individual history” [125]. In the domain of dramatic art these

views proved instrumental in the growth of modern subjective drama [126]. However,

subjectivity in modern drama has more than one direction. Unlike the naturalist theatre,

subjective drama tries to capture inner reality in terms of how and what a particular

character thinks and feels at any particular moment. This particular aspect of the modern

subjective drama brings it close to Expressionism that “rejected out rightly any

conformity to objective reality [127]. Expressionist drama tries to communicate the

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emotional experience of a single person through exterior elements of people and things.

The emotions communicated are nearly always painful [128]. This desire to “express”

strong emotional states is typically seen in exaggerated language and distorted visual

representations. Ward [129] on the other hand argues:

Expressionist asserts the primacy of ego as revealed through individual consciousness. The ego is regarded as absolute reality, indeed the only reality: the subject that records all changes both of itself and of the surrounding world and within consciousness moulds them into ceaseless process of ‘becoming’. Through the ego we become aware of unity and perceive the world as it really is; not as an external state of affairs but as a subjectively experienced whole. Subject and object are united in ego-consciousness. Thus the expressionist would argue that sense data of a realist or impressionist artists are unsatisfactory, because they are not depicted as having been absorbed and radiated subjectively by the ego.

Subjectivity in modern drama also signifies greater importance to artist’s subjective

emotional, imaginative and intellectual experiences in his art. Modern drama is rich in

this kind of subjectivism and dramatic text in this case assumes the position of expository

discourse, which exposes in consistent discourse pattern the very insight of the dramatist.

Pizzato’s analysis of both Artaud and Genet’s psycho-biography[130], Schneiderman’s

[131] interpretation of autobiography in the plays of Tennessee Williams and Becket etc,

and Bower’s [132] analysis of psychopathological elements in the dramatists and plays of

modern Afro-American playwrights substantiate the role that the author’s own particular

life has played in shaping the essence of their works. Besides, subjectivism in modern

drama also involves increased autobiographical representations. Strindberg and O’Neill

are undeniably the most autobiographical dramatists in the modern theatre.

3.2 PSYCHOIANLYSIS AND CREATIVITY

Modern development in psychoanalysis has broadened the theoretical foundation

of explaining creativity. It specifically focuses on the artist conscious and unconscious to

explain the creative process. See Chapter 1,Introduction, section 1.4 above for

detailed commentary/analysis.

3.3 CREATIVITY AND O’NEILL

Eugene O’Neill’s art in this context is an embodiment of subjectivism and self-

reflectivity. He is one of the most vigorous autobiographical artists in modern literature

and his plays are record of personal life experiences and history. The autobiographical

nature of his art is born out by Sheaffer’s Son and Artist, Son and Playwright,

Alexander’s Tempering Eugene O’Neill, Croswell Bowen’s The Curse of Misbegotten: A

Tale of the House Of O’Neill, Bogard’s Contour in time: The Plays of Eugene O’Neill etc.

31

These full length studies uniformly establish close relevance and association between the

artist’s personal life and what he created in his art. Therefore drama for O’Neill involves

primarily dramatization of self and close relations such as mother, father and brother, and

this association between life and art goes back to early amateur plays. Walton highlights a

close correspondence between his life experiences and his first twenty five plays

following his association with Province Town Players from 1914-24. These deal with

“folklore and folkways of the sea- traditional sailor concepts and patterns of conduct he

had learned from two years of firsthand experience aboard ocean going ships and in water

front area before beginning his career as a dramatist” [133]. Walton includes Beyond

Horizon, Diff’rent, Gold, Anna Christie, the Hairy Ape, and Ancient Mariner among

O’Neill first act plays in this category that deal with personally experienced sea ways. But

art in O’Neill’s case is not a mere urge for subjective representation. The self here is

shaped by the unconscious drives and serves as the main source of mobilizing his creative

impulses and imaginative reflections. As the artist’s unconscious here is in traumatized

state for the reasons discussed below, his art assumes “depressive attribution style” [134]

Mother figure in the whole process remains central and plays a determining role in

positioning the traumatized psychic conditions and responses. Robinson and Shaughnessy

as already referred (Chapter 2) have highlighted this centrality of the mother figure in

O’Neill’s life and art. It cannot, however, be taken as mere subjective representation. The

strength and compulsive presence of the mother needs restructuring and revival. Robinson

[135] in his explanation of O’Neill’s “primitive Masculinity” refers to spiritual crises in

O’Neill’s life as direct result of his mother’s dope addiction. Shaughnessy [136] also

refers to similar example for the deep spiritual crises in O’Neill. The peculiar mindset that

O’Neill developed in these conditions is also reflected by his own abortive suicide in

1912 and “intermittently for several years thereafter”. His bohemian living style,

companying prostitutes, frequenting saloon and brothels, courting disease speak of the

destructive course that O’Neill chose and followed in the course of his life.

These life patterns and the drift of the mind have opened up the playwright’s dark

and mysterious unconsciousness to psychoanalytic investigation. It has given rise to

debate on the nature of the mother-son relationship and her specific role in his creativity.

Engel [137] makes initial psychoanalytic investigation into O’Neill’s creativeness on the

premise that his plays are continuous dramatization of the inner struggle between life and

death with temporary exaltation of life in such plays as Lazarus Laughed. Manheim [138]

in his study Eugene O’Neill’s New language of Kinship offers insightful co-relation

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between O’Neill’s creativity and the determining influences on his creative urges that in

Manheim’s views were “his mother’s dope addiction, death of his mother and his brother

Jamie and Alexander’s Tempering of Eugene O’Neill [139] is a valuable account of

O’Neill’s personal and artistic life. Alexander in her book focuses on certain key relations

like father and mother who contributed to the making of the artist as well as his

education. She also reads oedipal nature of the familial relation. More relevant writings

to our discussion are Alexander’s Eugene O’Neill’s Creative Struggle: the Decisive

Decade, 1924-1933(1992), and Black’s Eugene O’Neill in Mourning [140] that addresses

this correlation from two different perspectives. Alexander sees it in terms of

“opportunity to confront and solve a pressing life problem”

indeed the way in which O’Neill confronted in these nine play [written during 1924-33] his intense problems in love and marriage shows the same curious combination of knowing and not knowing at the same instant, and the same constant evolution in his thinking brought by his actual knowledge of what refused to report itself in explicit reasoning” [141].

Black also suggests a close relation between O’Neill’ personal life and what he created.

He sees a pattern in the playwright’s career that hovers around personal tragedy,

especially the death of his father, mother, and brother that drove him deep into his work

and to a greater understanding of himself. “O’Neill spent most of his life in mourning”,

says Black, and “loss inspired O’Neill’s creative acts of repair”. He contends,

“Through the exploration of the family portraits and themes, O'Neill does the work of mourning that goes on at a glacial pace and encompasses most of the playwright's working life. But it does progress. One can follow in the plays his resistance to grief and his erratic progress toward accepting his losses [142]

The study analyses O’Neill’s creativity in the context of co-existence of close

relationship between his personal afflictions and creative urges. It will be argued that the

creative impulse inspired by affliction was not for any attempt on the part of the

playwright to resolve the crises as Alexander argues or comes to terms with it in spirit of

acceptance of loss or as an act of repair as Black contends. On the contrary it remains

unresolved and keeps the creative process entangled in restructuring the personal loss

and recovering the lost object/being (here mother) for particular psycho-sexual

imperatives. Several readings confirm it in O’Neill’s self and art. Moorton Jr. [143] for

instance reads Mourning Becomes Electra and Long Day’s Journey as strictly

autobiographical works highlighting in a sustained manner the existence of oedipal love

for the idealized mother. “Both Mourning Becomes Electra and Long Day’s Journey” he

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contends “are incessantly confrontational because both are based on the same enclave of

unresolved Freudian conflicts”. This pattern is characterized by variations in its mode of

representation and expression. It assumes such different patterns as father-son conflict as

in Desire under Elms, Beyond Horizon and Long Days Journey, fraternal conflicts as in

Beyond Horizon and Long Days Journey, incestuous mother-son and father-daughter

patterns in the whole family as in Mourning Becomes Electra etc. There are plays where

O’Neill reveals his incestuous ties with the mother through his double Jamie as in Long

Days Journey [144-145]. This factor can be traced back to his early sea plays. Moon for

the Carribies, one of his early successes in art reveals this at work in a very significant

fashion. Here dreamy Smithy, a self portrait, reveals his loss of the motherly affection and

love through a number of meaningful utterances and acts. In another early play Beyond

Horizon, O’Neill reveals the underlying incestuous love through familial conflict between

father and son and brothers for the same woman. Likewise hostility between the two

brothers Andrew and Robert in this play represents fraternal rivalry for the same woman

(Ruth representing mother). In Desire under Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra and Long

Day’s Journey, same relationship pattern is repeated with variations in form and intensity

[146-147]. A Touch of Poet [148] also highlights between mother-son and father-daughter

incestuous pattern. The incestuous pattern in all conditions, however, has a corresponding

regressive effect on the subject and causes such a psychopathological and even biological

effect as blankness of sexual desires or sexual dysfunction as in Moon for the Carribies,

Strange Interlude and Mourning Becomes Electra, and premature aging and physical

disintegration as in Mourning Becomes Electra (Chapter 4). In Moon for the Carribies,

Smithy for instance reveals early signs of biological disintegration of male sexuality on

account of his oedipal longings for the mother. Marsden in Strange Interlude and Orin in

Mourning Becomes Electra are instances of sexual dysfunction. Marsden is quite different

from other row main male characters, Darrel and Evans. He has no doubt emotional

attachment with Nina, but is in reality blank and sexually underdeveloped or

dysfunctional for heterosexuality, and the reason for this is his latent homosexuality, and

neurotic attachment with the mother. In Long Day’s Journey the incest motif first drives

Jamie to jealousy for his younger brother Edmund for being mama’s pet, then to

prostitution and drunkenness in the worst form.

But oedipal pattern as located in his art does not adequately explain the nature of

his familial relationship and its terrible effect on his life. His particular attitude to women

in his art involves a great degree of complexity that no single notion could adequately

34

interpret and explain. Barlow [149] states his maternal figures have no specific motherly

role to play. They could easily fit into any one of the roles of prostitute, virgins, childless

wives, and affectionate mother goddesses mentioned above. But, whatever the role they

assume in the play, it is the male and as Barlow writes the masculine perspective that

invests them with the motherly desire or the absence of that. Feminists, however, have

raised concern on the treatment of women from male perspectives in O’Neill’s theatre.

Drucker [150] complains about ‘O’Neill’s notable inability to distinguish virgin from

whore [who] reflects the generally faulty sense of identity shared by most of his women’.

After analyzing the plays and the playwright, she diagnosis O’Neill as suffering from

‘Psychological myopia’ [151] for women. The analysis substantiates Burr’s [152] stance

that depiction of such women provides ‘sinister fact’ of O’Neill’s misogyny. She

contends that the legions of ghostly women suggest O’Neill’s ‘remarkable empathy with

women, with their psychic and social imprisonment, and with their painful and. . .

Confusing disenfranchisement’, and she locates this attitude in O’Neill’s personal

experience with his ‘mother’s misery’ caused by her unhappy marriage to James O’Neill

[153].

However fragmentation in the artist’s relationship with the mother can be

observed on textual analysis. Mother in his plays is not only the desired object that the

desiring subject yearns for possession and undergoes sense of loss and mournfulness on

her absence. Quite contrary to the desirable impression, there are plays where this mother

figure assumes definite persecutory role/nature and create impression that is one of

anxiety or fear as the case may be and the study explains this with reference to Klein’s

good and bad breast stance. Klein made very important but controversial contribution to

modern psychoanalysis. She worked within the Freudian psychoanalytic traditions and is

one with him on number of basic psychoanalytic creeds like the existence of the

unconscious, the part played by human sexuality, Oedipus complex etc that Freud had

postulated earlier. However, she is also different from him on certain issues. For instance

she asserts that the object (mother here) is knowable from the very beginning of life

(infancy) and that the Oedipus complex was functional long before Freud had thought.

She argued in favor of early stages of oedipal complex that had its origin in oral and anal

drives, and that it was constructed on the basis of part objects and not at this stage on the

whole object relationship. But the projected object, the mother’s breast for instance is far

from being idealized here. In Klein’s analysis there exists ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ for

all infants ‘extending through the first three to four months’ [154] displaying the death

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and life instincts sporadically. The first object of infant’s desire is the mother’s breast,

which in child’s mind becomes split into a good and bad breast. The good in breast is

vital to the ego formation and contributes vitally to physical growth, but the death instinct

becomes the source of disturbance, and its earliest manifestation ‘is felt as the fear of

annihilation (death) and takes the form of fear of persecution’. The ego also projects this

fear outward to the breast, which consequently becomes the symbol of persecution. She

terms it paranoid-schizoid position of all infants. But this paranoid-schizoid position gives

way to anxiety and depressive position that is related to the awareness of object as a

whole and not in bits (breast) only. He becomes as Segal [155] says, more able to

perceive his mother as one ‘who comes and goes, who is the source of gratification but

also the source of frustration and pain’. Parkin-Gounelas explains Klein’s position in

these words:

For Klein the object has as much to do with phantasy as it does with reality. When the baby introjects the primary objects or rather part objects (the mother’s breast, the father’s penis), s/he does so in response to an already existing, innate ‘knowledge’ of these objects. The objects, having been established as ‘images’ within ego form the basis of what is then projected out onto ‘real’ objects actually encountered. This simultaneous process of introjections and projection means that objects both construct and are constructed by the subject”. . . . It is a misconception to assume that Klein was interested either in the mother as a subject or active agent, or to idealize her as source of all good; when Klein talked about the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ breast, this had little to do with the mother’s treatment of the child . . . Rather, it defines the child’s innate capacity to oppose good (that which satisfies) and bad (that which deprives), and its subsequent internalization and reformulation of this opposition [156] .

Klein thus refers to the role of childhood experiences in the origination of what

constitutes individuals psychopathology. Importantly she refers to factors other than

sexual drives which in her opinion are anxiety, induced by fear particularly of

annihilation. Here in O’Neill the vital opposition between the good and the bad in the

mother is not meant to idealize the mother, but it reflects the paranoid-schizoid position

of the artist that he continued to project in his dramatic works.

3.3.1. SPLIT MOTHERS

The Kleinian dual good and bad breast image strongly emerges in some of his

female characters. Barlow’s analysis could not address this perspective of his female

characters and what association it holds for the artist himself. The study does not deny

oedipal, but projects the other destructive aspect of the mother as an object. Importantly

the alteration between her image as a desirable and threat-full entity reflects the paranoid-

36

schizoid position of the artist himself and not psychopathological identity of the mother

as an object, which means that Klein’s theoretical stance serves to highlight the

psychopathological identity (schizoid-paranoid) of the subject. The study uses this

labeling and identification to investigate O’Neill’s divisive personality in respect of his

mother. In Strange Interlude O’Neill project the innate fragmentation towards the mother

interchangeably between Nina and Mrs. Evans. Nina Leeds is one of the most significant

artist creations in his art, suffering from deep psychic derangement on account o the death

of her fiancée Gordon in the war. It leaves her simply shocked and traumatized for she

not only lost her fiancée, but also failed to have sexually gratifying matrimonial relation

with him. Her mental condition could be realized in one of the most sensuous

monologues in the play that hover around her last meeting with him: ‘That last night

before he sailed _ in his arms until my body ached- kisses until my lips were numb-

knowing all that night_ something in me knowing he would die, that he would never kiss

me again - knowing this so surely yet with my cowardly brain lying, no , he’ll be back

and marry you, you’ll be happy ever after and feel his children at your breast looking up

with eyes so much like his , possessing eyes so happy in possessing you!. Two things are

made apparent in this monologue: one she has a deeply sensuous personality and

secondly she associates sensuous love with marriage, pregnancy, birth and breast feeding.

Her desire for motherhood is further fortified in her very next dialogue with Marsden:

‘Gordon wanted me! I wanted Gordon! I should have made him take me! I knew he

would die and I would have no children, that there would be no big Gordon or little

Gordon left to me’ [157]. All these signify her good breast role, desiring to procreate and

possess nurture the baby. However, Gordon’s accidental death I the war leaves her

sexually unfulfilled as well as possibility of mothering his child. The desire however

remains there. She gets the chance of fulfillment of the motherhood desire through

marriage with Sam Evans. The communicative level between the two mothers is wrapped

in intense anxiety, irritability, tension and gradual rise in the inevitability of abortion. But

the inevitability as it shapes at the verbal level between the two mothers reveals

simultaneous existence of dual motherly traits of nurturance/love and persecution in both

ladies. Nina Leeds reflects good breast image in insisting upon having the baby and Mrs.

Evans plays the bad breast role in forcing her to abort. Mrs. Evans’ attempt to force Nina

to abort is symptomatic of her destructive/threat-full role of the mother. Her fear of

hereditary insanity that may affect the new born in the family may be a legitimate one,

but the cold hearted insistence with gradual, but intense rise in pressure imparts to her the

37

bad breast image. Nina on the other hand with her motherly desire and affection for the

fetus appears here as woman who symbolizes faith in motherhood to nurture and protect

her baby from annihilation. As the interaction between two ladies develops, the

constructive and the destructive roles are played interchangeably that furthers the

complexity involved in the situation. The whole situation, however, goes on to divulge

O’Neill’s own inner fragmentation towards her own mother. Here two women, one

mother and the other expecting baby unearth the good and the bad, the constructive and

the destructive in the mothers interchangeably. The dialogue pattern begins with Mrs.

Evans asking Nina, ‘Are you going to have a baby, Nina?’ To Nina’s reply, “I want a

baby’, Mrs. Evans first presses Nina not to have baby now as Sam’s financial position

would not be able to sustain a new addition to the family. But her major point of not

allowing her to have a baby at all rests on her fear of insanity in the family. She knows

that the Evans family is having hereditary insanity problems and the baby may be born

with this taint. The concern here is legitimate, but the whole dialogue process reveals the

cruel and hard heartedness of a mother who denies the womanly affection of having a

baby to another woman. Once the conception has taken place, she stresses abortion as the

only remedy to stop the baby being born. Besides in the process of convincing Nina to

abort, she reveals her own persecutory mother nature. She instills the fear of insane baby

coming into the world through her own example: ‘I pray’d Sammy was born dead, and

Sammy’s father prayed, but Sammy was born healthy and smiling, and we just had to

love him, and live in fear. He doubled the torment of fear we live in. And that’s what

you’d be in for’ [156]. Nina burst into anger and frustration: ‘(hysterically resentful) what

do you mean? Why don’t you speak plainly’ (violently) I think you’re horrible! Praying

your baby be born dead! That’s a lie! You couldn’t!’ Mrs. Evan, remains irresponsive to

what Nina is undergoing and continues to build the pressure: ‘It’s the curse on the

Evanses. My husband’s mother-she was an only child- died in an asylum and her father

before her. I know that for fact. And my husband’s sister, Sammy’s aunt, she’s out of her

mind’ [158]. Nina would not accept the argument saying, ‘I don’t believe you! I won’t

believe you” [159], but Mrs. Evans carries on their pressure, ‘My husband, Sammy’s

father, in spite of all he and I fought against it, he finally gave in to it when Sammy was

only eight, he could not keep up any more living , in fear for Sammy, thinking any minute

the curse might get him. . .” . Desperation and conflict continue to rise in Nina. She is

desperate to have children, but the fact placed so tenaciously beginning to shake her

confidence in her love and relation with Sam:

38

Nina (breaking away from her __ harshly) well I don’t love him [Sam] I only married him because he needed me _ and I needed children! And now you tell me “ve got to kill my__ Oh, yes, I see I’ve got to, you need’nt argue any more! I love it too much to make it run that chance! And I hate it too, now, because it’s sick, it’s not my baby, it’s his! (With terrible ironic bitterness) And still you dare to tell me I can’t even leave Sam!” [160].

Mrs. Evans holding on her position tenaciously would not loose the pressure and brings

Nina to the point where she cries in desperation, ‘but I’ll be so lonely! I’ll have lost my

baby! (She sinks down to her knees at Mrs. Evan feet ___ oh mother how can I keep on

living? And Mrs. Evans jump to catch the moment with and inject thought of picking

some healthy male of an other conception too which Nina agrees and agrees to abort the

child: “Oh, my baby. . . my poor baby. . . I’m forgetting you . . . desiring another after

you are dead! . . . I feel you beating against my heart for mercy . . . oh! . . .’ [161].What

emerges in this interplay of complexity of the emotion that mothers hold for their babies

is about the mothers’ attitudes to their babies. Mrs. Evans’ disturbed by her early

experience of giving birth to Sam in fearful conditions of hereditary insanity wished for

her child to be born dead and now forced by the concern for her own son makes Nina to

abort her baby. Nina initially resists the pressure to abort, but ultimately gives in,

signifying the persecutory mother’s role that she ultimately performs. Thus the mothers

here work in contrary directions of being caring as well as persecuting ones.

Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey possesses the dual role in a marked way that

could be observed in her thoughts, mental disposition towards the sons, verbal expression

and in overall behavior. The good breast role is to be found in her deep motherly

affection and caring attitude for the younger son Edmund in the play. Edmund as the play

opens a little off the color and seems to be suffering from some health problem that has

taken away his appetite and is having bad effect on his physique. He seems to be growing

thin with sallow complexion that distinguishes him from strong and sturdy elder brother

Jamie. Mary’s motherliness is evident t in her deep desire to see him healthy and fully

recovered from the trouble. It even makes her behave bizarrely in building illusions about

his health and returning to terrible morphine addiction. Having lost a son earlier through

infected measles, she can not bear the very idea of losing another son through another

disease. Therefore repeatedly in the play early on she consoles her self verbally that what

affects Edmund is just a common cold that has taken away his appetite, and a bit of care

will do him perfectly well, ‘James, it’s Edmund you ought to scold for not eating enough.

. . . .I keep telling him that but he simply has no appetite. Of course there’s noting takes

away your appetite like a bad summer cold”. And in response to James assurance that

39

“it’s natural and don’t let yourself get worried”, Mary retorts “Oh I’m not. I know he’ll be

all right in a few days if he takes care of himself’ [162]. These verbal expressions

however, are contradicted by her thoughts and mental disposition. In fact one of the

strong reasons for her return to morphine recently lies in her deep concern about

Edmund’s health and possible Tuberculosis. Her genuine motherliness is evident in her

infrequent verbal expression to Edmund himself. For instance the mere sound of his

coughing for instance alarms her to a disproportionate level. Warm motherly affections

are evident when she finds Edmund coughing nervously: Mary. ‘(Goes worriedly to

Edmund and puts her arm around him). You mustn’t cough like that it’s bad for your

throat. You don’t want to get a sore throat on top of your cold’[163] with James and

Jamie very early in play. It is her concern for his well being that makes her deny Edmund

having any serious problem, and for her ‘It’s just a cold!’, and to James remarks that

‘doctor hardy thinks it might be a bit of malarial fever he caught when he was in the

tropics’ Mary retorts with contemptuous expressions, ‘Doctor Hardy! I wouldn’t believe a

thing he said, if he swore on a stack of Bibles!’

But the bad breast role is equally evident and in fact is more vocal and more

annihilating than that of nurturance, motherliness and affection. Unlike motherliness that

is much more evident in her feelings and concerns about Edmund, the bad breast role

could be observed in her thoughts and attitude to both living sons and the dead little

Eugene in the play. For instance she plays bad breast role in her refusal to procreate a

baby after the sad demise of little Eugene. Here she is very unlike Nina who had deep and

pervasive desire to have pregnancy, procreate and breast feed her baby. Her attitude

towards Edmund’s birth as Hinden writes was ‘clouded by refusal’[164] of his identity

that is painfully pricked by her own responsibility in the death of little Eugene at home:

I blame myself. I swore after Eugene died I would never have another baby. I was to blame for his death. If I hadn’t left him with my mother to join you on the road, because you wrote telling me you missed me and were lonely, Jamie would never have been allowed, when he still had measles, to go in the baby’s room [165].

Guilt makes her even eschew her natural and motherly desire to procreate another one,

and if it is procreated at all, it is necessitated by the desire to blot out the guilt of personal

responsibility in the death of Eugene earlier. Mary tells Tyrone plaintively, ‘Above all I

should not have let you insist I have other baby to take Eugene’s place, because you

thought that would make me forget his death’, I knew something terrible would happen. I

knew I’d proved by the way I’d left Eugene that I wasn’t worthy to have another baby,

40

and that God would punish me if I did, I never should have born Edmund’. Secondly her

attitude to Edmund on several occasions in play is indicative of her deep seated bitterness

against him as Edmund’s birth coincided with his miserable lonely existence in dirty

hotels, morphine injections to relieve her of birth pain for which he could not be blamed.

In fact it was Edmund’s birth that put her on the life long morphine addiction. The

particular memory occasionally makes her respond aggressively, irritably and negatively

to loving son Edmund. This negative attitude contrasts with her motherliness to him and

reveal the fragmentation of her personality. The earlier guilt, the excruciating post

marriage living conditions, and the terrible fear of passing on hereditary disease (her

father was consumptive and extreme alcoholic) made her sick and brought down her

health considerably. Then her attitude to Jamie, the elder one is marred by hostility,

neglect, annihilation and denial of her duty. Jamie —‘The jealous elder brother, the

cynical tempter of innocent youth, pans, Mephistopheles Can . . .’ is a miserable failure in

life. Drunkenness, prostitution and jealousy dominate his depraved personality that he

deliberately and persistently pursued as a self destructive strategy for evasion from the

initial brought up in the family. Jealousy also shows his destructive nature as it makes

him deliberately ruin the life and brought of his younger brother, Edmund. Mary blames

past for making him so, “It’s wrong to blame your brother. He can’t help being what the

past has made him any more than your father can or you or I’. In fact his ruined mental

condition owes a lot to the neglect that the mother has shown in his brought up.

Responsibility of what Mary terms upbringing in the past is related strongly to Jamie’s

need of mother that has driven him to despair and extreme jealousy. His loathing against

her, Edmund and himself springs directly from his sense of loss that he suffered on

account of Mary’s dope addiction and her strong inclinations towards Edmund.

The natural consequence of this dimension of creativity creates persistent mode of

loss, and depressiveness in the whole range of his art and invests his whole art with

pessimistic rather sadistic impression and instructs his plays with certain limitations.

These limitations have been highlighted in terms of its representative quality and

intellectual appeal. At the outset it is pertinent to ask how far is it possible to draw

O’Neill’s coherent tragic theory/worldview in the light of what is uppermost as discussed

above? Bloom [166] in his introduction to Eugene O’Neill: Modern Critical Views writes,

“O’Neill’s strength was never conceptual, and so we are not likely to render his stances

into single coherent view of tragedy”. But Lionel Trilling [167] reads “the existence of an

organic and progressive unity of thought in all O’Neill’s work . . .”. Similarly Highsmith

41

[168] writes that O’Neill never allowed himself to formulate dramatic theories, but his

basic idea of drama can be determined as implicit (and sometimes explicit) in many of his

conversations, interviews and letters. He condenses O’Neill’s whole conceptual strength

in four points: “drama is the approximate life; drama is to transform life into art; the

medium of theatre is to present this aesthetic transformation; the presentation itself is to

acquire ritualistic value” .Voelker [169] also categorically states that throughout most of

his active play-writing career, O’Neill was continuously formulating such theories of

drama in letters and interviews. It is possible writes Voelker, from examining a large

numbers of O’Neill’s letters and interviews produced over number of years to outline a

coherent aesthetics of drama that does not seem to change throughout the career. “Truth

was important to O’Neill”, writes Voelker, “but it was presented most effectively when it

was an integral part of the play in question, when it was an ‘interpretation in terms of

lives’, that is, in terms of events in the experience of his characters” . Diggins [170]

likewise discusses O’Neill plays, his nostalgia with reference to anarchism as a

worldview/philosophy of life that O’Neill cherished throughout his life, but which never

succeeded and remained a miserable failure. O’Neill’s letters are the primary sources of

his opinion on his anachronism as an artist. His discussion of Welded, Different, Now I

Ask You and Before Breakfast are placed as a part of O’Neill’s ongoing anarchist

resistance to and compromise with marriage, responsibility, and society. Anarchism is

involved too when Diggins writes about O’Neill’s conduct and life including his

mistreatment of wives and children and the need to come to terms with earlier generation,

his parents and brother. It is obvious from these views is that the writer, particularly of

O’Neill’s type does not appear to be without the consistency that is required of an artist of

his type. But it is the same depressive, traumatic and terrible human behavior and

predicament spurred on mostly by the inner impulses and the same “Despoliation of

nature and lives” [171] that characterizes the essence of his tragedies. It collectively

imparts what Brown [172] calls “Depressive Attribution Style” to his art. He is of the

view that a person with “a depressive attribution style takes darkest possible view of any

unhappy outcome in his life. He considers it to be internally caused by his own failing. He

construes the failure in global terms_ not just a little failing but a very general one. He

believes that failing is stable, it is always going to be that way”.

3.3.2 PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTATION

Literature has a wider/universal appeal that travels across the geographical

boundaries. The artist," says Emerson, "who is to produce a work which is to be admired,

42

not by his friends or his townspeople or his contemporaries but by all men, and which is

to be more beautiful to the eye in proportion to its culture, must disindividualize himself,

and be a man of no party and no manner and no age, but one through whom the soul of all

men circulates as the common air through his lungs" [173]. Russell says, "The habit of

directing thought and desire to our own states of mind rather than to something objective

inevitably makes life fragmentary and unprogressive. . . . Many men, when they are in

love, are more interested in their own emotion than in the object of their love; such love

does not lead to any essential union, but leaves fundamental separateness undiminished....

Only a life which springs out of dominant impulses directed to objective ends can be a

satisfactory whole, or be intimately united with the lives of others"[174]. In the same way

Santayana reminds us that "the best things that come into a man's consciousness are the

things that take him out of it-the rational things that are independent of his personal

insight and of his personal existence. These he approaches with his reason, and they in the

same measure, endow him with their immortality" [175]. And narrow preoccupation with

the self writes Mason [176] jeopardizes universality in that work. O’Neill by remaining

fixed in confronting the personal past in a particular fashion as explained above

circumscribes the applicability of his art to human nature. The constrictive dimension of

his plays is established for the following reasons:

1. The definition of art/ literature designates sociological aspect that entails its

relation with the society outside the artist. The sociological aspect in fact is

inherent in the concepts of mimesis, representation, expression, and in the opinion

of the Functionalists who have adhered to the argument that art is designed to

serve a purpose. The origin of literature may lie either in the artist’s own inner self

or in the search for broader and varied subjects of general nature; it must enlist the

wider appeal, application and acceptability at the social levels to become a public

document.

2. Determined largely by the unconscious, a mood of loss, anxiety and

depressiveness govern the entire range of O’Neill’s art. His obsession with death

and deathly behavior is borne out by repetition of theme of death in his plays.

Death is the ultimate image in most of his early plays. For instance, there is a

murder in The Web, accident in Bound East for Cardiff, suicide in Recklessness,

Abortion, and Before Breakfast. Even in the plays of the '20s, death as a theme

predominates. Both Jones and Yank Smith meet death at the end of their

respective expressionistic plays; the protagonists in Diff'rent commit suicide; both

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Abbie and Eben move towards probable death punishment in Desire under the

Elms for their horrible act of infanticide. And the most terrible dramatic ending

occurs in Dynamo in which Reuben Light first kills his girlfriend and then

electrocutes himself. In Mourning Becomes Electra emphasis on grim images of

death govern the thought and structure of the play. Physical deaths in the play

appear in the form of murder and suicide of Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant, Christine

and Orin. The death also governs the trilogy in the historical context of civil war.

Mannon arrives and declares, “All victory ends in the defeat of death” [177].

Orin’s first expression on reaching home, “Did the house always look so ghostly

and dead” likes a tomb. That’s what mother used to say it reminded her of, I

remember” [178]. Then the ghosts of the dead haunt and control the life and

destinies of the alive. In the previous generation, before the play’s first part

begins, David Mannon was evicted by Abe Mannon because he fell in love with

Marie Brantone – a nurse whom his brother had himself desired. Not content with

this, Abe razed the family home to ground and build a new one. David later

committed suicide. All events of the present in the play are triggered by this Abe,

David and Marie triangle of the past. Then portraits of the dead Mannons hover

over the play’s action and the characters are overshadowed by the dead. Adam

Brant –David Mannon’s son – seeks vengeance on the family for his father’s

death by seducing Christine away from Ezra Mannon. Christine herself driven by

lust for Adam conspires with him to poison Ezra and duly succeeds in her

objective. However, Lavinia, who had already understood the truth of their

relationship, convinces Orin both of the real cause of Ezra’s death and Christine

adulterous relation with Adam. Thus the death of Ezra triggers another sequence

of the death controlling the conscious and the subconscious impulses and thoughts

of the living. Lavinia strongly dispossessed by Ezra’s death, instigates Orin to take

revenge on the murderers. Orin himself driven by incestuous thoughts for mother

kills only Adam. This in turn triggers Christine’s death, who frustrated by her

lover’s death commits suicide. Orin too follows the established life and death

pattern in the family. Frustrated by the death of his mother, he kills himself,

leaving Lavinia to her world of social isolation. Then there are plays where some

particular biological disorder/infection threaten the life and point strongly to death

of the victim. In The straw advanced state of tuberculosis from which Eileen

Carmody suffers threatens to kill her at the end of that play. In Beyond the

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Horizon, Robert – a self-portrait – is marred by his imaginative nature, his dreams

and his bodily incapacities to sustain physical labor continually over a long

period. His physical weakness includes his fragile health, and his consumptive

state, which incapacitates him to carry on the arduous task of maintaining and

developing agricultural farm. He fails to understand his biological strength which

disrupts his married life as well as his functioning on farm. Marriage here itself is

Strindbergian, an impediment rather than a process of self-fulfillment and deeper

psychological realization of the self and the other. Both these in combination put

extra strain on his body and mind, and bring out about decay and deterioration at

the personal level as well as at the family level. Death is the only possible

eventuality in his life which comes to all – to Robert’s parents, to the child of

Robert and Ruth, and at the play’s and to Robert himself who dies with both

emaciated body, and spirit.

This death pattern of life is apparent not only in life’s progression but also

in its immediate expression. In Strange Interlude, one comes across a deadly

conflict in the subconscious and the unconscious of the depraved and torn

personalities. The are involved in essentially psychopathological struggle without

any concern for moral and emotional imperatives, preoccupied in Nietszschean

pursuit of entirely personal views on God, religion, human perfection, and

dominated by lust, oedipal drives and death instincts. In Iceman Cometh, one of

his master works, several human deranged are seen trying to sustain themselves

with last chance delusions. They are delusioned equally and forcefully by love and

life and live out their meaningless existence in an atmosphere of total nihilistic

despair in an environment where conflict between life and death determines the

narrative of behavior in the play (for detailed commentary see 6.4). And in Long

Day’s Journey, all the members of Tyrone family live out their pitiful and useless

lives in the Tyrone’s summer home in New England. The mother is a dope addict,

the father a destroyed parsimonious actor, one son a drunkard, sexually pervert,

jealous of his younger brother to the extreme, and the other son a tubercular, and

hopelessly morbid expressing sense of life’s utter worthlessness time and again in

the play. They all suffer from guilty conscience for betraying each other in the

past. They realize for the final time in the play that they must live on in their slow

death that creates the painful impression of life’s continuity in pain and affliction.

45

Now death does appear as a major thematic concern in classic

/Shakespearean drama. Michael Neill has discussed the treatment of death in

Shakespeare which is largely true. Death is not merely a theme of early modern

tragedy, writes Neill, it is what lies, crucially, "at its core" [179] and at the core of

the culture's searching explorations of self. It writes Neill provides mixed and

competing responses of either denying or triumphing over death. For Neill, who

sees in "all drama" "the dialectic tendency ... to incorporate contradictory and

subversive voices" [180], tragedy works both with and against the absoluteness of

ending, ideologically, thematically, and structurally, to produce death as at once

"the supreme occasion for exhibitions of individual distinction" [181] and the

unnerving ultimate in indistinction. Macbeth for instance when studied in the light

of what Neill has said, one comes across an effort, a life process that no doubt

culminates in death, but that carries significance beyond its narrow biological

scope to impart deeper connotation to a man’s struggle in the world against

shattering odds that arise either because of man’s own propensity to generate

destructive torrent or through the strange coalition between the self and the potent

forces over which man has little control. Here in the protracted struggle, although

lies the defeat and death for the protagonist, but the struggle itself is worth the

whole exercise. Macbeth’s death is an instance of the transcendence that a

protagonist achieves through death despite being treacherous, and involved in

gruesome murders/bloodshed that make the land and the nation weep. His life and

the tragic experience is an embodiment of purely Renaissance culture for greater

lust for fame, power and knowledge. Power among the rest is not only required

here for the self, but for the generation also. Gaining the crown itself is looked

devoid of luster if it is not perpetuated through the succession. Therefore

Macbeth’s ascendancy to power through murder lacks the taste as the forces that

promised him throne had equally promised its succession in Banquo’s lineage.

The mere thought of power being transferred to Banquo’s family stretched out to

infinity utterly deprives him of the joy associated with the assumption of power.

Entrapped in this area of deep concern, Macbeth has to put himself on the path of

infamy. Bloodshed ensues from his desperation to halt the fulfillment of this part

of the prophecy. But murder upon murder not only brings notoriety, but adds to

his desperation leading to total nihilism expressed in no uncertain terminology:

Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts ad

46

frets his hour upon the stage” [182]. But the huge despair and nihilistic expression

of life’s utter meaninglessness is not left to its own. Convulsed as Bradley

remarks by conscience [183], and promptness to face Macduff’s threatening

forces at the end, Macbeths achieves certain degree of firm dignity of a hero.

In Greek tragedy too death in number of cases leads to greater issues and

in some cases in transcendence. In Orestia for instance one observes a death

pattern culminating in the victory of civic forces. The play commences with the

return of Agamemnon from Troy and his slaughter by his queen and her

paramour. This gruesome deed is followed by vengeance taken by Agamemnon's

son Orestes in the Libation-Bearers and ends with Orestes' persecution by the

Furies of his mother, and his. He is finally released from the pursuit of these

monsters who are transformed to Eumenides, “The Kindly Ones” and become a

pillar of the Athenian polity [184]. O’Neill’s plays are as discussed above are

replete with the image of death that makes its appearance in varying forms in the

plays. But whatever the forms it assumes, it remains predominantly regressive and

govern the entire life pattern of the personas.

3. Control of the unconscious on personal life and familial bonds and the resultant

affliction, depressiveness in turn restrains the artist's imagination. It creates total

absorption in the personal/ private to the dismemberment of the higher aesthetic

ideals of universal application and appeal. O’Neill was a keen experimentalist as

well as a reflective artist. His reflections on what he wanted to achieve in the

theatre are to be found in his notes, letters and his work diaries in bits and pieces.

In one of his letter to Hobson Quinn wherein O’Neill refers to the mysterious

force: (Fate God our biological past creating our present, whatever one calls it_

Mystery, certainly) - and “of the one eternal tragedy of Man in his glorious self

destructive struggle to make the Force express him instead of being as an animal

is, an infinitesimal incident in its expression” [185]. Quite rightly the force that

works behind man in Greek tragedy, principally Fate/god makes him express

himself in a way that corresponds to heroic struggle for self realization and

fulfillment. But the force that manifests itself in human thoughts and action in his

own plays is regressive and trapped in certain desires. In Mourning Becomes

Electra as for instance, the determining force behind the apparent human conduct

lies in the unconscious drives that force themselves up to create a fragmented and

desolated human figure without the avowed struggle on their part to lay it behind

47

or achieve any sort of mastery over it. The force of the play is the Freudian death

instinct of all the principal characters determined by repression of sexual instincts,

lust and incest beyond any proportion. Mother-son, father-daughter, brother-sister

incestuous pattern are established and developed into deadly conflicts of impulses,

motives, and desires. The frustration of these subconscious libidinal desires

through repression, the separation or loss of those desired objects through their

absence or death, and the absence of alternative objects/persons for self fulfillment

or inability to transfer/sublimate potential desires to others, transform these

patterns, and individual into death patterns. The persistency of this pattern is

remarkable and as discussed above is present even in the plays of last phase like

Long Day’s Journey, Moon for Misbegotten, and in the extant Cycle plays A

Touch of Poet. This persistency in the play after play transforms Freudian

psychological myth into the real figure of O’Neill himself. “Doris Alexander”

writes S. Georgia Nugent opines that “O’Neill’s representations of Oedipal

Complex are so explicit that they cease to be Freudian at all [186].

4. Then action in Greek tragedy springs from the character as a complex of human

traits shaped by past human experience or as the product of working of

metaphysical forces such as a reaction against human breach of cosmic order. But

the action whatever the shaping spirit may be remains recognizable, rationalistic

and continue to reflect the laws of human experience. Besides, the ultimate

expression of the human predicament in tragedies is far from self-destructive,

defeatist and enfeebling. O’Neill’s concern with the internal on the other hand has

a negative counter effect on human endeavor to live. It makes his struggle assume

self destructive, defeatist with depressive and enfeebling effect on the character’s

behavior. The emergent impression undermines art applicability and appeal in

wider terms.

5. It is undeniable that a tragic event always involves suffering for the protagonist

and the related personas. Sufferings in fact constitute undisputedly the crux of

tragedy and generally but not necessarily end in the protagonist’s death. They

have generally their origin in man’s own disposition and may work in collusion

with the external forces to accentuate their destructive effect for that individual. A

perfunctory glance on the bulk of tragic works makes it very clear that tragedy

without corresponding suffering is hardly a thinkable reality. Sufferings in

O’Neill’s dramatic art bear a characteristic stamp. Their store house either lies in

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the character’s total absorption in the realization of certain personal desires of

erotic nature or in some other extreme modes such as guilt, illusiveness, loss, and

alienation, springing from a man’s disposition to repeat them with a high degree

of ambivalence. What is to be found in for instance Desire under Elms, Strange

Interlude is an absolute preoccupation with sexuality to the level of self-

indulgence which is an expression of undermining faith in human potentiality and

propensity to achieve personal, emotive and psychic transcendence. From artistic

viewpoint such a representation imparts a deterministic and static visage to the

whole representation. This particular static impression governs even human

relationships in his plays. Relationships in O’Neill’s art manifest their control by

the consciousness or deeper unconsciousness. The personas are locked in conflict

with the others in such a way that they seem to be governed and shaped by the

inner forces of incest, sexuality, jealousy, guilt, desire, or the life and death

instincts. In Strange Interlude, for instance, Nina’s extra marital relationship with

Darrel is shaped by her desire to give birth to a biologically healthy child.

Likewise all incest motives in Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra,

Long Day’s Journey and A Touch of Poet precede the necessity to create and

foster a particular relation. Thus, the relationships in O’Neill are not the

representation of a family drama; they are personal and an example of what

Williams calls “private tragedy” [187].Importantly such sufferings do not carry

the element of transference from the stage to the audience. Drama by virtue of its

stage production does embody the vibrant presence of the audience and their

periodic emotive involvement at different stages denotes general applicability of

that very production. Then the audience is not to be confined to a time frame say

of the artist’s own age. The timelessness of the art necessitates the measurement

of response of the audience of different ages and regions. Overt sexual indulgence

or its suppression and the resulting neurasthenia may have the emotional interest

of a group at any particular time period and area, but can not be generalized. In

diverse culture with diverse values and systems the particular focus on the control

of the unconsciousness for specific relationship patterns is likely to create deeper

inter-cultural misperceptions and conflicts.

6. Then plays where psychopathology is uppermost, which begin with the present

and advance by returning into the past in a repetitive fashion can be stimulating

49

and stirring experiences, but they fail to create intellectual absorption that has

remained the essence of real tragic drama. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the play about

which there is most disagreement. It has generated bewildering variety of different

and even contradictory responses for Hamlet as a tragic hero, from being

considered as the greatest tragic hero to that of “neurotic” [188]. His agony, self-

torture, is beyond any doubt stupendous, generating in him thought of

unprofitability of life “an unweeded garden,” where” rank and gross” things grow.

Intensity of pain and grief drive him to the state of negation of life and death, a

state of “to be or not to be”. But the overall effect is not one of loss, emptiness and

pettiness of human endeavor. Hamlet still retains the grandeur of tragic hero.

Turner [189] describes his struggle allegorically at two levels, “Hamlet must act in

relation to two worlds; the world of time in which the crime was committed and

within which he must work his revenge, and the timeless world where he has

been shown the crime and commanded to revenge it” [190] . He goes on to write

that, “Hamlet is trapped in time. . . . the command of revenge and implications of

its source seem to require an action which is timeless, which will destroy not only

an individual evil but evil itself . . . .[191]. This allegorical interpretation is one

among scores of interpretations of this great tragedy. The gravity of the struggle,

if looked in this perspective acquires a great educative value where human

struggle is not one of the survivals to carry on empty existence. The quality of

endeavor regardless of the fate that the hero faces is essentially transcendental.

The reader, therefore, returns again and again to tragedies like Hamlet grasping

some eternally fixed beauty or immutable truths encapsulated in them. Tragedies

pose problems and questions of fundamental as well as eternal human

significance, and it is in reading and responding to the continually challenging

questions set in motion by these plays that tragedy is truly performed and

experienced. Poole [192] argues that “Tragedy is inherently provocative and

interrogative and the reason why Greek tragedies have survived the rough

passages of time and translation is that they have harbored a stubborn power to

ask difficult questions. They put these questions in flesh and blood and spirit,

giving body and soul to question about the value of pain. The overall impression

and response is one of what Kierkegaard said about life in general in his

existential notions: “The sickness unto Death” or that of “Conscience is a disease”

[193]. Finally the calamitous sufferings caused by nature or uncontrolled forces of

50

either past or present may bring out some sort of sympathy with the sufferer, but

as Eldridge [194] writes, “we are typically not instructed about human nature by

them”.

7. Human consciousness never works on a fixed operative mode. Its natural

operative mode is one of what William James and Virginia Woolf have expressed

fluidity and not fixity:

Consciousness begins at the point at which Mr. Joyce and Mrs. Woolf describes it. Miscellaneous, vague, and chaotic, composed of memories, moods, sensations, and desires mingled helter-skelter with things tragic and comic, trivial and important treading upon the heels of one another, the stream goes continuously on from the moment we wake until it trails off, fainter and fainter, into slumber or death. From this fast-moving current we snatch bits here and there to fashion into words or to clutch at as resolutions, and by these we are judged; but the real “I” is the ever-flowing stream known only to ourselves. . . . [195]

This constant movement make human consciousness non-representative in its nature.

It is strictly individual, and as Brown [196] writes it is always continuous without any

gaps, and that the consciousness of each “is personal and perfectly insulated from

each other; there is no mutual awareness or interaction”. This factor has totally

remained unexplored in studies prone to psychoanalytic interpretation of the artist life

and art. O’Neill’s preoccupation with confronting loss, the ambivalent/fragmented

attitude towards the object of mourning and the afflicted stance has its own impact. It

keeps creative art confined to peculiar psychic mode that is regressive and

psychopathological. This mode of thinking and feeling can not be ascribed as a

representative and general conscious process.

8. The representation of tragedy as a pinnacle of art is to be judged on the touchstone

of experience. Black [197] writes, “one of the most enduring and interesting

aspects of tragedy is that we are more likely to know it when we experience it than

be able to say what it is”. The same definition/characteristics of tragedy create the

fundamental difficulty of experiencing the peculiar mental states that O’Neill

creates for the reader across the culture. Besides, a persona’s plight due to his

neurosis or fragmentation may arouse our curiosity, but not our personal

experience and moral sense

9. Last, but not the least the persistency of the affliction deprives the play of the

possible resolution of the crises. The plays like Long Day’s Journey establish a

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painful movement that is without resolution and denouement that is essential to

come to term with the loss and the crises.

3.4 CONCLUSION

Thanks to development in modern psychology, it has developed into intricate

issue to stay away from conclusion that psychopathology is indivisible from creation of

works of art. In fact representation of what Pizzato terms “mental theatre” in modern and

post modern drama highlights the fallacy and ineffectiveness of denunciating role of

artist’s subjective self in what s/he creates. It seems that undermining of literary text as an

embodiment of author’s vision and unconscious has gone predominantly unnoticed. The

author remains a focus of interpretative attempts and marks an important part of readers’

efforts in comprehending the text as well as the technique. However, the issue is not

altogether free from complexities. It has remained very controversial and has refused to

settle into an accepted formula and notional position. Equally contentious has remained

the issue of author as a neurotic whose work gives insight into his neurosis. The study

based on textual analysis substantiated the classic position that author is a psychopath

whose work reveals the underlying neurosis conflict as well as the causes of his

psychopathology. The study, however, unlike the extant studies draws this conclusion

through a complex of Freud’s, and Klein’s theoretical positions on personality

development and creativity. While Freud as referred above locates the cause of neurosis

in frustration of instinctual drives for the mother that generates destructive oedipal

conflict in the concerned, Klein locates it in pre-oedipal mother–child relation to establish

paranoid-schizoid personality type that is equally regressive. O’Neill’s personality type is

a complex one that no single theory could reflect adequately. The study therefore

employed a complex of Freud and Klein’s positions to explain his complex personality

type. It is strongly oedipal as previous studies contend, but it is equally paranoid-schizoid

that is based upon contradictory/ambivalent desire and fear concerning the mother. This

neurosis and paranoid-schizoid psychic state informs the work with deep sense of loss,

depressiveness, and anxiety. His dramatic art therefore is primarily concerned with

subjective representation with the principal aim of restructuring and reforming the

relation with the mother both as a neurotic and paranoid-schizoid personality. The

particular metal states as revealed and the artist’s preoccupation with the subjective

dimension in particular fashion as explained, however create problem of representation

for the art itself. The study concluded on the detailed analysis of this problem and how it

emerges in O’Neill’s art.

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CHAPTER 4

BEHAVIORAL DISOREDERS 4.1 INTRODUCTION

Particular mental state of loss and anxiety that O’Neill as an artist reveals in his

art and through the creative process is strongly reflected in the very treatment of his

personas. Characters in O’Neill have a degree of distinction that set them apart from other

dramatic representation in the contemporary literature. The study in this section

specifically focuses on the deviant behaviors of O’Neill’s personas in his major plays.

The areas analyzed are related to sexuality, trauma, and social withdrawal.

4.2 Psychopathological States: Behavior Disorders 4.2.1 Sexuality and Behavioral Disorders

Sexuality is fundamental to many close human relationships. Marriage endorses it

to form healthy social and cultural foundation of a family and society. But it is also found

in such relationships as dating, and other committed romantic relationships. As a generic

term, it specifies dimorphic reality of human reproductiveness and biological maleness

and femaleness as two behavioral modes of being in the world. As a theoretical, aesthetic,

and practical problem, it is associated with the rise of modern secular culture that had its

foundation in the decline of religious world view, and the rise and the rise of a western

society devoted to the production of goods and knowledge. Sexuality as a matter of fact is

psycho-biological process/phenomenon related directly to human sustenance in

individual, family and society and associated with human reproduction/reproductive

processes. Sex itself as a biological activity contains multiple aspects from pleasure to

pain, and from ravishment to conjugal bliss; thus having the normal and abnormal

elements. It is a primary source of reproduction carrying pleasure/orgasm or pain element

in the process. Healthy sexual activities engender orgasmic responses (pleasure) and

nurture human growth along healthy lines. Its derangement, however, may cause

numerous psycho-biological regressions that may in turn engender psycho-biological

regression. Recent studies in the field of abnormal psychology provide expert analysis of

sex related disorders like “sexual addiction” “sexual dependence”, “compulsive sexual

behavior (for example compulsive promiscuity, or masturbation”), “pornography

53

dependence” etc [198]. Such disorders are treated like substance –use disorders. The

resultant impact of such disorders is naturally and clinically that of neurasthenia.

O’Neill is primarily a dramatist of human emotions and is deeply concerned with

dramatizing extremes of human behavioral tendencies. His treatment of human sexuality

is an illustration of his dramatizing extremes of emotive and psychological states. Here he

owes a lot to Freud’s psychoanalytic exploration of human consciousness and his

theoretical stance on infantile psycho-sexual development in familial context. Therefore

one comes across a persistent mode of incest in familial relation in his plays of different

periods. The existing scholarship on O’Neill substantiates the Freudian oedipal dynamics

of his personas’ relation with the mother and the repetitive conflict between the sons and

the fathers in O’Neill’s plays or the fraternal rivalry/conflict for the same desired object

(mother) equally establish this oedipal nature of the relationship in the family (see chapter

3). The study, however, highlights such other areas of human sexuality as marital

sexuality, male sexual abstinence/wastefulness, female heterosexuality, prostitution, and

neurasthenia with reference to selected plays of different O’Neill’s dramatic career to

emphasize that there is predominant pattern of regression in all these areas of human

sexuality that has its negative bearing on human behavioral pattern and conduct.

4.2.1.1 Sexuality in Theory and Literature

Validity and primacy of sexuality in modern philosophical, literary and

psychoanalytic discourses and practices owes a lot to Sigmund Freud. Freud's major

statement on sexuality can be found in the Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory

[199] which is divided into three sections: The Sexual Aberration, Infantile Sexuality, and

The Transformations of Puberty. The subject of sexual aberration has sections on

homosexuality, fetishism, scopophilia and exhibitionism, sadism and masochism. In his

essay "Infantile Sexuality" Freud stresses that sexual diversity in both aim and object is a

natural human trait. But he hardly presents here sexual growth as a clear example of

stable evolution toward adult sexuality, rather he argues that sexual progress moves in

stages that are characterized by such unconstructive features as deterioration and memory

failure. Freud also summarizes very dissimilar developmental profiles for boys and girls

as infantile sexuality draws to a close: boys experience a "castration complex," while girls

experience "penis envy." Although, both sexes go through the first oral phase and the

second "anal-sadistic phase," the sexes are distinguished during the third "phallic phase,"

54

based on their relationship to the male member [200]. Even after the most thriving

transitions to adulthood, however, Freud claims that the choice of object and aim in

mature sexuality is not reached without "ambivalence” [201]. The third essay describes

the nature of sexual enjoyment and sexual excitement. The pleasure of genital orgasm,

Freud writes, "is the highest in intensity, and its apparatus differs from that of the former

pleasure. It is brought about totally by discharge: it is totally a pleasure of contentment

and with it the tension of the libido is for the time being extinguished" [202]. What one

gets in these essays is that here he theorizes that object of love in infancy, which is

incestuous and must be prevailed over in puberty, but that is likely only through

suppression. In particular boys must prevail over their oedipal association to their mothers

and experience apprehension about castration. At the same time they must conserve their

competitive feelings about their fathers to foil their sexuality from "inverting" toward

homosexual relations [203].

Unlike Freud, Schopenhauer develops the idea that the sexual desire serves the

will to life in its constant effort to perpetuate itself in the human species that is in fact its

highest demonstration. Although, he argues, a man and a woman believe themselves

drawn together to produce a new individual in whom the qualities of both parties will be

continued, but what draws them together at base is the will to life's furthering itself by

infusing into them personal desire to continue their existence in a new being. No self-

centered gene is at work here--only the all-mighty will to life. Moreover, when two

individuals personally give up everything just to bring into being and protect a new

individual, this too is only an appearance of the will to life through the dissemination of

the species. His main essay on sexual love is to be found in the second volume of The

World as Will and Representation. Its title, "The Metaphysics of Sexual Love," as well as

its place in Schopenhauer's writings affirms that it was proposed to be a fundamental part

of his broad theoretical or even metaphysical design. What he endeavors in this essay is a

metaphysical elucidation of the massive power that the sexual desire works out in human

life. In post modern era it is Foucault [204] who has advanced his theories of sexuality as

power struggle. A student of Nietzsche and of Marxist philosopher Louis Althausser,

Foucault studied collection of social institutes, including prisons, mental institutions,

medical clinics and universities. He came to believe that those in power manipulate

prevailing attitudes to suit their ends and redefine the ideas of insanity, illness, sexuality

and criminality in order to identify and oppress undesirables and sexual "deviants. In his

55

three-volume work, The History of Sexuality, Foucault describes the history of sex and

sexuality as a history of suppression by the powerful. Such power has manifested itself in

terms of restriction, proscription or non-recognition. Such power relations can be intricate

as well as explicit. In the first volume, Discipline and Punishment, Foucault finds out that

the existing negatives outlook toward sex and sexuality between the sixteenth and

nineteenth centuries did little to repress but much to encourage excess of discussion about

the topic. People could not stop thinking and writing about "it." Result of this "explosion"

of knowledge was to redefine and rediscover different contours of sexuality. In the next

two volumes, Foucault traces the history of discourse about sexuality back to the early

period of Western Civilization. In the second volume, The Use of Pleasure, Foucault

demonstrates that the Greeks uncovered through their writings the proper system

regarding sexual behavior. Sex was not the passionate end of one's being but a regulated

social institution with strict rules essential for keeping up social unity and organization. In

the third volume, The Care of the Self, the author carries on his investigation of the

ancient world to the Romans and their uncompromising sexual codes of restraint and

moderation [205-206].

Treatment of sexuality in literature has always remained challenging. It has been

treated imaginatively and associated strongly with love and friendship. Modern

development in psychoanalysis, the range of studying sexuality along psychoanalytic

lines and terminologies has been stretched back to the primitive society and ancient

civilization and its literature. Deats in the Politics of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: An Early

Modern Perspective [207] examines the concepts of subjectivity, gender, sex, and

sexuality as presented in sixteenth century discourse, and concludes that those concepts

were as difficult to pin down in the early modern period as they are today. Forker [208]

comments on eroticism in Renaissance theatre and writes that it constituted “ a body of

plays as highly charged with eroticism and as profoundly concerned with questions of

sexuality as any in history including Restoration comedy, which is often thought of as

obsessed with sex and dominated by lubricity”. Stage, continues to write Forker served

for Elizabethans and Jacobeans, “whether consciously or unconsciously, as the chief

artistic medium for projecting images of sexual desire and aversion, providing audiences

with a means of focusing, defining, or "processing" (as de-constructionist critics might

say) the fundamentally ambivalent nature of their own erotic attitudes and feelings”.

Shakespeare also provides the healthiest and most gentle view of sexuality in the period

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by refusing to isolate sex from a more full view of the human condition, from those moral

and spiritual values in the light of which he invites us to assess all aspects of human

experience. The blessing of the bride beds in for example, A Midsummer Night's Dream,

substantiates the creativity o f sexual encounter as an facet of matrimony, and therefore

of social structure and Christian atonement. Biggins [209] studies the relations between

sex and violence in Macbeth and the connection of both with the Weird Sisters in the

play. Hamlet has also been analyzed as strictly Freudian play with marked oedipal motif

functioning in prince hamlet that leads to his neurosis. Gil [210] examines the ways in

which Shakespeare's sonnets depart from the sonnet tradition associated with Petrarch,

particularly in their treatment of desire, both homosexual and heterosexual. Pequigney

[211] in his Such Is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets interprets Shakespeare’

sonnets in Freudian perspectives. He argues “the psychological dynamics of the poet's

relations with the friend comply in large measure with Freud's authoritative discussions of

homosexuality". McGurk [212] offers exploration of sexuality and gender in Renaissance

text and art, society and literature in Italy, France and England. Modern American

literature principally drama and Fiction show marked tendency to highlight sexuality

more as a violence than as a s a healthy process for orgasmic love. In Afro-American

Dramatist, it assumes terrible conditions to shatter the image of love. Freudian patterns

also remain very visible in such works. Murillo [213] discusses theoretical components of

sexuality in the selected texts, which show how a "phallic logic," persist regardless of the

emergence of free speech and the weakening of obscenity laws at the turn of the twentieth

century. Sofair [214] analyses modern depravity in his review of the series of film Sexual

Despondency: the Split Image of Globalization that offers us a range of perception which

reveal a global procedure of evenness at work undermining all pre-existing cult, existing

cultures, Western as much as non-Western.

4.2.1.2 SEXUALITY IN O’NEILL’S PLAYS

Sexuality in O’Neill exists in different forms that are predominantly regressive

and degenerative in both individual and familial contexts. First concern deals with marital

sexuality that pertains to sexual relation between spouses. Maddock [215] analyses a

model of family sexuality that according to him gives way to broad principles for

distinguishing what he calls "healthy" from "unhealthy" patterns of sex related relations

in families. He mentions eroticism /sexual dimension as essential to family experience.

He terms “Sex as “pervasive in the organization, structure, and function of a family

system, and that a “combination of gender complementarity and erotic interest provides

57

important motivation for the formation and maintenance of a family unit, and affects

many of the goals and purposes of family members” [215]. He argues that sexual pattern

among family members create “a network of shared meanings, which, in turn, serve as a

basis for further behavioral sequences between members, creating new meanings upon

which additional behavior is based, and so on”[215]. One aspect of positive sexuality in

familial context is the faculty to respond to sexual motivation in such a way as to make

sexual commotion including any activity that is not injurious or exploitive as positive,

enjoyable aspect of one's experience. The unhealthy sexual activities in familial context

are that of sexual neglect or virtual ignorance of family member’s sexuality. Secondly

sexual abuse among and of family members is also taken as serious unhealthy sexual

dimension of modern day family structure, the most poignant is “the startling incidence of

sexual abuse of children and adolescents by older family members-siblings, parents or

parent-substitutes, and more distant relatives” [215]. In O’Neill the healthy sexual

dimension in the familial context particularly between the spouses is a rarity. In Long

Day’s journey into Night, we have a relation that is positive and fulfills healthy sexual

marital bond between the spouses. It had its origin in Mary’s sensual part of love and

desire for marriage with stage actor James Tyrone. Her desire appears unusual as Mary

had in fact committed herself to the service of the church as a nun. But after her first

encounter with handsome James, she bowed to her sensual part of feminine nature. In fact

his handsome male outlook acts as a powerful stimulation of her erotic /sensual self that

overrides her religious commitment. Mary recalls her stimulation for marriage in such

words:

If you think Mr. Tyrone is handsome now, you should have seen when I first met him. He had the reputation of the best looking man in the country. He was a great matinee idol then, you know. . . . You can imagine how excited I was then, when my father wrote he and James Tyrone had become friends, and I was to meet him when I came home from Easter vacation. II showed the letter to all the girls, and how envious they were! My father took me to see him act first. It was a play about the French Revolution and the leading part was a noble man. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I wept when he was thrown in prison—and then was so mad at myself because I was afraid my eyes and nose would be red. . . . . And he was handsomer than my wildest dreams, in his make up and his noble man costume that was so becoming to him. . . . I fell in love right then. So did he, he told me after wards. I forgot all about becoming a nun or a concert pianist. All I wanted was to be his wife [219].

Marital relation established thereafter speaks of a lifelong fidelity that precludes

happy sexual relation as without it, the happy relation would have lacked the vitality and

58

charm that they have for each other after thirty six years of marital life. However, in such

plays as Desire under Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra, the marital sexuality is

hardly invigorating and even orgasmic. It is marred by failure on the part of the male

partner to provide sexual stimulation/erotic interests to the female partner or engage her

in meaningful sexual contacts that are capable of sustaining the marital relation and

happiness in that relation. On the contrary, the post marital conditions that involve

persistent lack of erotic interest in the partner give rise to subversive adulterous and

incestuous relation in the family that accentuates the conflict and crises to undermine

normal familial relation and structure. In Desire, old Ephraim Cabot ‘s marriage with

young and sensuous Abbie (his third wife) creates discord in the family, accentuate

father- sons rivalry, creates incestuous relation between Eben and Abbie that ends in total

chaos in the family involving infanticide, and imprisonment. The marriage lacks the

mutuality of feelings for the partners. Cabot brings her to have his sexual gratification,

and Abbie looks upon old Cabot as a means to possess his farm when he dies. She has no

love for him and the sexual and erotic stimulation is absent in ties with him. In fact the

slightest physical contact between them causes Abbie to feel disgust, and makes her

“shrink from his touch” [220].Cabot marries to get rid of his growing loneliness in his old

age, but her arrival initiates the discord as both Peter and Simons (sons from first wife)

decide to leave the farm and settle somewhere in California. The marital sexual discord

shows its first symptom when Abbie straightaway shows disinterest in sharing bed and

bed room with Old Cabot when she asks, “This here’s a nice bed room, Ephraim. It’s a

r’al nice bed. Is it my room, Ephraim? [221]. He has to retort “ourn” that causes strong

uncontrollable aversion in Abbie [222]. Her lack of sexual excitement for essential

marital sexual bond with the old man is made manifest further when in her first encounter

with aggressive, strong, sexually attractive/stimulating Eben (son from second wife) she

makes it clear: “You mustn’t mind him. He’s an old man. (A pause. They stare at each

other) I don’t pretend playin’ maw t’ye, Eben. . . . I want t’ be frens with ye [223]. Te

initial expression of friendship gradually develops into proper sexual relation (incest) that

after initial resistance on Eben’s part leads to Abbie’s impregnation, and Cabot is left to

express only in words that he has the strength and manliness at this age that could be

satisfying for the young lustful wife, “ I’m getting old ripe on the bough. (then with a

sudden forced self assurance) Not but what I haint a hard nut to crack even yet__ an fur

many a year t’ come! [224]. Shrewd Abbie capitalizes on this forced expression of

manliness to befool him of being capable of producing son at this stage, and she would

59

use this assurance to hide her impregnation through Eben and continue to make him

believe that the child that she carries is that of Cabot. Her final disclosure of the child

paternal identity after she has smothered it to death speak of the deep underlying hatred

and aversion that Abbie carries for this old man, “ What right hev ye to question me about

him[child]? He wa’nt yewer son! Think I’d have a son by yew? I’d die fust! I hate the

sight of ye . . . [225]. Thus here O’Neill highlights the need of sexual dimension as a

source of family stability and strength. Had Cabot and Abbie entered into meaningful

sexual post marital contact and relation, the family would have been spared of the agony

of familial discord and conflict that ends at the new born’s death. In Mourning Becomes

Electra , readers once again come across a failure of marital sexual bond and tie that liker

Desire lead to adultery and incest ending in death, suicide and severe depressive states ion

all the family remembers. Here Christine, the lustful wife of middle aged Ezra Mannon is

at the center of sexual and the familial conflict. O’Neill leaves us in no doubt that she is

hyper sexual and carries a propensity to achieve liberation in the exercise sexual desires,

but the problem is that she is not at all happy in her marital sexual ties with Ezra and in

her absence she develops adulterous relation with Adam Brant. She has no hesitation in

saying it to Lavinia that she hates Ezra, that leaves Lavinia stunned, and to her horrified

expression, Christine says,” That relationship has no meaning between us! You’ve called

me vile and shameless! Well, I want you to know that’s what I have felt about myself for

over twenty years, giving my body to a man I _” [226]. She remembers her wedding night

as a horrible moment of pure sexuality and lust deprived of real conjugal bliss, and she

regards Lavinia as a product of that lust born out of body without real motherly affection.

In her first encounter with the husband on his return from the war, she is vehement in

revealing her blankness of emotions for the husband:

You want the truth? You’ve guessed it! You’ve used me, you’ve given me children, but I’ve never once been yours! I never could be! And whose fault is it? I loved you when I married you! I wanted to give myself! But you made me so I could not give! You filled me with disgust!”[227].

This hatred and lack of orgasmic fulfillment drives her to Adam Brant and her son Orin.

Her love for Brant finds poetic expression in such words, “He’s gentle and tender; he’s

everything you’ve never been. He’s what I’ve longed for all these years with you _ a

lover! I love him!”[228]. His murder at the hands of Orin, however, leaves her desires

unfulfilled and she driven to madness and subsequent suicide on his death. She has also

powerful incestuous inclination for the son Orin. He is her baby, and if he had not gone to

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war, she would not have turned to Brant saying “when he had gone there was nothing left.

But hate and a desire to be revenged – and a longing for love!”[229]. She gives vent to

her emotions in addressing Orin on his return “. . . we had a secret little world of our own

in the old days, didn’t we! . . . And that’s what your father and Vinnie could never forgive

us! But we shall make that little world of our own again, won’t we” [230] and for Orin

she merges into the mysterious imagery of primitive, sin-free islands. Her entire conduct,

her hatred against Ezra and her sexual relation with Adam, however, brings her into direct

confrontation with religiously motivated Lavinia that would end in her suicide.

Desire for extra-marital heterosexual contacts and relations is the other area of

sexual concern in O’Neill’s plays that is, however, is more prominent in women here in

O’Neill than in men. Nina Leeds, Christine Mannon and Lavinia are apt illustrations of

heterosexual desires and heterosexual gratification through indiscriminate sexual contacts

with men. Nina Leeds desire for heterosexuality sexuality springs from her un-fulfillment

through marriage with Gordon Shaw. His accidental death blocks natural expression of

her hyper sexuality, and leaves her shocked and traumatized for the considerable part of

her life. O’Neill introduces her appearance as:

Her eyes are beautiful and bewildering, extraordinarily large and a deep greenish blue. Since Gordon’s death they have a quality of shuddering before some terrible enigma, of being wounded in their depths and made defiant and resentful by their pain. Her whole manner, the charged atmosphere she gives off, is totally at variance with her healthy outdoor physique. It is strained, nerve wrecked, hectic, a terrible tension of will alone maintaining self possession [231].

The death has filed her with deep animosity for the father who is considered

responsible for her plight as well as betrayal to Gordon. She calls her,” The professor of

dead languages. . . . dead words droning on . . .listening because he is my cultured father.

. .[232[. But what she feels on Gordon’s death and how desperate she is for his physical

touch and sensuality is made obvious in the aside that would also set the pattern of her

behavior in the future: Ashes!. . . oh Gordon, my dear one! . . . oh my lips, oh strong

arms around me, oh, spirit so brave and generous and gay! . . . ashes dissolving into mud!

. . . mud and ashes! . . . that’s al! . . gone! . . . gone forever from me! . . [233]. Her

desire to be a nurse in military hospital is her first reaction to pursue her desire through

heterosexual contacts with soldiers. But the effect is far from sexually gratifying; on the

contrary it leaves her exhausted and hollow. Darrel understanding her need for out let of

her blocked up emotional life, suggest Marsden to have her marry Sam Evan. But Gordon

is wrong in his estimate that Childish Sam would be able t provide her the necessary out

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let, for the reason that he lacks that physical strength in his personality that could help

Nina in coordinating his love and embraces to that of dead Gordon. It is Darrel himself,

who could fill in the gap and provide the necessary out to her pent up sensuality.

Gordon’s physical strength finds exact equivalence in Darrel. Nina. (Thinking) Strong

hands like Gordon’s . . . take hold of you . . . not like Sam’s . . . yielding fingers that let

you fall back into you self . . .[233]. Secondly, it is Darrel who serves another Gordon

function properly that Sam has for certain hereditary factor failed to perform. Nina in her

earlier torturous lamentation on the death of Gordon expressed her desire to have the feel

of Gordon’s children. Marriage with Sam initially filled her with the promise of having

babes, but Mrs. Evan’s disclosure of hereditary insanity in the family leaves her on other

option but to abort her desired object i.e. baby. “Gordon’s spirit” as she feels “followed

me from room to room”[234] after the surgery for the abortion. It is this desire that makes

her beg to Darrel to impregnate her with a healthy baby. Darrel after his initial repulsion

to any such animal type breeding where he has to serve the laboratory role of a guinea

pig, agrees to it for what he terms Nina’s happiness, “yes-yes, Nina- yes- for your

happiness - in that spirit! [235]. The experience, though having the ruthlessness of a

scientific experiment fills Nina with remarkable euphoria and confidence. “There! . . .

that can’t be my imagination . . . I felt it plainly . . . life . . .my baby . . . my only baby. .

.the other never really lived . . .[236]. The euphoria has obvious physical impact on

Nina’s strained health. It makes her as O’Neill writes “stouter” with “a triumphant

strength about her expression, a ruthless self-confidence in her eye” [237]. In Mourning

Becomes Electra, Christine frustrated by her sexual/orgasmic love shows propensity for

heterosexuality with Adam and son Orin that accentuates familial discord and ends

generates a sequence of death in the family. Lavinia, very religious in thoughts strongly

opposes mothers adulterous relation with Adam (in fact her own lover), but once freed

from repressive and constrictive Puritanical social and religious order in her visit to the

islands exhibits strong and vibrant tendency for heterosexual contacts with opposite male

sex. The aim here of course is not to have sex for any reproductive purpose, but to realize

the inner urge for sexuality and sexual fulfillment through sexual contacts. As long as she

is under deep Puritanical compulsion to act morally that disallows free expression of

natural and instinctual desires, she remains in constant conflict with herself and the

mother for her adulterous relation with Adam Brant. She constantly argues in favor of

strong punishment to the adulterous mother for her faithlessness in marriage to father. But

once she is taken to the Island after the terrible deaths I the family involving mother,

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father and Adam Brant, she reveals her natural self in her inclination to lust and love with

naked men on the islands.

Female urge for reproduction/avoidance from reproduction is the other area of

concern in O’Neill’s treatment of sexuality in his plays. Reproduction is an important and

related part of sexuality. In O’Neill one comes across the existence of both the urge for

reproductive sexual relations as well as the desire to avoid reproduction in sexual marital

contacts, and both have a degree of abnormality associated with them. In Nina urge for

reproduction is to mother a child that forces her as explained above to adopt strange and

abnormal/neurotic sexual behavior. In Mary Tyrone (Long day’s Journey) the

reproductive urge is marred by ambivalence. It is marred first by denial and then desire to

procreate another to blot the guilty of child’s death. She had to bear the shock of Eugene

death, but guilt for leading to his death never leaves her for the entire life: “I blame only

myself” she exhorts. This sense of guilt had its manifestation in her refusal to procreate

the other one, “I swore after Eugene died I would never have another baby [238]. Her

agony is further evident in her terrible expression: “It was my fault. I should have insisted

on staying with Eugene and not let you persuade me to join you. . . .Above all I shouldn’t

have let you insist I have another baby to take Eugene place. . . I never should have born

Edmund” [239]. This thought is based on denial of her duty to procreate. But she had to

procreate the next one as she needed the new one to overcome her shattering sense of

guilt on the death of Eugene. Edmund’s birth, however, is not free from pregnancy and

birth complications. She had in fact apprehensions throughout her pre-natal period that

something terrible would happen: “I knew something terrible would happen”. Her

apprehension proved substantially true as Edmund’s birth made her terribly sick and

introduced her to lifelong morphine addiction. It was injected to her on a quack’s

recommendation to relieve her of birth pain.

Male Sexual dysfunctionalism/abstinence and wastefulness is the other concern that

the reader consistently comes across in O’Neill’s theater. there are plays where the reader

come across a condition of sexual dysfunctionalism (not impotency) in the major

character in that play, and the reason for this lies in the complex of that character’s sexual

propensity to mother as a desired object that leaves the concerned lost in the desired

object, feeling her absence/loss to the level of mournfulness, and dreaming of the old days

of physical dependence on her breast for gratification of biological and sexual

desires/appetites and attachment with the object. In such early play like Moon for the

Carribies [240] dreamy Smithy reveals his sexual dysfunctionalism. His lack of interest

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in sexuality with the visiting prostitutes on the ship also establishes his oedipal dynamics

that has left him averse to sexuality with any other woman for that matter. As Pearl_ a

prostitute_ approaches him outside the bar on the ship, he shows some inclination to

sexuality and “puts her arm around her waist and presses her to him”, but instantly “he

pulls his arms back quickly with a shudder of disgust, and takes a drink”, that definitely

puzzlers Pearl. Marsden in Strange Interlude is an absolute neurasthenic, and the cause

lies in his frustrated oedipal sexual drives and the mother being dead he is left to live a

life of constant and painful remembrance of the lost object. In Hairy Ape, O’Neill

stresses the wastefulness of male sexuality due largely to the impact of absolute and

dehumanizing control of the machine over human instincts and desires. The absolute

control of the power of machine over the human is made manifest right from the

beginning of the play. The first scenes dramatize the dominance of machine though

mechanized sounds that has engulfed the workers even in spare time. The description of

the sailors gathered in the forecastle of the liner exemplifies this expressionistic

approach. The room is crowded with men, shouting, cursing, laughing, singing and

confused, inchoate uproar swelling into a sort of unity, a meaning the bewildered,

furious, baffled defiance of a beast in a cage [241]. The animalistic nature of the sailors is

further stressed in another stage direction, that says “the men themselves should resemble

those pictures in which the appearance of Neanderthal Man is guessed at. All are hairy-

chested, with long arms of tremendous power, and low, receding brows above their small,

fierce, resentful eyes”. The sailors’ rowdy mood is harmonized by "a mechanical,

regulated recurrence, a tempo" set by "the monotonous throbbing beat of the engines"..

Yank in this dehumanizing environment exhibits strong symptoms of wastefulness of

male sexuality. Masculinity in fact goes to the machine which is assumed as a “substitute

to life giving feminine principle” [242]. Yank for instance uses very suggestive sexually

charged language for machine:

Yank. . . .Dat’s the stuff! Let her have it! All togedder now! Sling it into her! Let her ride! Shoot de piece now Call de toin on her! Drive her into it! Feel her move! . . .Drink it up, baby! Lets see yuh sprint! Dig in and gain a lap! Dere She go-o-es [243].

This sexually charged language symptomatizes masculine sexuality that has gone

wasteful and slided in wrong, destructive courses. His aggressive attitude is also reflective

of Freud’s views on the destructiveness of misplaced sexuality. In his discussion on

culture, Freud [244] frequently refers to the displaced libidinal desires to be the cause of

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increased aggressiveness and severity of intolerance; “the more man controls his

aggressiveness, the more intense his ideal’s inclination towards aggressiveness against his

ego. In All Gods Chillum Got Wings O’Neill dramatizes distortion of male-female

sexuality due to such powerful determining factor as racism. Black Jim desired white Ella

that is initially frustrated by Ella’s deep sense of white superiority. But abandoned by her

white friend Mickey and a child who died of diphtheria, she starts to see Jim again,

calling him the "only white man in the world!" [245] whose kindness to her throughout

the difficult period, that makes her accept his offer of marriage. Jim as described "has

grown into a quietly-dressed studious-looking Negro with an intelligent yet queerly

baffled face" [246].They marry and go to France in hope of a better life. For a while,

among people less concerned with their racial difference, their life continues to show the

impact of earlier racial brought up. This factor is made obvious in their living together as

brother and sister more than as husband and wife as Ella shows least inclination to have

sexual relation with black Jim (see chapter 5 for further commentary).

In O’Neil sexuality is also associated with neurasthenia or nervous exhaustion

that may spring from different sex related attitudes. Kristeva has her conception of

exhaustion of erotic drives that create such psychological effect that is produced not

through repression of sexual desires as is the case in Freudian theory, but through what

she calls “disconnection”, “Appropriated by the object of love__ by the lover or, behind

him, the mother whose mourning remains impossible___ the drives are blank, so to speak,

emptied of their ability to provide sexual pleasure or of symbolic complicity” [247].

Unlike Kristeva, however, who describes “disconnection” as the cause of this exhaustion

(neurasthenia), the study contends that overindulgence, purposeless involvement, empty

contacts may also cause exhaustion among those involved. In O’Neill, there is hardly a

disconnected phase of sexuality. Repression is definitely there, but repression itself does

not suggest disconnection. In Freudian observations, it springs mainly for the incestuous

libidinal desires/drives, which necessities suppression in the unconscious, thereby

generating grave psychopathological defects. But the desires itself remains there. But

apart from these repressions in O’Neill, there are practical instances of overindulgence,

hyper-sexuality in his personas that unearth the resultant exhaustion/depletion of nerves

and even general bearing and health. Characters like Nina in Strange Interlude, Orin in

Mourning Becomes Electra and Jamie in Long day’s Journey and Moon are guilty of

overindulgence in sexuality or the drives with the resultant exhaustion, ennui, and severe

despair. Therefore they sever here as instances of exhaustion resulting not from

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disconnection, but from frequent, indiscriminate sexual involvement either in thoughts or

in action. Nina’s case needs a little elaboration. As explained her sexuality bordering on

hyper sexuality initially is tied to the person of Gordon Shaw, and she was anticipating

orgasmic love through marriage with him. His accidental death, however, shatters her

dream of all that, thereby driving her to promiscuity with hospitalized soldiers in a

military hospital where she prefers to work as a nurse. The promiscuity has had her effect

on her entire being. Her marital life with Sam and her relation with Darrel speak of

orgasm/pleasure-free sexual relation and what Kristeva describes as “ravishment” and the

resultant profound mental state of despair, ennui, inactivity and exhaustion (all signifying

neurasthenia from overindulgence). Sexual exhaustion thereby, writes Kristeva, creates its

own meaningless discourse, and the person concerned turns “only towards the hollowness

of one’s own proper body that nevertheless is disappropriated of jouissance and sinks into

fondness of death of one’s self”. Although Kristeva speaks of this state with reference to

exhaustion resulting from disconnection, but the result is the same in any form of the

sexual exhaustion. Nina is “disappropriated” of joyousness in relation with the male,

whether her husband Sam or lover Darrel, and there are moments when she sink into state

of fondness for death and disgust with life. Likewise Jamie’s behavior in Long Day’s

Journey and the Moon for the Misbegotten speak volume of a person, who has lived a life

of prostitution and whoring right from the early days of his youth. But the prostitution

plus the consistent failure in realizing his incestuous love for the mother has a role in

depriving him of essential vitality of life and has stigmatized him as exhausted, bliss-less,

despaired, Mephistophelian figure. He looks much older than his thirty three. Signs of

premature disintegration are obvious on his visage. He lacks Tyrone’s vitality; his hair

thinning rapidly with a bald spot in the head; visage carrying cynic expression; and

speaking acrimoniously of life and world throughout the play. Behind this lies his

prolonged prostitution and indiscriminate over indulgence in sex at the brothels. Orin in

Mourning Becomes Electra is the other youth who reveals the disintegrative effect of

sexuality on his kind and body. On his first appearance he carries a square-shouldered

soldierly bearing, at the end of trilogy he wears a beard like his father, and within a

month, ages to the point at which he looks as old as his father in his portrait.

Analysis above highlights prevalence of predominantly regressive sexual behavior

in O’Neill’s plays of different periods. Predominantly in all cases the personas suffer

from failure to have sexually gratifying relationship in and outside marriage. Generally it

assumes the destructive form of lust that extends to family members to assume Freudian

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incest model. Such an attitude has its negative effect on their social lives as well. It keeps

them socially detached or functional and leads to their isolation and further disintegration.

Here characters are brought close to each other to plunge into lustful relation that far from

invigorating them set them further apart and leave them exhausted and even

psychopathological.

4.2.2 MEMORY, TRAUMA AND POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

(PTSD)

Memory/remembrance in O’Neill is integral to his themes and dramaturgy.

Creativity itself in his case as analyzed above is a traumatized response to the deep sense

of personal loss and anxiety that he had to confront strictly in the familial context.

Desertion of ancestral catholic faith as referred above (also see chapter 3, 5 and 6),

repeated suicide attempts [248-249], prostitution, life of utter wastefulness, and trying to

hit bottom speak volume of O’Neill’s personal traumatized state. His personas likewise

reveal marked abnormalcy in their behavior and conduct. They appear terribly lost and

most importantly traumatized and both psychic states have direct relation with

memory/remembrance of their past. Therefore memory/remembrance of the past has

assumed a terrific role in their overall psychic and emotive states and plays a determining

role in this disorder. It will be argued here that though the past as an element of thematic

and dramatic structure has been emphasized in different critical studies on O’Neill, what

has not been adequately appreciated and analyzed is how far O’Neill’s art stands as a

reflection on trauma and traumatized memory performance in art. In the first place

O’Neill’s treatment of memory is essentially and predominantly concerned with the

personal/subjective and not with the collective memory. This factor brings him at par with

modern theoretical stances on memory and memory performance. Secondly remembrance

is charged with traumatic effect and the personas conduct in the plays like Strange

Interlude and Long Day’s Journey into Night is an illustration of trauma that expresses

itself instantly as well as belatedly to mar human behavior with variable degree of

psychopathology. Thirdly the traumatized responses in his persona vary, but are definitely

regressive and assume psychotic urge for repetition that obstruct individual harmonious

integration with the self and the others. The immediate impression of traumatized

memory is that of “affected state” that displays such traumatized reactions as

overwhelming depressive behavior. This particular behavior is repetitive and mars the

linear life movement; generate shattering anxiety, plunging the person into a form of

authentic being towards death. The analysis will conclude on the point that the plays do

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not make provision for the strategies for coping with trauma that characterizes classic and

Shakespearean theatre.

One significant development in literary aestheticism is related to memory that has

emerged as one central part of contemporary discourse on aesthetics and literary text.

Malkin [250] interconnects discourse on memory with post modern aesthetics and late

twentieth theatre texts to define and discuss the centrality of memory in contemporary

research. She argues that “an important group of theatre texts written since 1970s exhibit

an exceptional preoccupation with the questions of memory, both in terms of their

thematic attention to the remembered or repressed pasts, and in terms of the plays

‘memorized” structures: structures of repetition, conflation, regression, echoing, overlap

and simultaneity This preoccupation with memory, however, varies in modern and post

modern theatre. She has drawn a clear line of differentiation between the two approaches

towards memory. Memory in the transition from modernism to post modernism has as she

writes, undergone a phenomenal change in the theatre. She has detailed her views on the

role of memory in modern and post-modern theatre thus:

Post modernism's changed view of memory is expressed in the theatre by a set of new characteristics. In post-modern theatre, voice and image is privileged over narrative and character, the collective over the individual, the interactive over the self-sufficient, intact text. In this reformed reality the question of who is doing the remembering is problematic. Unlike, memory in modernist plays. . . where a protagonist, or group, is the explicit source of remembrance, post modern drama has no psychologically endowed character who can act as locus of call [251].

This emphasis on individual memory "found" she writes "Paradigmatic expression in the

vitalist philosophy of Bergson, in Proust's idealizing of involuntary memory, in Joyce's

stream of consciousness, and, not least , in the psychology of Freud" [252]. The "post-

modern memory theatre, she continues to write involves explicit (and usually ‘loaded’)

evocation of collective past and that too "without order, causality, direction, or coherence.

. . .[253]. As an example of memory in modern theatre, she refers briefly to Arthur Miller,

Tennessee Williams, Chekhov, and Strindberg. Miller's Lowman's remembrance of past

has been described as "subjective remembrances". She writes:

Arthur Miller originally planned to call his subjective remembrance of life 'inside His Head'. Willy relives past encounters with his brother, his sons, and his lover__ encounters that signified as hallucinatory and thus as psychological aberrations. The Play merges a realistic present with past experienced by Willy in his memoire involuntaire. These subjective remembrances 'return' Willy to a past that may perhaps 'explain' to us, if not to him__ the reason for a failed life [254].

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And Tennessee William's Glass Menagerie, "is narrated flash back 'framed' by the

remember (Tom) who tries to exculpate his guilt at leaving his mother and sister by

reinvestigating his action"[255]. Thus in both the plays "memory as a restorative and

explanatory function is seen as psychological and individual, constructed through

narrative recall, introspection, flash back"[456]. Other examples of "individualized

memory" can be found in Chekhov's Three Sisters and Strindberg's Dream Play. In the

first, she writes " a group of characters all deaf to the desires and memories of the others,

speak parallel monologues of longing and recall that almost disrupt communication or

plot" and in the second "although there appears to be no unified self or world in this play,

everything emanates from one consciousness 'transcending all . She also goes on to assert

that memory is performed as traumatized and associates urges to repeat the unhappy past

as essentially “psychotic” and an indication of the traumatic stress disorder named Post

traumatic stress disorder. The past in this scenario is replete with the torturous thoughts

and experiences that make remembrance a traumatized experience and the past in this

case becomes a repository of agonizing inevitability. This traumatized remembrance is in

her words an essentially post-modern experience and characteristics, which has three

corresponding components: One it is always “provoked by external events” of great force

and magnitude that hinder “its integration into the personality of the sufferer”; two it

always “expresses itself belatedly”, and is therefore “displaced”; Three the trauma of a

historical event becomes the pathology of the “history itself”. But whatever the form of

the disorder the resultant impression is one of a “wide set of psychological problems,

from memory loss and depression to psychotic urges to return to, and eternally repeat the

traumatic past”[257].

Discussion on memory and trauma had its pioneering voice in Sigmund Freud

whose description of different complexes developed in childhood and their terrible role in

the individual’s life in the later phases is an apt example of how the individual’s life is

affected by the past, and how the past creates traumatic present. He regards trauma as

“any excitation from outside which are powerful enough to break through the protective

shield” [258] provoking disturbance on a “large scale in the functioning of the organism’s

energy”, that would continue to live in the individual for his entire life. Caruth [259]

writes that trauma cannot be defined by events that caused it. It consists, “solely in the

structure of its experience or reception: the event is not assimilated fully at the time, but

only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it, to be traumatized

is to be possessed by an image or event”. In "Trauma and Literary Theory," Berger [260]

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asks why psychological trauma has "become a pivotal subject connecting so many

disciplines," from literary studies to historiography. He probes possible reasons for "such

interest in trauma among literary and cultural theorists". One explanation is that inundated

exposure to family dysfunction, aggression, wars, and global catastrophes have created

extensive consciousness of the effects of upsetting/traumatic events, making it "not

surprising that theorists have turned to concepts of trauma as tools of [...] analysis" .

Furthermore, he shows that conceptions of trauma merge with other critical theories that

emphasize problems of representation. As a "discourse of the un-represent able," trauma

theory attempts to deal with "the event [...] that destabilizes language", an event so

threatening that it provokes denial, amnesia, delayed memory, and forms of expression.

Balaev [261] writes that a central claim of contemporary literary trauma theory asserts

that trauma creates a speechless fright that divides or destroys identity”. The term "trauma

novel" he writes refers to a work of fiction that conveys profound loss or intense fear on

individual or collective levels. A defining feature of the trauma novel is the

transformation of the self ignited by an external, often terrifying experience, which

illuminates the process of coming to terms with the dynamics of memory that inform the

new perceptions of the self and world. Adams analyzing Stolorow’s Trauma and Human

Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Reflections writes that

conventionally and simplistically trauma is either about the occurrence of a usually

sudden and dramatic event, and/or the inability to integrate excessive affect and that',

trauma is 'a catastrophic loss of innocence that permanently alters one's sense of being-in-

the-world'. In 'Trauma and the 'Ontological Unconscious', Stolorow [262] says that

'trauma produces an affective state whose features bear a close similarity to the central

elements in Heidegger's description of anxiety and it accomplishes this by plunging the

person into a form of authentic ‘Being-toward-death'. But this encounter with being-

toward-death is itself so traumatic that it cannot be tolerated. It is a realization that there

is no ground, no substance. The immediate impression in performing traumatized

memory is that of “affected state” that displays such traumatized reactions as

overwhelming depressive behavior that is repetitive, and mar the linear life movement,

generate shattering anxiety , and “plunging the person into a form of authentic being

towards death [263].

Memory in O’Neill carries its importance in his scheme of things. Westgate [264]

associates tragic violence with memory in the play that he writes “emerge unbidden from

the past to overwhelm the present and the future too”. He continues to argue that memory

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in Long Day’s Journey is a deterministic force that “disrupts the linearity of their lives”

[265]. Quite differently, Raleigh [266] analyses “communal, familial, and personal

memories particularly in Long Day’s Journey:

The Human memory, on one of its many levels, manifests itself in three overlapping categories: the historical; the familial and social; the autobiographical and personal. At one end of the scale is the constellation of collective memories, given by one’s socio-economic class ethnic background, education, religion, the historical period of one’s nationality, and so on. At the other end of the spectrum, in a purely private shrine in one’s unique ego there are those individual memories that no one else, past, present or future, will ever share or know. Social-familial memories tend to connect to categories, the public and the private. . . . Dramatization of this triadic aspect of memory in our literature is O’Neill’s Long day’s Journey into Night . . .

The working of collective or communal memory in this play, writes Raleigh is exhibited

through the presence of Irish factor in this catholic American family, which in turn

generates such levels of morbidity in the Tyrone family that finds reflection in their sense

of “not belonging, a kind of cosmic loneliness”. This collective memory, he writes, is also

reflected in certain other plays like Emperor Jones, Iceman Cometh, and A Touch of Poet.

In Emperor Jones “there is clearly a collective racial memory at work”, and in Iceman

Cometh “a collective social memory operates for some of the characters, evoking the

good old days_ ‘dem old days’_ in 1890s when Tammany corruption was at its height and

they were on the take” [267]. But regardless of the presence of so called

collective/communal memory in some of his Plays, what fascinate the readers is not so

much the communal or the collective in memory. It is the personal and the subjective that

excites so much indulgence by the characters in several of his plays including Long Day’s

Journey that is that reminds of what T.S. Eliot writes, "not only of the pastness of the

past, but of its presence; ... a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the

timeless and ... temporal together" [268]. The usual form of traumatic experience in

O’Neill springs from some personal mistake, loss, and grief, experience that is repeated

consistently and recurrently to create what Malkin [269] writes as Post Traumatic Stress

Disorder (PTSD). In plays like Desire under Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra, Strange

Interlude and Long Day’s Journey, the reader comes across dramatization of oedipal

dynamics in the that leaves the personas preoccupied in the desire, developing sense of

mourning on the loss/absence of the desired object (mother). This preoccupation in loss in

psycho-sexual form leaves the sufferers traumatized and reflects the psychosis and

neurosis in varying degrees. In plays like Desire under Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra,

loss suffered on account of the absent mother figure exhibited in the oedipal conflicts as a

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quintessence of the characters’ individual and particular infantile experiences in the past

makes a very predominantly dark and traumatic appearance in such forms as incest, lust

and propensity to put to end life under these impulses. Here it can be said that past is

linked with present through dark drives of incest, adultery and even murder, but all

without any retribution.

The study, however, analyses traumatic effect of past and traumatized behavior in

other areas. The traumatized responses in his persona vary, but are definitely regressive

and assume psychotic urge for repetition that obstruct individual harmonious integration

with the self and the others, and the analysis will conclude on the point that the plays do

not make provision for the strategies for coping with the trauma that characterized classic

and Shakespearean theatre

4.2.2.1 TRAUMATIZED MEMORY PERFORMANCE IN PLAYS

In Strange interlude, Nina Leeds _ a powerful, but intriguing character_ reveals

obsession with traumatized personal past, that hovers around the dead fiancé, Gordon

Shaw who was shot down over France before they could consume their love into marital

bliss. Her entire behavior is reflection of the underlying stress disorder caused by the

traumatic demise of the fiancée that ultimately settles into a fixed behavioral pattern with

intriguing strength and constancy as Wolf [270] writes” in Strange Interlude, audiences

were watching the characters' repeated, constrained attempts both to contest and reinforce

the causality of the past. . . .”. Gordon’s memory after his accidental death haunts her in

her life through different periods and phases. It initially pushes her desperately to punish

herself for what she thinks her “cowardly treachery to Gordon”. As Nina makes her first

appearance, the readers are struck by the level of pain and grief that has engulfed hr since

Gordon’s death. Gordon’s death fills her with deep animosity and bitterness for the father

whom she considers responsible for her plight as well as betrayal to Gordon. She calls

her, [271]”The professor of dead languages. . . .dead words droning on . . .listening

because he is my cultured father. . . . But what she feels on Gordon’s death and how

desperate she is for his physical touch and sensuality is made obvious in the aside that

would also set the pattern of her behavior in the future: Ashes!. . . oh Gordon, my dear

one! . . . oh my lips, oh strong arms around me, oh, spirit so brave and generous and gay!

. . . ashes dissolving into mud! . . . mud and ashes! . . . that’s al! . . . gone! . . . gone

forever from me! . . [272]. The sense of her betrayal to Gordon is so torturous and

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traumatic that she finds it hard to come out it. The sickness itself speaks of the neurotic

streak in her personality, springing mainly from the trauma:

Nina (With fierce self-contempt) I gave him? What did I give him? It’s what I didn’t give! That last night before he sailed- in his rams until my body ached- kisses until my lips were numb- knowing all that night- something in me knowing he would die, that he would never kiss me again- knowing surely yet with my cowardly brain lying, no, he’ll come back and marry you, you’ll be happy ever after and feel his children at your breast looking up with eyes so much like his . . . . , but Gordon never possessed me.! I’m still Gordon’s silly virgin! And Gordon in muddy ashes! And I have lost m happiness forever all that last night I knew he wanted me. I knew it was only the honorable code-bound Gordon, who kept commanding from his brain, no, you mustn’t you must respect her, you must wait till you have a marriage license! [273].

Darrell confides this mode of self-punishment, this “Gordon fixation” [274] in his talk to

Marsden, which “helps her to atone in her mind to Gordon” [275]. This single factor or

traumatized condition would remain transfixed in her consciousness throughout the play

and in all her stages of transition and phases of life that O’Neill has dramatized here in

the play. Four things in this affected state would emerge clearly in Nina’s character: one

the pain and the trauma of her betrayal to Gordon; second her traumatized remembrance

implying her failure to come to term with the state; third her expressed thought of

motherhood that is powerfully linked with the dead Gordon figure; and fourth her

relapsing imperceptibly into girlhood (virginity) denoting here life long desire to return to

Gordon. Similarly all the three men that enter in her life after the traumatic demise of

Gordon_ Marsden, Darrel, and Sam Evens_ have association to her writes Floyd, with

reference to the dead Fiancé. They “possess different personality traits and forms in her

disoriented mind a composite picture of her romantic ideal, Gordon Shaw’ [276]. Her

desire to be a nurse in military hospital is her first reaction to punish herself, which

exhibit the initial shock level of Gordon’s death. She expresses the desire to go there in

defiance of her father’s will to stay at home: “(Again with the strange intensity) I must

pay! It’s my plain duty! Gordon is dead1 what use is my life to any one or me? But I must

make it of use- by giving it! (Fiercely) I must learn to give myself for a man’s happiness

without scruple, without fear, without joy, except in his joy . . . . Don’t you see? [277]

.Darrel understanding her need for out let of her blocked up emotional life, suggest

Marsden to have her marry Sam Evan. But Gordon is wrong in his estimate that Childish

Sam would ever be able to provide her necessary out let for the reason that he lacks that

physical strength in his personality that Gordon had and that could help Nina in

coordinating his love and embraces to that of dead Gordon. It is Darrel himself who can

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fill the gap and provide necessary outlet to her pent up sensuality. Gordon’s physical

strength finds exact equivalence in Darrel, “Nina. (Thinking) Strong hands like Gordon’s

. . . take hold of you . . . not like Sam’s . . . yielding fingers that let you fall back into you

self . . .” [278] . Secondly, it is Darrel who serves another Gordon function properly that

Sam has failed to perform. Nina in her earlier torturous lamentation on Gordon’s death

expressed her desire to have the feel of Gordon’s children. Marriage with Sam initially

filled her with the promise of having babes, but Mrs. Evan’s disclosure of hereditary

insanity in the family leaves her no other option but to abort her desired object i.e. baby.”

Gordon’s spirit”, as she feels “followed me from room to room” after the surgery for the

abortion [279]. This desire compels to fall so low as to beg Darrel to impregnate her for a

healthy baby. Darrel after his initial repulsion to any such animal type breeding where he

has to serve laboratory role of a guinea pig agrees to it with, “yes-yes, Nina- yes- for your

happiness - in that spirit! [280]. The experience though having ruthlessness of a scientific

experiment, fills Nina with remarkable euphoria and confidence, “There! . . . that can’t be

my imagination . . . I felt it plainly . . . life . . .my baby . . . my only baby. . .the other

never really lived . . .”[281] . The euphoria has obvious physical impact on Nina’s

strained health. It makes her as O’Neill writes “stouter” with “a triumphant strength about

her expression, a ruthless self-confidence in her eye”. Then the child is conceived,

nourished in her maternal womb and given birth in full and absolute realization and

remembrance of the dead Gordon. He is christened as Gordon, a name that would irritate

Darrel on his coming to know that, but what is more remarkable than this naming the new

born after the dead one is the matter of physical resemblance between the two. To Nina,

the young Gordon has resemblance neither with Darrel nor Sam, Act VI young Gordon

again reminds her of the dead one, “ . . . little Gordon . . . he does remind me of Gordon . .

. something in his eyes . . . my romantic imagination?”, and later in Act VII , Nina again

speaks of the resemblance between the two: “He reminds her a great deal of his

namesake” [282] and later in Darrel response to what Nina says revels the level of

bitterness that he feels for the suggested resemblance; (Touched on a sore spot- with a

nasty laugh-cuttingly) Gordon Shaw? Not the slightest bit in the world and you aught to

thank Go he does not! It’s te last thing I’d want wished on a boy of mine- to be lie the rah

rah hero!” . But Darrel irritation apart, young Gordon grows up with greater and greater

resemblance with the dead Gordon. Sam equally realizes the exact similarity between the

young and the dead Gordon. His physical strength has marked affinity with Gordon

Shaw that makes even Sam appreciate him for he himself lacked the stuff, “Evans (to

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Nina). . . You used to cheer loud enough for Gordon Shaw! And our Gordon’s got hi beat

a mile, as a oarsman, at least! (Turning to Darrel) And that isn’t father stuff either, Ned!

Al the experts say so” [283] .However greater resemblance between the two begins to

show negative effect on Nina herself as well. He is there to fill the gap that Gordon’s

death had created in her mind. The marked physical and nerve similarity had infatuated

her to him. Any idea of her son leaving her is utterly unbearable to her and it makes her

resent his love affair with Madeline. It also marks his separation and departure from her

that reminds of Gordon Shaw’s departure, and therefore she would resist any such thing

at this particular period of her life. Sam on this occasion sides with Gordon, thereby

adding bitterness to the aging Nina. At one point Nina goes back on her words that the

young Gordon bears similarity to his ideal Gordon: “Nina. . . . Don’t be modest Sam.

Gordon is you. He may be a fine athlete like Gordon Shaw, because you’ve held that out

to him as your ideal, but there the resemblance ceases. He isn’t really like him at all, not

the slightest bit!”[285]. It is only when all the three men desert her that she agrees to

Gordon’s marriage with Madeleine, preceded by her confession to Marsden of past guilt

that made her bow to Darrel for a healthy child. While Marsden responding paternally

forgives her, Sam collapses, and falls on the deck. Gordon in that case ceases to hold any

other identity for her except that of Madeline lover.

Long Day’s Journey into Night likewise dramatizes traumatized memory

performance through individual characters. Each character in this play comes out with

his/her own representation and post traumatic stress disorder that is manifested in their

thoughts, expressions, remembrance and behavior. The trauma leaves them in a position

of total psychological stalemate. What Mary Tyrone says in the play assert the

preponderance of the past in a semantically incredible expression; “The past is present,

isn’t it? It is the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won’t let us”. Her words in

the dialogue stand in sheer contrast to what James Tyrone had said in response to her

eloquent talk of his scandal with a mistress, who actually had sued him as well:

Tyrone.(With guilty resentment) for God sake, don’t dig up what’s long forgotten. If

you’re that far gone in the past already, when it’s only the beginning of the afternoon,

what will you be tonight? [286]. And his desperate pleas to Mary in response to her talk

of her living in filthy hotels and bearing children there, and young Edmund’s death etc,

“for God sake, forget the past” , and, “can’t you let our dead baby rest in peace?”. Tyrone

is terribly mistaken that any part of their past could be laid in peace, or pushed to

forgetfulness. He cannot deny that it has tortured their existence so far, and would

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continue to haunt them as Mary asserts, in their future too. It is beyond the confines of

time, and limitations. Neither the living condition that Mary had to experience after her

marriage with actor Tyrone nor the death of the baby Edmund would ever be pushed to

oblivion as they have captured their entire psychic beings and entrapped them in their

wholeness [287].

Mary’s remembrance is particularly excruciating that hovers around her post

marriage exposure to the world of extreme pain, death, disease, and above all persistent

sense of loneliness and of homelessness that she had to confront in her post marriage life

which also coincided with her dislike for the world of theatre and all that it implied: “I’ve

never felt at home in the theatre. . . I’ve little to do with the people in his company, or

with any one on the stage. . . Their life is not my life. It has always stood between me

and—” [288]. Initially she had to go through the nerve-wrecking traveling with her actor

husband, stay in dirty hotels, and cheap food. The trauma of living and bearing children in

these conditions surfaces and re-surfaces belatedly and consistently in her life. In Act III,

stress of traumatized living surfaces in her reverie: “I had waited in that ugly hotel room

hour after hour. I kept making excuses for you. I told myself it must be some business

connected with the theatre. I knew so little about theatre. Then I became terrified. I

imagined all sorts of horrible accidents. I got on my knees and prayed that nothing had

happened to you. This became as Mary writes the routine in her life for many years, “I

didn’t know how often that was to happen in the years to come, how many times I was to

wait in ugly hotel rooms. I became quite used to it [289]. In the course of the play she

repeatedly and painfully refers to it and the deep developed sense of homelessness s and

loneliness. In I, ii, she burst in frustration: “Oh, I’m so sick and tired of pretending this is

a home! . . . You never have wanted one — never since the day were we married! You

should have remained a bachelor and lived in second rate hotels and entertained your

friends in barrooms! Later in the same Act she once again gives vent to her deep shock to

her early experience of living in dirty hotels and the developed sense of homelessness in

these words “No, no. Whatever you mean, it isn’t true, dear. It was never a home. You

have always preferred the club or a barroom. And for me it’s always been so lonely as a

dirty room in one night stand hotel . . . you forget from I know from experience what a

home is like. I gave up the one to marry you — my father’s home”. Though James refutes

her idealization of home and father in saying “you must take her memories with a grain of

salt. Her wonderful home was ordinary enough”, but the early experiences and the dirty

hotel narrative was painful and real enough to cause the trauma and create discourse of

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pain to be felt belatedly and persistently. This sense of loss of home was further

accentuated by terrible family experiences related to birth and death of the babies in sheer

contrast to happy prospects of a romantic marriage. It was her constant traveling with the

husband and leaving children at home without realizing possible loss, injury, and

discomfort to them in her absence. Here the sensuous part of her feminine nature

overrides her maternal affection, and love to the dismemberment of the kids left at home

and leads to the unfortunate death of new born Eugene through measles infected Jamie.

This death turns out to be another traumatized moment of her troublesome early life. The

resultant guilt emerges strongly as a result of her failure to act maternally and finds

expression in one of the memorable eloquent dialogue, “blame myself. I swore after

Eugene died I would never have another baby. I was to blame for his death. If I hadn’t left

him with my mother to join you on the road, because you wrote telling me you missed me

and were lonely, Jamie would never have been allowed, when he still had measles, to go

in the baby’s room ” [290]. The expression also reveals her paranoid condition of denial

of womanly/motherly responsibility for the procreation/reproduction for the time being.

Even if it was conceived, the only purpose was to blot out the guilt arising out of the

death of little Eugene. It in fact accentuated the precarious condition by exposing her to

unbearable living conditions in cheap hotels. The traumatized expression is obvious in

the lines: “But bearing Edmund was the last straw. I was so sick afterwards, and that

ignorant of quack of the cheap hotel doctor—all he knew was to reduce pain. It was easy

for him to the pain.

Apart from Mary’s traumatized remembrances, the play dramatizes different

traumatized reactions in other characters. For instance four factors– all related to past and

therefore present through remembrance— Mary’s attempted suicide, death of Eugene,

knowledge of Mary’s return to addiction and Edmunds consumptive state keep the family

members traumatized for they represent the loss they have suffered on their account.

Tyrone remembers her terrible attempt for suicide in Act II as, “I hope you’ll lay in a

good stock ahead so we’ll never have another night like the one when you screamed for

it, and ran out of the housed in your nightdress half crazy, to try and throw yourself off

the dock”[291]. Mary tries to ignore it by saying “I have to get tooth powder and toilet

soap and cold creams— [292]. But the remembrance is there and in the final scene it

resurfaces to merge with Mad Ophelia who died through drowning. Its appearance in the

last Act and scene highlights recurrent nature of traumatized moments for the miserable

Tyrones. Both Jamie and Edmund in the family context are apparently traumatized.

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Jamie’s jealousy, and embittered attitude to father and mother is a traumatized response to

his brought up in the childhood. Both Tyrone and Mary are cognizant of the fact that he

was born with lots of talent that he virtually ruined through life of dissipation, whoring

and drunkenness. For both it is the past that has made him so. Edmund is no less

traumatized in his dark and pessimistic view of life. His response to existing life

condition of personal deteriorating health, fear of some serious disease, mother’s return to

addiction, and strained family environment is one of acute stress and persistent

depressiveness that push him to a paranoid state of anxiety, fear and even firm faith in

life’s ultimate insignificance and triviality. His recitation of Baudelaire’s poem in Act

Four, speaks of what Tyrone calls, “madness” [293], “filth and despair”, and “morbid

nonsense”. He continues, “Or be so drunk you can forget. (He recites, and recites well,

with bitter, ironical passion, the Symons’s translation of Baudelaire’s prose poem). “Be

always drunken. Nothing else matters: That is the only question. If you would not feel the

horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be

drunken continually. . .” [294]. What Edmund says here is an expression of total denial of

all that pertains to meaningful life and is the embodiment of Nietzschean and

Schophenaurean world of absolute lack of spirituality, emptiness, utter wastefulness, and

decay. The ultimate destiny, that the quotation project is one of constant decline and

deterioration. Edmund’s traumatized state finds much more direct expression when he

makes his birth an unnecessary event, a mistake: “It was a great mistake, my being born a

man; I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will

always be a stranger who never feels at home who does not really want and is not really

wanted, who can never belong, who must always be in little love with death”. Similarly

traumatized depressive states are equally reflected in pernicious drunkenness of all the

male characters in the play. Alcohol addiction, writes Menniger [295] “can be thought of

not as a disease, but a suicidal flight from disease, a disastrous attempt at self torture or an

unseen inner conflict, aggravated but not primarily caused by external conflict”. He also

takes alcohol drinking as a step towards “expression of such feelings and memories which

threaten to emerge, to become again conscious . . .They feel, with justification, that they

have been betrayed, and their entire subsequent life is a prolonged, disguised reaction to

this feeling”. Menninger’s analysis is a befitting account of Tyrone’s family. Father, and

both sons are terribly addicted to wine and O’Neill leaves the readers in no doubt about

their perverse addiction by projecting father and sons gulping alcohol in what seems to be

a desperate attempt to divert their patterned behavior and mode of expression. Their

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profuse drinking can’t be ascribed to any external stimulus, as for example environment

or to the general family habit. Its source is undeniably internal springing from their past

living.

However, one very significant limitation in this concern with dramatizing trauma

through remembrance/memory is O’Neill’s failure to provide possible strategies for

coping with trauma, stress disorder and PTSDs. Tragedies like Oedipus Tyrannous and

Hamlet possess this capability in a marked degree. These tragedies are valuable not only

for the extreme distress that their protagonist has to bear but also for their natural

therapeutic strength as they provide natural and inbuilt strategy for coping with the

different traumatized states caused by extreme distress to initiate internal course of

overcoming the latent shock to achieve tragic transcendence. The strategies are not

superimposed on the plot and structure of the play; rather they are inbuilt and are a part of

the very development of the plot and the characters. O’Neill’s art as these plays

substantiate on the contrary lacks therapeutic strength for allowing the protagonist to cope

with the superimposed crises. The ultimate impression is one of psychological impasse

that leaves the protagonist paralyzed and neurasthenic the end. It is pertinent to refer here

to Westgate’s [296] “Tragic Inheritance and tragic Expression in Long Day’s Journey”

wherein Westgate takes pains to write O’Neill’s play as an attempt on O’Neill’s part to

set up new idiom of tragedy in the tragic genre, which lies in his non-adherence to the

tragedy of what he calls closure or “lack of conventional terminus”. Here instead the

reader comes across the return to a situation that is a routine pattern in the life of Tyrones.

Westgate, however, does not mention one every important component of the tragedy that

lies in the protagonist’s development from say misery to achieve transcendence and this

development in a sense carry therapeutic value for it provides the suffering persona a

strategy to cope with the prevailing chaos and come to term with the crises before he dies.

One particular instance of this is to be found in Hamlet. The response of the character in

this play to the disclosure /awareness of the traumatized episode borders on acute stress to

PTSD. The hero is found regressing down in thoughts, feelings and behavior as a mark of

the impending strength of the awareness of the event of father’s death followed by

mother’s quick marriage to Uncle Claudius. The disclosure comes through a source that is

beyond rational comprehension to this otherwise wise and intelligent Prince. But the

disclosure has its impact and that is manifested in the protagonist’s soliloquies. However,

the plot and structure of the play makes provision for the development of the Prince from

the state of shock to the realization of his potentials and virtues that are largely

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responsible for his intellectual and philosophic strength as well as his heroic grandeur in

the face of the crises. O’Neill’s dramatic art, however, does not provide any strategy for

the coping with the trauma and the traumatized states. However, the remembrance in each

case is not followed by development towards resolution of the crises as the plays do not

make provision for strategies for the persona to come to term with the terror of the

remembrance and it seems that their return to past will ever go on in the same line and on

the same model. Mary’s drugged condition, her memoir of Convent days; desire to be nun

and the frustration that romantic marriage instilled in her life is nothing new; it’s return to

the early condition and as Westgate writes this “is not the first time that she has taken so

much morphine that she becomes a ghost a ghost haunting the past”, and “her taking the

drugs does not indicate any definitive action that might lead the tragedy to a conclusion . .

.”. In Strange Interlude, Nina Leads’ initial strategy to cope with overwhelming crises is

that of promiscuity and heterosexuality that, however, leaves her exhausted and

neurasthenic.

4.2.3 ALIENATION/SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL

O’Neill’s personas also express such personality disorders as detachment from

social relationships to have a restricted range of emotional expressions/experiences. Their

moods and emotive states are so placed as to obstruct their broader social appeal and this

particular factor underscores the constrained nature of their feelings in those conditions.

Importantly it was going to be the central part of O’Neill’s vision and dramaturgy in his

later plays.

Lack of social dynamism in analyzed is art could be from number of angles. In the

first place as discussed above his drama is painfully concerned with what transpired in his

life and therefore it is primarily concerned with communicating essentially personal

experiences in terms of feelings, moods and thought patterns to the readers/audiences.

The image of social withdrawal is build from the early sea plays. Here he create a

situation of a directionless journey, and the personas constrained mental and emotive

condition is underscored through their peculiar talk that hover around death, women and

prostitution. It is to be discerned in his personas’ verbal expressions and fixation in such

activities as drunkenness, prostitution and violence. Importantly all these as dramatized in

early sea plays later on became central part of O’Neill’s vision and dramaturgy.

In the first place crew of his sea plays belongs to different nationalities as their

names and dialects emphasize. Yank is an American, Driscoll, Irish; Cocky, a Cockney;

Smithy, English; Ivan, Russian; Olson, Swedish; Paul, Norwegian; and Scotty of course

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Scottish. This coming together of people of diverse nationalities speaks volume of the

nature of life that each one has been living. It signifies their rootlesness, dissociation from

familial affiliation, and from realization of social bond and responsibility. Their detached

and alienated interior is effectively revealed through certain moods and expressions that

persist throughout these plays. Such verbal expressions as death, possibility of death, or

the fear of death for instance tie together Yank and Olson in a similar mood in two

different plays. Yank in Moon for the Carribies fearing death, declares, “D’yuh think I’m

scared to_______” “I’m going to________. . . I’m going to die, that’s what”. . . [297].

Olson on the other hand demonstrates his fear of death in Voyage in reflecting upon the

possible death of his mother at home: “My mother get very old, and I want see her, She

might die and I would never______”[298]. Alienated and detached mental and emotive

conditions are further highlighted through depressive account of sea life. Yank, for

instance in Bound east for Cardiff gives expression to this condition in these words: “Just

one ship after another; . . . and when we get into port, just drunk endin’ up in a fight, and

all you money gone, and then ship away again . . . travellin’ all over the world and never

seein’ one of it [299]. Similarly Olson in Voyage retreats Yank’s depressive account in

these words: “I come ashore, I take one drink, I take many drinks, I get drunk, I spend all

money, I have to ship away for other voyage [300]. This alienated situation is further

strengthened by repeated images of drink, women, and sexuality. Moon for the Carribies

early on establish a world of sexuality, drink prostitution, homosexuality, and the

crewmen total absorption in this alienated world. Driscoll’s expression, “I’m dyin’ wid

impatience to have dhrink; an’ that blarsted bumboat Niger woman took her oath to bring

back rum enough for the lot av us whin she came back on board tonight [301] reflects the

same mood. He is ready to “skin her black hoid off av her if she goes back her words” in

response to Lamps statement that she may not bring any rum for them. The arrival of

these women with the drink is followed by a brawl. Sensitive and dreamy Smithy uses

drink to “stop thinking” and eradicate what he calls beastly memories, but it only

accentuates his meloncholiness. In Voyage again drink regulates the mind, behavior and

nerves of these crewmen. Driscoll and Ivan, for instance drink themselves into a stupor.

Ivon’s lies like a blarsted corpse whom even “Gabriel trumpet itself cudn’t rouse him”

[302]. Then O’Neill artistically strengthens this detachment and alienation among the

sailors through the images of fog in the plays of the series. Bound East for Cardiff, for

example places the sailors on “a foggy night”. Here dying Yank’s impression of haziness

and mistiness in fact indicates the swift approaching of death and becomes the symbol of

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the rest of the crew’s existence in a state that is shrouded in isolation and similar to a

world of approaching death. Earlier Davis in the play “damns this fog” that separates

them from any sight of the wanted shore. In Bound images of darkness establishes these

moods. In the forecastle the dense fog makes Yank to ask, “How’d all the fog git in

here?”, and Davis to” dam” it [303]. Later Yank, becomes depressed by the fog and

darkness and declares “I wish the stars was out, and the moon, too: I c’d lie out on deck

and look at them, and I’d make easier to go – somehow”. Then with his hope of light

being frustrated, Yank sees a “pretty lady dressed in black” and dies. The same social

detachment, aloofness and alienation are to be observed in his plays of middle and late

dramatic career. In Desire under Elms, Mourning becomes Electra, Long day’s Journey,

Touch of Poet and Iceman Cometh; different behavioral patterns unearth the characters’

social detachment and deliberate social withdrawal. In Desire mood of separateness is

established through Eben’s description whose eyes “remind one of wild animals in

captivity”, carrying un-subdued spirit [304]. However, the determining factor in causing

social detachment/withdrawal is that of incestuous love as referred above. These emotions

hardly permit social cohesion and affiliation and in fact attempt to create social crises and

disintegration. Similarly, in Mourning Becomes Electra the character social

detachment/withdrawal is revealed through total preoccupation of the principal personas

in the realization of their incestuous desires. It even necessitates creating a fantasy world

of pre-moral island world. Similar, but much more imaginative and creative dramatization

of aloofness/isolation finds terrible expression in Long Day’s Journey. First of all through

imagery and appropriate stage directions an atmosphere of isolation for the whole Tyrone

family is created and maintained till the end. The title itself is replete with meaning of

isolation. It induces feeling of approaching night that will finally envelop them in

darkness and ultimate isolation. This image of night is further accentuated through the

image of fog in the play. The play no doubt opens in the morning, but there is a definite

possibility of the return of the fog and Mary is sure in the first Act that the fog will return

with the night. Hazy afternoon in Act II scene ii confirms her belief in the return of the

fog. O’Neill uses the symbol of fog to draw reader’s attention to the terrible aloneness

that Mary undergoes in the play. A correlation is established between Mary’s detached

personality and surrounding fog. She speaks out this in her conversation with Jamie, “It’s

very dreary and sad to be here alone in the fog with night falling” [305]. Besides this

symbolic meaning, fog also represents Mary’s morphine addiction which is another facet

of her inner urge for withdrawal from impending familial situation. Thus, O’Neill

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artistically merges fog and dope to highlight deep inner isolation and desire for that in the

principal character in the play. Mary herself in Act III highlights this association in these

words: “I really love fog. . . . It hides you from the world and the world from you. You

feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or

touch you any more”. The same impression about the association between fog and

morphine is recognized by family members. Edmund, for example equates the morphine-

induced wall of around his mother to fog: “The hardest thing to take is the blank wall she

builds around her. Or it’s more like a bank of fog in which she hides and loses herself”

[306]. This wall condenses as the play grows, and Carpenter [307] argues that as the day

fades, Mary “gradually regresses from the sunlight world of reality to the fog-bound

world of dope and dreams”. Porter [308] in his analysis of the play elaborates persistent

mood of alienation and impending crises/pain in the play in terms of descent into

darkness through his theory of linear time movement. One particular aspect of this linear

movement is that of variation in the fog density in the play. In the morning the sunshine

becomes a "faint haziness" by lunch, increasingly dense by early afternoon, and a thick

fog by evening, resembling "a white curtain drawn outside the windows". By midnight,

the "wall of fog appears denser than ever". This accumulation of the dense fog is

reflective of the density of the chaos in their lives. Its return in higher degree at the night

also informs the reader of the return of the miseries with greater intensity after a daylong

introspection and nostalgia around guilt, death, disease and shattering of illusion. Edmund

recitation of Baudelaire’s verse in Act IV captures this unending process of their self-

torture: “If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders

and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually". Similarly Breitzke uses the phrase

"ceaseless struggle" [309] to describe the above named unending process of torture and

pain in this family repetitive act in the play. Her final sentence, he writes substantiates the

long journey they have to take that is however without the predictable end. Indeed, they

are all messed up, it's nobody's fault, and they keep going in a direction that they cannot

determine, always banging into each other, always hurting each other, mostly

unintentionally, but unavoidably. Night brings a new day and the torments begin again as

the fog rolls in once more. Furthermore, their aloofness, withdrawal and detachment from

social contacts moves in two circles; one broader that include all the four Tyrones, and

the second minor that Mary and sons have built around themselves in that broad isolated

circle. Mary’s micro circle is her room to which she retires of and on to meet her

morphine requirements. The playwright through effective stage directions and dialogic

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pattern highlights her necessity to retire to the isolated rooms desperately. The sons also

try to have their own smaller circle within the broader circle where they can satisfy their

drunkenness and peculiar association. These micro circles set them further apart from

each other. Mary leaves the male family members for the first time on the pretext of

seeing Bridget, but her return clarifies that she had retired to have a bout of opium to

relieve her growing nervousness. She enters the room with suspicious glance from one to

the other, and all of them instantly get conscious of what she has been up to. She tries to

evade their eyes and divert their anxious glances by talking about her rheumatism. Act I

closes when all males left her alone to herself. Here in one of the most impressive stage

direction, O’Neill builds up her peculiar desire to have another bout of opium: “She

grows terribly tense again. Her eyes open and she strains forward, seized by a fit of

nervous panic. She begins a desperate battle with herself. Her long fingers, warped and

knotted by rheumatism, drum on the arms of the chair, driven by insistent life of their

own, without her consent” [310]. The strange coordination between inner compulsion to

have morphine and her bodily response is amazing. When she appears in Act II, she has

already taken her “medicine” and looks sharp. The impression of her eyes has specially

been emphasized. They look brighter and she looks “a little withdrawn from her words

and action”. In Act I, scene ii, Mary’s aloofness and desperation to return to her private

circle is revealed through another effective stage direction. She is terribly nervous,

obviously tense at the lunch and her detached behavior even frightens the males. She

remains detached throughout the scene and her anxiety to have loneliness for specific

morphine purpose is manifested when they leave her alone at the end of the scene.

Initially her expressions are full of apprehension, but it soon gives way to relief on being:

“you wanted to yourself again. You wanted to get rid of them. Their contempt and disgust

aren’t pleasant company. You’re glad they’re gone. She gives a little despairing

laugh”[311]. The sons likewise need their own moments of being alone in their own

micro circle to give vent to their own feelings and particularly have their bouts of

drinking. Their desperation for such moments is evident when in Act I, finding no body

close by, they rush to gulp more brandy than what James would have allowed them in his

presence. In Touch of Poet (written in 1936, revised in 1939, 1942 was originally

conceived as the opening play of his ambitious Cycle of A Tale of Possessors and Self

dispossessed) once again the theme of isolation amounting to actual withdrawal has been

dramatized to support the treatment of such themes in other plays of his dramatic career.

Here in Major Con Melody, O’Neill creates a a self-indulgent romantic dreamer. Fiet

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terms him a “displaced person in an alien society, tied to the past of cultural conflict –

peasant versus aristocrat- which is accelerated by new social attitudes and

conditions”[312]. The study, however, construct his personality in terms of deliberate,

self willed withdrawal from social role due largely to certain personality traits. A son of

an Irish Peasant, but because of his upbringing and military heroism during Napoleonic

wars, Melody develops certain personality traits that greatly render him incapable of

social effectiveness. He creates fantasies about the real and imagined past that generates

haughty mannerism and insulates him from tenacious poverty that his wife and daughter

have to bear. His haughty mannerism is made evident through such stage directions as

“He is dressed with foppish elegance in old, expensive, finely tailored clothes of the style

worn by English aristocracy in Peninsular war days” [313]. His frequent recitation from

Lord Byron’s Child Harold: “I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not

flattered its rank breath, nor bowed” [314] speak of his estrangement from the

environment where he lives and even from his family. However, his subsequent

humiliation at the hands of police and public beating shakes his pride and forces him to

adopt his father’s peasant mannerism. He comes home with “big raw bruise on his

forehead . . . eyes empty and lifeless” [315], but most importantly thoroughly shaken, out

of himself. The symbolic, but terrible gesture of shaking the old ingrained aristocratic

superiority complex that had strained his relation with the family and distracted him from

the peasants is that of his shooting of the mare. Gregan reports the incident to Sara in

these words: “He kilt the poor mare, the mad fool! I found him on the floor, with her head

in her lap, and her dead” [316]. Fiet describes melody’s pitiable closure when he stands

stripped off his self imposed haughty posture as failure to find “a role suitable to the

needs of his nature”[317]. In More Stately Mansion, another of his cycle plays, O’Neill

shows his preoccupation with the theme of social detachment in the prominent personas’

conduct in the peculiar setting. The play has been read as “the depiction of American

greed leading to alienation from the land” [318]. But Petite [319] reads it as a reflection

of psychological states. He describes it as a play about “people whose need for protection

drives them to build around themselves” [320]. The walls, however, she writes do not

provide them security. On the contrary they “guarantee destructive isolation” that drives

them to a point of despair to create madness. She builds her thesis of psychic conditions

through her theory of power that could pose a threat to the individual and control of

others will ensure personal freedom. She explains it through the characters of both Simon

and Deborah [321].

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4.3 CONCLUSION

This section of the study debated diverse behavioral disorders in O’Neill’s

personas. They were analyzed here independent of autobiographical association. It was

analyzed that O’Neill’s personas reveal their psychopathology with characteristic

intensity and consistency in different conditions. The disorders were divided into three

distinct areas of; sexuality related disorders, trauma and post traumatic stress disorder and

social withdrawal. It was debated that O’Neill’s persona’s behavior is reflective of stress

and traumatic stress disorder having its origin in the past. It was also stressed that the past

in O’Neill remains personal or subjective and cannot be stretched to the collective level.

It was also concluded that the treatment of trauma is without natural and effective strategy

for coping with trauma. Classic tragedies substantially provide substantial opportunity for

coping with the trauma which accounts for their therapeutic and cathartic effect on the

readers. . it was debated that sex as a biological activity contains multiple aspects from

pleasure to pain, and from ravishment to conjugal bliss; thus having the normal and

abnormal elements. O’Neill’s treatment of human sexuality is an illustration of his

dramatizing extremes of emotive and psychological states with predominant regressive

pattern in human conduct and attitude towards sexuality. The study highlighted here such

areas of human sexuality as marital sexuality, male sexual abstinence/wastefulness,

female heterosexuality, prostitution, and neurasthenia. It was emphasized that there is

predominant pattern of regression in all these areas of human sexuality with pronounced

negative effect on human behavioral pattern and conduct.

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CHAPTER 5

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CULTURE

5.1 INTRODUCTION

O’Neill is undeniably a dramatist of subjective experiences and extreme of

emotive states. He has principally focused on dramatizing individual experiences with

marked stress on what lies deep inside their personalities. His concern with the social

aspect of art and social issues remained uncultivated in his art. It also constitutes the least

debated part of his art. This study as a part of exploring deviant behavior in his drama

contends that there are certain institutes /factors in the society or the prevalent culture that

may cause deviant behavior. Thus the study analyzes connectivity between society and

the possible role that some social factors play in generating psychopathological disorders

in individuals. Thus it does not merely show the connectivity between art and social

customs, traditions etc, or allow art form to reveal what lies at the heart of society, but

also studies the role that social institutions play in generating specific abnormal disorders

of diverse nature and degrees in the subjects. Now each society/culture is composed of

various elements/institutions. Depending upon the preference accorded in each society,

they range from such micro institutes like home, and family, to macro ones like ethnic

belongingness or differentiation, race, religion, economic conditions etc. In some cases

the economic factor would engulf the others to create ruthless struggle for economic

stability to the total denial of imaginative, intellectual and artistic elements, thus creating

particular psychic degeneracy. In other situations factors like ethnic or sectarian division

would become responsible for destructive conflicts. Several regions in the world testify

the explosive nature of this factor in creating or accentuating violence and even genocide.

Balkan and Middle east wars are clear examples of the explosive nature of ethnic or

sectarian divisions. Clearly the behavioral tendency is representative of the role of ethnic

/sectarian belongingness in generating destructive course of action like violence and

genocide. The study takes into consideration here three cultural determinants of psychic

disorders.

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5.1.1 THEORETICAL POSITIONS

“The Culture of a particular people at a particular time is a complex of industries,

commerce, occupation, habits, adjustments to soil and climate, history, real and imagined,

folklore, superstitions, mythology, religion: all that is blended together to make a tribe or

nation” [322]. This reflects abiding relationship between art and culture and makes art an

“essential expression of the spiritual activity of any civilized community and has intimate

links with other sides of activity”. Modern Psychology has acquired greater social

relevance. It has developed close interaction with the cultural parameters that effect and

inspire human psychic modes and matrixes. Indeed one of the current areas in psychology

pertains to socio-cultural area which focuses on “ethnic and cultural factors, gender,

identity, sexual orientation and related issue” [323]. However, the individualists,

sociologists, and psychoanalysts – each have given their own views of human behavioral

traits, and their genesis in individual and groups. The individualists hold that “society is

nothing more than the individuals who make it up” [324]. The sociologists, on the other

hand term such an approach fallacious and absurd. They believe that “no one is born in a

vacuum, that culture and individual with them vary, and that individual psychology is

powerfully influenced by traditional and cultural factors of which a purely individualist

approach cannot take account” [325]. Psychoanalysts have begun to focus on socio-

cultural psychology as one major area of concern in modern psychology. The

sociologists unlike the individualists believe that it is necessary to understand one’s

culture, ethnic identity and other socio-cultural factors to fully understand a person [326].

Badcock [327] argues that “. . . any modern psychological event must be the product both

of contemporary psychology in individual and of the part of evolution in the species and

the cultural group to which they belong”. He argues that sociologists and individualistic

approaches have their own weakness as both are incapable of explaining the origin of

such psychological phenomena as Oedipus complex. Knowledge about the origin of these

issues, he believes is vital to understanding human psychology and society. He therefore

introduces the term Social psychology to refer to an approach that takes what he believes

methodological position that not merely explains that “ childhood makes man, but that,

man makes childhood”(328). Earlier Adler [329], one of founders of modern psychology,

in his classic work Understanding Human Nature dilates upon the social aspects of an

individual. He writes:

What we call a character trait is the expression on the part of individual who is attempting to adjust himself to the world in which he lives. Character is a social

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concept. We can speak of character trait only we consider the relationship of an individual to his environment. It would make very little difference what kind of character Robinson Crusoe had. Character is a psychic attitude; it is the quality and nature of an individual’s approach to the environment in which he moves. It is the behavior pattern according to which his striving for significance is elaborated in the terms of his social feelings.

Brian [330] analyses the role of culture/society to create psychopaths. He contends that

the fundamental Freudian assumption is that behavior in a person is a more or less strange

or abnormal and a secondary by product of non societal, or even unsociable, instinctual

propensity as an erroneous belief. He writes that this concept fails to visualize the human

character as a culture-product as well as a culture producer. Ross [331] opines that there

may be societal neuroses and psychoses as well developed and as destructive as those of

individuals; indeed, they may be far more productive of individual mental disease. Object

Relation Theorists [332] like Fairbairn, Greenberg and Mitchell have in total dissociation

of Freudian libidinal context of human growth, all along emphasized the heath of

interpersonal relation listing even basic needs like responsive facilitation of the infants’

needs and gestures as necessary for heath psychological development. Likewise the so

called ‘cultural school’ of Froman has upheld a conviction against Freudian that “what

Freud mistakenly viewed as biologically determined is in fact culturally conditioned, and

that psychoanalysis can be reframed as an account of the way the psyche is formed within

specific society”.

5.2 CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF PSYCHOPATHLOGY 5.2.1 RELIGION AND BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS

Religion in the present global scenario has aroused significant academic interest.

Its role in human behavior/personality and rise in radicalism/extremism has attracted a

great deal of critical debate at different forums. The debate has principally been caused by

religion based militant movements and armed conflicts for specific economic and

political purposes in many parts of the world. The most vocal account of role of religion

in global affairs has been that of Huntington’s Calsh of Civilization. Huntington [333]

places religion in the center of inter-civilizational conflicts. He terms religion as the main

defining characteristics of civilizations including Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic,

Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and African. His fundamental premise in the

book is that “inter-civilizational clashes are usually conflicts "between peoples of

different religions". Hunt [334] argues that “Huntington's interpretation, with its stark and

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value laden delineation of regions in conflict, commanded considerable attention when it

appeared and has won fresh converts in the wake of September 11.

There are, however, contrary opinions on the role of religion in human behavioral

disorientation. Some studies put entire emphasis on religion alone in creating strong

behavioral disorders, while others are of the opinions that religion can create behavioral

disorders if other conditionals like poverty and economic deprivation are also present

there. Religion then engenders a particular ideology that fosters behavioral disorders.

Khan and Azam [335] have referred to this factor in their study. They have attempted to

create a proper understanding of terrorism (an offshoot of extremism) and analyze socio-

economic, cultural, religious, and psychological dimensions to measure the 'root causes'

of terrorism. The results as they argue indicate that while economic factors may incline

individuals to join terrorist organizations, the religious factor is most important in

influencing an individual's decision. Their survey found that eighty percent of individual

members of these organizations are religiously minded. Thus “a critical factor

determining suicide terrorist behavior is arguably loyalty to intimate cohorts of peers,

which recruiting organizations often promote through religious communion”. Almost all

sample respondents, involved in terrorism write Khan and Azam were unmarried males

exposed to fundamentalist teachings along certain determined lines that reject freedom of

thinking and engender a belief that life sacrificed for the sake of their religion would bless

them with paradise in life after death. Likewise Nagata [336] discusses the term”

fundamentalism” that has assumed such a vitality in international politics and research.

She writes, “[U]use of the term fundamentalism has recently undergone metaphorical

expansion into other domains and may be applied to extreme forms of nationalism,

certain socio-religious movements, and other forms of extremist ideological expression”.

Nagata here proposes that most fundamentalisms entail special forms of identity politics,

meaning, and labeling, characterized by a quest for certainty, exclusiveness, and

unambiguous boundaries, where the "Other" is the enemy demonized”. This quest for

exclusiveness and demonization of the other could assume destructive form only through

religion’s discourse of control and indoctrination along specific lines. Frejka and Westoff

[337] have taken role of religion to domestic affairs like reproduction and fertility. They

argue that analysing the role of religion and religiousness in engendering higher fertility

in USA as compared to Europe. Religion is important in the life of one-half of US

women, whereas not even for one of six Europeans. This study highlights the role of

religion in human behavior with reference to Eugene O’Neill’s plays Mourning Becomes

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Electra and Long Day’s Journey into Night. It has been argued that the role of religion in

O’Neill’s plays is problematic and disrupts normal human behavior and relationships. In

Mourning Becomes Electra it creates a terrible conflict between religious forces that seek

control of human thoughts as well as emotions and latent desire for liberation from this

control. Sexual drives in the play represent individual forces of liberation from

authoritarian religious control. The conflict however has regressive psychic and emotive

effects on the personality and creates severe psychic and familial disintegration. In Long

Day’s Journey, O’Neill treats this conflict much more subtly avoiding eroticism as a

metaphor of liberation from religious control. The play also dramatizes antithetical

processes of adulation and aversion from religion in the familial context in the play.

5.2.1.1. RELIGION AND DRAMA

Religion has traditionally enjoyed a significant place in dramatic literature that

stretches back to the Greek and the Elizabethans. Historically drama has remained allied

with religious beliefs and practices. Tragedy in particular originated in the traditional

religious rituals celebrated in honor of god Dionysus [338]. But religious implication of

Greek tragedy and role that gods played in human life has remained a contentious issue.

Greenwood [339] writes that Greek religion had almost nothing to do with “human

conduct that (except as regards two or three specific offences, such as murder and incest)

it neither told men what is right and wrong, nor offered them effective motives for doing

right and avoiding wrong”. He finds no ground for signifying religious spirit or religious

purpose in Greek tragedy more than “in any of the numerous other activities of public and

private life in the city states of Greece” that were “under the patronage of some divine

being or other and some form of sacrifice and prayer was a customary part of them all”.

Gardner [340] describes Greek civic life as governed by “thoughtful and reverent

philosophic agnosticism which seemed to many then to be the goal of humanity’s

spiritual progress”. About the role of religion in Greek tragedy she is of the opinion that

in discussing the religious significance of Greek tragedy, “we are safe from fatal

confusion of religion with theology that bedevils the discussion of tragedy in Christian

Europe” [341]. But there are plays that show these supernatural forces putting human on

the earth to great test of his character. In Sophocles plays writes Bowra [342] the gods

take an active, even a decisive part and their will is realized despite human resistance to

it. Furthermore, writes Bowra) they may participate directly in the action like Athene or

Heracles, or indirectly as through Teiresias in Antigone or through oracles which are

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invariably fulfilled. Dodds’ [343] argument may serve as representative of what has been

a widely held point of view on gods’ role in human life:

I need hardly say that religion and moral were not initially interdependent, in Greece or elsewhere; they had their separate roots . . . . But sooner or later in most cultures . . . man projects into the cosmos his own nascent demand for social justice; and when from the outer spaces the magnified echo of his own voice returns to him promising punishment for the guilty, he draws from it courage and reassurance.

But the role of gods was not absolutely determinate of their redemption and life hereafter.

Being Supernatural, not governed by human laws, and necessities, they revealed

themselves in natural forces like storms, lightening, blasts etc and also worked through

human nature that compels men to do things against their nature [344]. They are usually

swift to reduce man to his place, responding instantly to too much human happiness, or

too great success, or too great an achievement [345]. Allied to it was their distress for the

wrong committed and will to punish it through such instruments as human passions,

disasters, famine, plague, and the ancient powers of Furies meant for punishing the blood

shed [346]. The implacable gods could not, however, create human impression of a weak

earthly figure fully entrapped in their will and energy and unable to work independently.

The strength of these powers would neither reduce them to helpless lot nor take away the

human will and intellect to exert itself in hostile circumstances .One particular example is

that of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannous. Goldhill [347] has analyzed the play in the light

of fifth Century Athens development and dissemination of intellectual pursuits that

developed a particular human image replete with extraordinary optimism about human

potentialities in this world. Intellectual and rational faculties were in particular

emphasized. The training offered in linguistics, rhetoric, literary studies was, however, no

less significant and was in fact a prelude to life in courts, assembly. But this progress of

human intellect, and skills, writs Goldhill also offered possibilities of misuse or

transgression, thereby creating the strange and complex paradoxes of human greatness

and competence. Both of these in turn authenticate human independence in the course of

his life and achievements. Sophocles’ Oedipus writes Goldhill epitomizes Athenian

enlightenment along with inherent misuse or transgression of these as reflected in

intellectual and rhetorical techne. Yet Oedipus’ sin though committed in absolute

ignorance speak of the “outrageous negation of the norms and boundaries of the structure

of civilized society” amounting to transgression of the intellectual position that he held.

The knowledge that he gains in the process of rational deductions in true spirit of

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peripeteia results in collapse of the whole civic order that he had built with his intellect

and techne as well as in his personal ruination, symbolizing “the uncertain sitting of man

in the narrative of progress and the acquisition of knowledge that Oedipus’ reversal avers

[348]. His end in Oedipus at Colonous once again testifies the dualistic human position of

being an epitome of control, progress and intellect. What is being emphasized here is that

human image in response to his sinfulness and transgression is far from dehumanizing. It

is a punishment for restoration of human position in the scheme of things.

Renaissance tragedy in England grew in the church in the form of Miracles and

Morality plays based on biblical themes for didacticism, observable even in such

imaginative works as Marlow’s Dr. Faustus. Although major dramatist of the age like

Shakespeare moved towards greater secularity of his art, but religious concerns are there

and emerge significantly in different works. It is to be found for instance in the

inculcation of profound morals and moral truths. Gardner [349] studies “impressive

expression of Christian conceptions” in Shakespeare without explicit concern with the

revealed religious truths. No one would deny that the divine figures prominently in the

world of for instance King Lear. In modern and post modern theatre, role of religion

could also be observed. There are plays like Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral where an

ascetic hero, Thomas Becket, the play contends that bloodshed/martyrdom of a martyr is

the seed of the church. Pizzato [350] argues that the play reflects Eliot’s recognition of

modern divine loss dramatized through the chorus of hysterical women who through their

poetry “gives birth to the tragic figure of the martyr”. On the other hand, post modern

dramatists like Artaud, Genet, and Brecht, establish as Pizzato argues a connectivity

between the internal theatre (inner self) and external theatre (stage productions) to

substantiate the spiritual loss that inspired various modern/post modern theatre and

theory. Artaud’s theatre explained in detail is marred by extreme physical violence that

“reflects crises of divine emptiness in the universe and of evil forces within the body”

[351]. Then religion as a powerful force of disruption contributing to human

psychopathology emerges strongly in Afro-American dramatists’ lives and works. Bower

has analyzed the a wide range of plays of such dramatists as Johnson, Hurston, Childress,

Hansbury and Kennedy to establish psychopathology of varying degrees from severe

paranoia, and neurosis to neurasthenia, schizophrenia in the light of theoretical and

clinical works of R.D. Laing, Tom Lutz, Freud, Kristeva, Foucault, and Lacan. Among

other causes she refers repeatedly to the playwrights and their characters’ attitude to

religion as one important component of her analysis of their psychopathology. The

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attitude to religion in the playwright and their dramatic figures, she writes is characterized

by ambivalence. Religion here in these writers’ works is given either the persecutory role

or that of desired embrace from the surrounding chaos. Relying on Kristeva exploration

of the nature of love and religion in her book In the beginning was Love wherein she

explains the substitution for the desired father with Christ the father; Bower interprets the

position of religion in the lives of black women:

In the incipient stages of the infant’s development, here exists the birth of a psychic awareness and identification with the prehistoric father who in Kristeva’s words ‘possessed the sexual characteristics of both parents’. God becomes our first lover, and his love is enduring with no strings attached. This God/Jesus brings to the black women a substitution, a surrogate for the physical father, who is either absent or, in the case play Sunday Morning, lynched. So with this transference from the father to Father . . . women can, and do, survive either by desiring death that will bring a beatific afterlife with God or embracing life with the promise of a Father who will not forsake them __ an ironic but practical solution to loss and trauma [352].

5.2.1.2. RELIGION IN O’NEILL’S LIFE AND ART

Role of religion in O’Neil’s personal life is predominantly problematical that

could be identified in the personal life of the artist as well as in his art. He was brought

up in a Catholic family with focus on specific rigid, administrative and authoritarian lines

of control and inhibitions with major focus on sin, punishment and death. Laws of

abstinence that extended to all aspect of life were also taught with strictness and rigidity

[353]. But this kind of indoctrination had its negative and deterministic effect on the

artist’s mind. It clashed with the prevalent sordid domestic reality of the mother (Ella

Quinlan O’Neill) being addicted to dope. Faith in God and His benevolence proved

illusionary in the face of impending gloom, sickness and aloofness of the mother, and

resulted in O’Neill’s ultimate desertion of the faith itself. Long Day’s Journey highlights

this particular dimension of O’Neill’s life. Here Edmund (a self portrait) clearly shows his

displeasure against faith for the Deity has failed to cure his mother of her sickness:

“Edmund (Bitingly). Did You Pray for mama? Tyrone. I did. I’ve prayed to God these

many years for her. Edmund: Then Nietzsche must be right. . .”[354]. Quite unlike his

elder brother, Eugene turned introvert, “became restless spirit, an individual who is both

intimidating and vulnerable. He frightens family and friends because his disaffection is

not pretended. “He can” as Shaughnessy comments “damn God and religion with a power

unknown to those who play alienation”[355]. This drift towards rejection of faith explains

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how rigid indoctrination accentuates a rebellious response in the form of rejection of faith

itself.

5.2.1.3 Conflict between Religious Control, Religiosity and Desire for Individual

Liberation in Mourning Becomes Electra

Mourning Becomes Electra is an effective dramatization of negative role of

religion in human behavior. But as stated above the role is problematical, creates conflicts

and disrupts normal human behavior. The conflict in this play is between two opposing

forces of religiousness and emotive /psychic propensities. Living in a rigid, authoritarian

Puritanical society /culture, the Mannon family in the play has to assume a religious

attitude that requires consistent verbal expression as well. But the religious attitude

remains peripheral and fails to become a part of their entire inner beings. The emotive

inner self reflects their natural self and it desires for greater and increased liberation from

this external controlling force. Religious part of the self always remains an entity

regulated and controlled by powerful and domineering culturally conditioned religious

forces of Puritanism that demands strict observation of rules and codal regulation. The

inner selves, however, have not developed required religiousness to regulate life in terms

of these culturally conditioned religious codes and regulations. The inner selves are

governed by emotions and desires that are at odd with the superficial/ peripheral religious

selves and are always willing to revolt for liberation. In fact greater the force of

regulation, higher is the possibility of revolt. Thus control of religion here far from

nurturing the healthy personality or behavioral development acts as a force that compels

to behave rebelliously for experiencing emotive drives and needs. The revolt however

remains problematic throughout the process of conflict and accentuates serious discord in

the individual’s personality and familial relations. Both struggle to seek control of the

individual self in their own ways creating split personalities. Mannon family in the play

assumes the symbolic mode of reflecting this complex conflict. Religious thinking in this

family remains confined to verbal and communicative levels, while at psychological and

emotive levels it remains peripheral as it does not become a part of their true selves and

remains effective only in a particular environment where indoctrination, control and

regulation govern human action.

Sexuality with blood relation is strictly prohibited in all religions of the world and

its violation is a grievous religious offence punishable under the law. Rigid religious

control, however, create strong impetus to evade codified roles in the family and urge for

extra marital sexual relation in married, unmarried men, women and adolescents. This

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phenomenon is to be seen in the principal characters effort to liberate her/himself from

confined codal roles of mother, daughter and brother in Mourning becomes Electra. This

is dramatized through controlling sexuality and sensual urges in three principal characters

of Christine, Lavinia and Orin. Thus O’Neill juxtaposes here desire for liberation from

codified religious power with sensuous human propensities of love, heterosexual contacts

and spirited experience of sexual affiliation. The Mannon family in the play serves as a

model of this juxtaposition. From the father’s side, the family has acquired rigid

Puritanical religious doctrines and thoughts that find strong reflection in Lavinia and

Orin’s language and communicative patterns. In the first two part of the play, it is Lavinia

who reveals rigid Puritanism in her talk of punishment, sin, adultery, duty and

matrimonial fidelity in religious terms. Very early in Act I, Lavinia charges Christine

(mother) of adultery, and calls her “shameless and evil” for extramarital/adulterous

relation with Adam Brant. She thinks of duty that a married woman owes to her husband

that Christine has failed to perform: “You don’t give one though to father_ who is so

good_ who trusts you! Oh, how could you do this to Father? How could you?” [356]. Her

religiosity emerges strongly in her vehement declaration, “You know you deserve the

worst punishment you could get. And father would disown you publicly, no matter how

much the scandal cost him!”[357]. She would forgive mother only if she promises to be

dutiful to father and “make up for the wrong you’ve done him” [358]. Same religious self

cries on Christine’s death, “it is your justice, Father” [359]. Thus fidelity, duty and love

combine in her internalized moral self. Her religiosity also demands strong personal

amends for the sin her family has committed. Her last act of choosing the punishment for

herself reflects this religious desire for the amends: “I’m the last of the Mannon. I’ve got

to punish myself! Living alone here with dead is worse act of justice than death or prison!

. . I’ll live alone with the dead . . . until the curse is paid out and the last Mannon is let

die!”[360]. Orin too represent religious codes of the family. In the last part of the play,

Haunted, he talks of confession, retribution, and punishment. For instance in desperation

he suggests Lavinia, “For the love of god, let’s go now and confess and pay the penalty

for Mother’s murder and find peace together!” [361].

The internalized religiosity, however, does not overwhelm their respective sensual

natures or become a part of the natural sensual self. This factor leads to a terrible inner

and inter-personal/familial friction. In fact the religiosity reinforces their realization of

personal desires that could be forcefully expressed through their erotic feelings and

tendencies. One important component of these erotic desires is their propensity towards

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heterosexual contacts. This desire is apparent in both Christine and Lavinia. They show

an amazing propensity for heterosexuality. Christine’s desire has its root in the failure to

have orgasmic sexual fulfillment through Ezra. She has no hesitation in saying it to

Lavinia that she hates Ezra, that leaves Lavinia stunned, and to her horrified expression,

Christine says,” That relationship has no meaning between us! You’ve called me vile and

shameless! Well, I want you to know that’s what I have felt about myself for over twenty

years, giving my body to a man I . . .” [362]. She remembers her wedding night as a

horrible moment of pure sexuality and lust deprived of real conjugal bliss, and she

regards Lavinia as a product of that lust born out of body without real motherly affection.

In her first encounter with the husband on his return form the war, she is vehement in

revealing her blankness of emotions for the husband:

Do you think you could make me weak – make me forget all te years? Oh no Ezra! It’s too late! (Then her voice changes, as if she had suddenly resolved on a course of action, and becomes deliberately taunting). You want the truth? You’ve guessed it! You’ve used me, you’ve given me children, but I’ve never once been yours! I never could be! And whose fault is it? I loved you when I married you! I wanted to give myself! But you made me so I could not give! You filled me with disgust! [363].

Her desire for liberation from the assigned roles of a mother and a wife in the prevailing

conditions makes her home a sepulcher that she would like to avoid. Lack of orgasmic

fulfillment is reflected in her adulterous relation with Adam. Her love for Brant finds

poetic expression in such words, “He’s gentle and tender; he’s every thing you’ve never

been. He’s what I’ve longed for all these years with you _ a lover! I love him! [364].Still

yearning for more sex, she even carries incestuous desire for Orin. He is her baby, and if

he had not gone to war, she would not have turned to Brant, and “when he had gone there

was nothing left. But hate and a desire to be revenged – and a longing for love! ”. She

vents her emotions in addressing Orin on his return “. . . we had a secret little world of

our own in the old days, didn’t we! . . . And that’s what your father and Vinnie [Lavinia]

could never forgive us! But we shall make that little world of our own again, won’t we? ”,

and for Orin she merges into the mysterious imagery of primitive, sin-free islands. Her

entire conduct, her hatred against Ezra and her sexual relation with Adam, however,

brings her into direct confrontation with religiously motivated Lavinia that would end in

her suicide.

Lavinia herself is a very complex personality, terribly split between her peripheral

religious self and the inner sensual self. She had her sensual inclinations to both her father

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and brother, which indicates her determinacy to have liberation from the confined role of

daughter and sister. Christine flagrantly charges her of sexual fondness for the father and

trying to be the wife of her father. Her interest in Adam Brant also springs largely from

his likeness with both her father and Orin absent on account of war. But the conflict

between two parts of the self i.e. religious and sensual does not appear so powerfully as

long as she remains confined to Mannon ethical and religious codes. Her trip to Islands

becomes a major outlet to her sensual natural self that for the first time clearly

overwhelms her religiosity. Here she reveals almost unrestrained inclination for

heterosexual contacts that even shocks Orin and later on Peter. In fact her visit to Island

is a step towards gaining freedom as the islands as Lavinia herself says stand for a world

where the native dance “naked and innocent – without the knowledge of sin!”[355] and

this pre moral world provide the ground for nurturance and fulfillment of her natural

sensual self. Islands as Orin say “turned out to be Vinnie’s islands not mine” [356]. For

the first time in a world free from inhibitions, she realizes what love is and what it means

to have freedom in choice and realization of desires. To Peter she says:

I loved those Islands. They finished setting me free. There was something there mysterious and beautiful – a good spirit_ of love _ coming out of the land and sea. It made me forget death . . . . . Oh Peter, hold me close to you! I want to feel love! Love is all beautiful. I never used to know that! I was fool. (She kisses him passionately. He returns it, aroused and at the same time a little shocked by her boldness. She goes on longingly) we’ll be married soon, won’t we? And settle out in the country free from folks and their evil talks. We’ll, make an island for ourselves on land . . . .

One important factor in realization her sensual self in a free society is related to her very

unusual physical and psychological transformation into Christine like appearance. The

phenomenon of personality transformation expresses her inner association and more and

more affiliation with the sensual self of the mother that Lavinia had previously hated as

shameless and evil. Importantly it is visit to the free Islands that is foundational in this

transformation as she undergoes the experience of free heterosexual life here. The

phenomenon is also a commentary on the effect of religious ideology of inhibitions and

punishment on individual’s thinking process and emotive states. What Lavinia

experienced at the islands could not be condoned for her religiously regulated life at

home, but it clearly tells us that mere indoctrination, strict codal life would not make a

person religious in spirit unless the individual regulate his/her inner self with that. Her

end that she chooses on her own free will after home coming substantiates the other facet

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of regulation in human life in a particular environment. As she returns from the trip to the

Islands, she remains initially in the same mood of free expression of her sensuous self.

She behaves sexually with Peter freely as she had done with naked men of the islands.

But her predisposition here in a religiously determined environment is frustrated by the

Puritanical Peter who in fact is shocked at her gestures. She had to return to the reality

that in this environment it is sinful and therefore punishable under the culturally

conditioned religious control. Thoughts of the sin, punishment start resurfacing in her

consciousness. It finds reflection in her last verbal encounter with Peter:

Don’t be afraid. I’m not going the way Mother and Orin went. That’s escaping punishment. And there’s no one left to punish me. I’m the last Mannon. I’ve got to punish myself! . . . I shall have the shutters nailed closed so no sunlight can ever get in. I’ll live alone with the dead, and keep their secrets, and let them hound me, until the curse is paid out ands the last Mannon is let die! (With a strange cruel smile of gloating over the years of self torture) I know they will see to it I live for a long time . . .[365].

Each word here in this final dialogue reflects return of the earlier religiously regulated

self/ internalized religious self with the same stress on punishment, death, justice and sin.

Her realization of the natural self appear to be short lived in this society that would not

give room to human independence or independent emotive and reflective states. The

nature of the punishment is strictly in line with the codal regulation of the Puritanical

laws i.e. abstinence from sexuality and all relations involving sexual contacts like

marriage. Khan and Azam [366] as referred above expounds the role of reward after death

theory in destructive extremist tendencies in some conditions, here on the contrary the

punishment theory urges the concerned to behave abnormally in one way or the other.

Lavinia is convinced that her living without pronounced punishment would be

inappropriate for the religious codes that she had been propagating early in the play in her

encounter with the mother on adultery issue. She therefore chooses to shut herself behind

iron doors and abstain from all human relations. What is further apparent in choosing this

mode of punishment is that Lavinia being the only surviving member of the Mannon

family considers it her responsibility to atone for the sins of the family.

In Orin’s life too, the playwright manifests specific role of peripheral religious

regulations in a self destructive mechanism. He has like Lavinia internalized puritanical

codes of inhibitions, punishment for sin and regulation of individual life in the light of

strict codes. But he carries a spirit that like the mother and sister wants to experience

liberation in realization of desires. Here too erotic nature of the desires becomes a

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metaphor for the liberation from the strict codes. Like Christine, he yearns for

experiencing desires in a sin free society. Islands, therefore, in his thought merge into

mother figure. On his return from the war, he remembers the happy Islands. His thoughts

are clearly mother centric and an association is developed between mother and Islands:

“Those Islands came to mean everything that wasn't war, everything that was peace and

warmth and security. I used to dream I was there. ... There was no one there but you and

me. And yet I never saw you, that's the funny part. I only felt you all around me. The

whole island was you” . And later when Lavinia confides to Orin the real nature of their

Father’ death as well that of the relationship between Christine and Brant and their

planning of going to the island, Orin retorts, “And my island I told her about. . .which was

she and I.. . . she wants to go there. . .with him”. It makes him easy to kill Brant and

reclaim his lost island. Announcing Brant's death to his mother, Orin explains: "I heard

you planning to go with him to the island I had told you about--our island--that was you

and I!” When she moans with grief on Brant murder, he tells her that he will help her to

forget: I'll make you forget him! I'll make you happy! We'll leave Vinnie here and go

away on a long voyage _ to the South Seas”[367]. But, Christine death afterwards shocks

him and deprives him of the object of his desire. He stands unfulfilled and guilt ridden.

He tries to displace his erotic interest from mother to sister Lavinia, who becomes a

mother to him, nursing him like a sick child to life. But he becomes neurasthenic (chapter

4) and regresses rapidly in behavior and physical appearance on his way to death.

5.2.1.4 Conflict, Adulation and Aversion in Long Day’s Journey

In Long Day’s Journey, there is another facet of how religiousness renders human

behavior problematical. Here religion does not appear as repressive or punitive force. On

the contrary the play highlights a terrible coalition of real living conditions and

religiousness to create conflict and opposite trends of adulation of religion or strong

aversion from it I the Tyrone family. Parents here glorify faith differently. James (father)

is proud of his catholic faith and he looks up worldly failure as the result of dissociation

from faith. Thus he admonishes his sons for flouting “the faith you were born and brought

upon -- the one true faith of the Catholic Church -- and your denial has brought nothing

but self destruction [362]”. Both sons react aggressively to this statement (His two sons

stare at him contemptuously. They forget their quarrel and are as one against him on this

issue). Edmund terms Tyrone remarks as “bunk” [363] and Jamie retorts, “We don’t

pretend, at any rate” [364]. In reply to Jamie’s sarcastic remarks, “I don’t notice you’ve

worn any holes in the knees of your pants going to Mass” [365], Tyrone remarks, “It’s

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true I’m a bad Catholic in the observance, God Forgive me. But I believe!”. He also

considers Mary’s predicament as a result of her forgetting faith, “She hasn’t denied her

faith, but she’s forgotten it, until now there’s no strength of the spirit left in her to fight

against her curse” [368]. Mary’s position is, however, different. She is no doubt a

religious woman. But like Christine and Lavinia in Mourning Becomes Electra, her

religiousness has not taken hold of her inner self. It remains confined to peripheral level

of her personality and springs mainly from initial Catholic education and family

background. However unlike Mourning Becomes Electra where violent expressions of

sensuality govern female principal characters, this play downplays direct and violent

eroticism as metaphor of human desire for liberation from codified roles. On the contrary,

it dramatizes very subtle conflict between Mary’s sensual propensities and her

religiousness. The conflict leads to ignoring religious inclination for realizing latent

sensuality. Her Catholic education in her adolescence glorified religious ideals and

religious characters like Nun over and above real and earthly desires. She was

indoctrinated along these lines in the culture of religiosity and religious education. First

indication of this indoctrination is apparent in her reverie regarding her love and marriage

with a matinee idol: “I was brought up in a respectable home and educated in the best

convent in the Middle West. Before I met Mr. Tyrone I had hardly knew there was such a

thing as theatre. I was very pious girl. I even dreamed of becoming a nun. I’ve never had

the slightest desire to be an actress”. But her ancestral catholic training with focus on

aversion from worldly pleasures did not become a part of her natural self. The

indeterminate control of religion on her is apparent in her volcanic romantic inclinations

for handsome James, a theatre actor/matinee idol. By all means James stood for

gratification of latent sensuality and pleasures that religion and religious education had

denied her. O’Neill highlights her response to sensual attraction in one of the most

eloquent and referred reverie in the play, Mary: If you think Mr. Tyrone is handsome

now, you should have seen when I first met him. . . . . . I was so bashful, all I could do

was stammer and blush like a little fool [369]. This was her first indication of forgetting

“all about becoming a nun or a concert pianist” and deserting faith for the realization of

worldly pleasures.

But the post marital real conditions exposed her to the terrible world of pain,

death, disease, homelessness and familial discord. Collectively they created a state of

deep psychic trauma affecting her thought processes and emotions (chapter 5). She was

unable to face reality in the form of death and disease in her marital life as it clashed with

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her illusionary world of happy church figure of Nun. Obviously her religious education

was not tuned to ingrain in her conflicting aspects of real life conditions. It had not

established in her possibility of pain and death in life. Therefore with every passing day

her pitiable condition continued to worsen. It could be found in such depressive

expressions as: “. . . None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done

before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last

everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self

forever [370]”. But the most shocking revelation of her miseries in the past comes when

she speaks her heart out in these words:

I was so healthy before Edmund was born. You remember, James. There wasn’t a nerve in my body. Even traveling with you season after season, with week after week of one night stands, in trains without Pullmans, in dirty rooms of filthy hotels, eating bad food, bearing children in hotel rooms, I still kept healthy. But bearing Edmund was the last straw. I was so sick afterwards, and that ignorant quack of a cheap hotel doctor – all he knew I was in pain. It was easy for him to stop the pain [371].

Morphine, introduced to her accidentally became her necessity that could help her endure

the impending crises temporarily. But she also tries to sustain herself through her

desperate remembrance of Virgin Mary which signifies her return to her pre-marriage

religiosity. Initially she doubts that Virgin Mary would bless her. She tried to pray, but

she could not. She had a feeling as if her power for the pray had been snatched away from

her:

Mary (Longingly) If I could only find the faith I lost, so I could pray again! (She pauses – then begins to recite the Hail Mary in a flat empty tone). “Hail Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee; blessed art Thou among women”. (Sneeringly) You expect the Blessed Virgin to be fooled by a lying dope fiend reciting words! You can’t hide from her![372].

As the painful conditions persist, she is seen desperate to have Virgin’s mercy and

forgiveness. Importantly her need for blessings and return to religiosity spring in

particular conditions of deep psychic strains. Therefore religion serves as an abode of

happiness and peace from the surrounding depressive crises. Religious education/training

on their own would not have pushed her to seek solace in religion at this time had she not

suffered terribly from the chaos of the post marital life. It is the depressing condition that

compels her to seek solace in religion. She is desperate for forgiveness and redemption:

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. . . . some day when the Blessed Virgin Mary forgives me and gives me back the faith in Her Love and pity used to have in my convent days, and I can pray to Her again – when She sees no one in the world can believe in me even for a moment anymore, then She will believer in me, and with her help it will be easy, I will hear myself scream with agony, and at the same time I will laugh because I will be so sure of myself [373].

Religion here becomes an illusionary entity embodying happiness, peace, possibility of

forgiveness that Mary needs now. Her condition and desire for forgiveness can also be

paralleled with religious fantasies of black Afro American female characters in Johnson

Plume and Lynching Plays [374]. Faith in Jesus /God writes Bower, provides substitution

for surviving in the trying conditions either by desiring death that will bring a beatific

after life with God or embracing life with the promise of a Father who will not forsake

them”[375]. Bower terms it ironic but practical solution to their loss and trauma. Mary

has developed an almost similar stance on religion and her surrounding conditions are not

less painful that what Afro American women faced in their context. Hopeless of any

improvement in the difficult situations and desirous to have some respite from it, Mary

and Afro-American female characters develop fantasies about religion. Mary would not

have begged for forgiveness or develop fantasies about it, if she had not suffered

indescribably in her post marital life. This factor also highlights a coalition between

religious belief and psychic conditions to create illusionary /dreamy world of what Bower

calls beatific life with God or surviving with the promise of forgiveness for what they

have receive here. In any case creating religious fantasy /illusion is symptomatic of

psychic regression under trying conditions. Both sons as referred above have complete

aversion to faith and are far away from any affiliation with ancestral Catholic faith. They

have no illusions about life and beatific after life with God or forgiveness. Jamie has

wasted away his life in whiskey and whoring, while Edmund as referred above (chapter 5

) is a typical atheistic figure who like Nietzsche believes in God being dead. One of his

favorite quotes comes from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra: “God is dead: of his pity

for man hath God died” [376]. Jamie’s prostituting and Edmund’s denial of catholic faith

is symptomatic of deep conflict in the family surrounding religion. The reason could be as

for Edmund dissatisfaction from religious ideal as it contrasts with the psychic and

surrounding conditions or it could lie in lack of parental care as for Jamie since

childhood. But whatever the genesis of their aversion from ancestral faith, a contrary

trend towards religion is apparent in the family. While father carries strong association

with the faith, he was born with; Mary tries to find some respite from the impending

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crises in religion and prayers. Both sons on the other hand have little interest in religion.

This factor accentuates the emergent discord in the family.

To sum up religion is a powerful force in human life, personality and society.

O’Neill clearly demonstrates it in his plays. But the role and influence of religion in

O’Neill largely remains on the negative side engendering deep psychic conflict in the

personality and society through its suppressive discourse of forceful application of codes

and regulations. This fact brings religion directly in clash with human will desirous of

individual expression and realization of desires. The clash accentuates personality and

societal discord as O’Neill dramatizes in Mourning Becomes Electra. It also highlights

that mere indoctrination and enforced application of religious codes fail to create real

acceptance at the deeper psychic and emotive levels. Enforced religiosity could go on to

create deeper psychic and emotive conflicts with pronounced regressive effect on

behavior. O’Neill’s treatment of religion in plays like Mourning Becomes Electra also

differs from its treatment in Greek tragedy. Religion in Greek tragedies as referred above

does not create an impression of human weakness in the face of hostile and opposing

gods or supernatural forces. The strength of these powers does neither reduce man to

helpless lot nor take away his will and intellect to exert his individuality in hostile

circumstances. O’Neill’s pronounced desire was to find approximation of Greek sense of

fate in modern psychology in Mourning Becomes Electra. In his work diary maintained

for this play, he ponders over a possibility of using “modern approximation of the Greek

sense of fate in such a play “for the modern “intelligent audience of today” who has little

faith in gods or “supernatural retribution” [377]. One clear difference that emerges in

finding this approximation in the named play is related to the effect of retribution aspect

of religion that creates a vast cleavage between the two approaches. Unlike Greek tragic

art, the spectacle of the major characters in plays like Mourning Becomes Electra locked

in their incestuous/libidinal desires is replete with defeatism, rendering their struggle

traumatic and psychopathological. Thus the dynamic role of religion to sustain and

inspire heroic struggle is entirely absent from the world of O’Neill.

5.2.2 RACISM AND BEHAVIORAL DISORDER

American literature especially fiction and drama provide searching study of racial

and regional factor in American society and their impact on human psychology. The

black in particular in American culture and history suffered from social segregation,

assimilation and other serious social, economic, cultural problems that lead to

psychoanalytic study of the essentially black in the American experience. The plight of

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the Black can be imagined by the fact that until about 1940 no black author could present

the black experience convincingly to the reading public and the task was left to the white

American writers to create black representative literature and images for the readers and

audience. Therefore writers like Melville, Twain, Conrad, Faulkner, and O'Neill came

forward to project the black experience to the contemporary society. But it was not less

than a challenge as these white intellectual had to write without the very personal

experience of being black in the white racist majority as well as the larger social problem

of acceptance of black as theme of universal meaning. They had also to confront the

established negative myth of a Negro [378]. Years of suppression, however, gave rise to

Black arts movement that like The Black Power concept was related broadly to the Afro-

American's desire for self-determination and nationhood. The term Afro-centricity was

coined to study Africa and Afro-American culture through Afro-centric perspectives

[379]. But, during I960s and 70’s black theatre in America earned a reputation as one of

the most controversial and dynamic movements in the world. Plays by black dramatists

boldly portrayed black life in relation to oppressive political and social institutions in the

United States. Blacks founded hundreds of theatre groups which produced plays by at

least 200 dramatists [380]. Widespread interest led to a proliferation of black theatre

articles, dissertations, and scholarly books. The works of Johnson [381] , Hurston [382-

383] and Childress [384] etc strengthened the Black voice in the Modern and post modern

American Theater. Bower (2003) has clearly interpreted black American Female writers

along psychoanalytic lines to highlight the problem of racism and its painful role in the

life of the artist and their works. Discrimination, deprivation, poverty, insult, humiliation,

and torture (physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological) in fact, writes Bower

created a complete discourse of various abnormalities in the affected group. Faulkner [

385-386] among the writers of fiction has treated terrible racial problems with particular

reference to poverty ridden predominantly black populated American South. In works

such as Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses, Faulkner critiques the sexual and racial

injustices wrought by the racial bias and prejudices. For instance ethnic discrimination on

color results in fundamental clash in Faulkner's Light in August [387-389]. Kartgarner

[390] analyses the novel as a a discourse of conflict between blackness and whiteness that

merge in Joe, mulatto or “the imagined mulatto” that creates a crises of identity for him.

Sundquist [391] interprets Joe’s life in terms of two conflicting and complementary forms

of anxiety that springs from his mixed blood/white nigger status and heritage. If his

murder of Joanna reflects his anger, frustration to liberate himself from the circle,

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ruthlessness and brutality involved in Joe’s murder, and his castration reflect the violence

that racial hatred had generated in that region. Andrews [392] analysis of the treatment of

miscegenation issue in Faulkner highlights the same distortion in public attitude. He

argues that in Faulkner, the social structure promotes white male hegemony over black

female as well as a form of double standard which tolerated one form of miscegenation,

between white men and black women, and opposing the opposite of this type. In fact in a

white male domination, miscegenation almost came to mean “only the taboo form, thus

silencing the reality of white male exploitation of black women” Elision’s Invisible Man,

Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God, Morrison’s Jazz are landmark achievements in

mirroring the socio-cultural perspectives of the American south and being black in

hegemonic and prejudiced white majority. Jazz in particular highlights the strange,

bizarre and aggressive human behavior caused principally by years of racial

discrimination and violence in American south [393].

5.2 .2.1 RACISM AND O’NEILL

O’Neill’s treatment of racial factor in the prevalent US culture did not develop

into a set pattern. As stated above O’Neill’s fort remained exploration of the deeper

emotive states and consciousness in the entire range of his dramatic art. Some of the early

plays, however, show some black characters playing secondary roles. But only Gods

Chillum and Emperor Jones are among his reputed contributions to highlight racial issue

in American literature and culture. The treatment of the black in his art, however, is not

free from controversies. General consensus is that he mostly followed stereotypical

picture of the black and white on the stage. Shaughnessy [394] contends that a consistent

“racial bias” continued to plague O’Neill till the end. Bogard [395] highlights the similar

stance in O’Neill plays concerning black themes in Emperor Jones. Orr [396] agrees with

the stereotypical projection of black image in O’Neill’s drama, but adds, “while O’Neill

never challenged these myths didactically in his works, at a deeper artistic level his tragic

vision constantly undermines them. Holton contends that O’Neill’s “attempt at

interpreting black life between 1918 and 1923 were both stereotypic reflections of then

prevailing superior attitude towards black people in general, and also subtle, complex

investigations that revealed a possibility for deeper cultural understanding” [397]. He

argues that following stereotypical image of the black in The US culture and history,

O'Neill dramatized during the year 1913 to 1939 black character performance. It included

sixteen black characters six male and ten female. Majority of such performances were

staged between 1916 and 1924. He dramatized four West Indian Female Blacks in Moon

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of the Carribies. Although they play minor role in the play, but the play does suggest

O'Neill's awareness of the social climate of the West Indies; and, “with particular

attention to dialogue and mood, he explores varying racist attitudes articulated by

members of the crew through their apprehension of black cannibalism before the women

arrive, and through the crew's interactions with the women while on the ship” [398]. In

1919, O’Neill produced first black drama The Dreamy Kid with urban setting of New

York City. It consisted of all-black cast and was opened in the midst of nationwide racial

chaos [399]. It is again a conventional play with specific focus on the racial issue in the

American culture. Its stereotypical nature is apparent in its dramatization of a young

mulatto gangster who faces definite death at the hands of the prejudiced white racist

police for slaying somebody in self-defense [400].

The study here concentrates on the particular impact of racial background on

behavior which is regressive and leads to mental illness/madness. All God’s Chillum Got

Wings, is specifically concerned with inter racial marriage and resultant psychic

problems. The play’s intention writes O’Neill is “confined to portraying special lives of

individual human beings . . . and their tragic struggle for happiness. To dedicate any

general application from God’s Chillum except in a deep spiritual sense is to read a

meaning into my play, which is not there” [401]. Prominent O’Neill’s critics like Bogard

and Bigsby have, however, have underscored stereotypical treatment of racial issues in

the play. But the study analyses their behavior in terms of drift towards abnormality and

ultimate madness due exclusively to the governing racial problem in the society.

O’Neill understanding of deep rooted racial factor goes to the very basics in this

play. Skin color and not the personal name for instance are used to open the play. As the

play opens a group of boys and girls, named as white and black are engaged in casual

talk. Early in the play, contrasts between black and white are made with expressionistic

relentlessness. O'Neill says in his stage directions, which in All God's Chillum have their

own narrative impact:

People pass, black and white, the Negroes frankly participants in the spirit of spring, the whites laughing constrainedly, awkward in natural emotion. Their words are lost. One hears only their laughter. It expresses the difference in race [402].

Social segregation along body color line is further strengthened through the description of

the street of the white, and street of the black and of the church in stage directions:

As if it were a signal, people – men, women, children – pour from the two tenements, white from the tenement to the left, black from one to the right. They

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hurry to form into two racial lines each side of the gate, rigid and unyielding, starting across at each other with bitter hostile eyes [403].

Contrasting music in these diverse streets reinforces the split. The world of Jim and Ella

as children, where he is called "Jim Crow" and she "Painty face" [404] to indicate her

rosy complexion, is a racially relative Eden for them. However, it is white Ella –Black

Jim marriage that reinforces culturally conditioned mental illness and regression towards

ultimate abnormality. Their marriage has no doubt a romantic beginning. Jim talks of

drinking chalk water to become white and Ella wants to be black as he is. But both carry a

deep seated consciousness of their racial differences manifested in their color. During

their teenage life, Ella, then of white Mickey’s girlfriend takes no interest in Jim. In

response to Jim's offer of help, she says, "You're certainly forgetting your place!"[405]

However, after Mickey abandons her she moves to see Jim again, calling him the "only

white man in the world!"[406]. They ultimately marry, but they have to go to France in

hope of a better life there. They are wrong as they fail to elude the terrible racial heritage

that governs their individual behavior. It could be seen in their post-marital life in France.

Apparently they have moved away from culture of racial discrimination and hatred in

their native country, but the typical mindset fails to leave them even in France. Their

marriage seems to have not taken at all as both fail to develop regular married

relationship. Ella in particular shows least inclination for sexual relation with Jim as her

husband. Therefore they live out their relationship more as brother and sister [407] than

husband and wife. This pattern keeps their polarization in abeyance as long as they are in

France. In fact mental regression continues to worsen in Ella case in particular. As her

mental condition starts to show downward trend, they return to their native country..

From this point onward intensity in their thinking and relationship builds. They seem to

be drifting towards madness and insanity. Jim continues focus on trying to rise in status,

to pass the bar exam and become a lawyer. But the torture of being black keeps torturing

him. Ella also continues her fragmentation and regression. At times, she urges Jim

forward. She says at one point, "I want you to climb and climb" [408]. While in one of

her mad moments, she addresses the Congo mask that, for her, embodies Jim's blackness,

saying, “How dare you grin at me? I guess you forget what you are!( That's always the

way. Be kind to you, treat you decent, and in a second you've got a swelled head, you

think you're somebody, you're all over the place putting on airs ..”. She also “confesses, I

wouldn't let you sleep. I couldn't let you. I kept thinking if he sleeps good then he'll be

sure to study good and then he'll pass--and the devil'll win! and Jim responds, “Honey,

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Honey, I’ll play right up to the gates of heaven with you!”[409]. Then irritated by his

blackness, and desire to succeed, she even tries to kill him with a knife. Jim on his part

continues to be fully supportive of her in her mental illness; he even refuses to send her to

an asylum certain, as he tells Hattie, that Ella's racism is "Deep down in her people--not

deep in her" [410]. Ella, when she learns that Jim has not passed his exam, stabs the

Congo mask in a manner that is clearly reflective of her frenzied deterioration. She is

ecstatic, insisting that "The devil's dead. Jim has to reject his dreams in favor of returning

to childhood state. His failure to establish himself as white by graduating as lawyer can

save her because it reasserts the constancy of the isolated world and reassures her sense of

inherent pride in being white.

The plot outline is a reflection of fragmentation and gradual progression towards

madness due to a seriously distressing social phenomenon. The grim human predicament

in which Jim and Ella find themselves is here largely determined by terrible racial cultural

forces. Bernstein [411] has analyzed the regressive behavior in terms of fragmentation in

personality and conduct. Nowhere, writes Bernstein is the fragmentation more evident

than in the behavior of Ella. She oscillates between strong love and tempestuous hatred

foe Jim. She has love for Jim, but she hates him too for he is black, and her marriage with

him undermines her superiority complex. She desires that he should clear the law exam,

but fears his passing as well as his success might make him leave her and, even generate

superiority sense in him. She desires and even tries to murder him in Act II. The conflict

makes her ignore the fact that she is absolutely dependant on him and married him. She

loves him that is so definite in the play, but will not have child through him on the fear of

begetting a black child. Her regression is rapid and consistent and at the play's end, she

wishes to play with him as a child partner, or he to play the role of "old Uncle Jim"[412] ,

i.e her servant, so that she can maintain her social superiority. Jim too shows his

regression, ambivalence and fragmentation. He wants to be Ella's man, and protector, yet

also wants to be her servant. He wants her for sexual gratification, yet is ready to be with

her as a brother and sister. Further he wishes to pass his law exam and prove himself as

competent and efficient as the whites, yet has no hesitation in accepting his final failure in

the exam, just because it will keep him at par with her. The fragmentation does not end up

here as he even shows his willingness to commit suicide, if that would please Ella.

Clearly the dominant motif in the play is to show the deep split in the personalities of the

both characters as the type of the problem that they are facing is beyond their control.

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This fragmentation keeps threatening sanity. She receives the news of his failure in the

exam in a frenzied state and slides into a childhood at the end of the play. Jim as the

doctor thinks also slides towards collapse and illness. Ella's behavior and his perpetual

and frustrating efforts to have a law degree made even more st becomes even more

stressful as he links success in exam with white culture. This is sufficient to unnerve him

terribly. His failure, therefore, and Ella's insanity, places him in a pressing psychological

state [413]. His outburst as his exam result is declared clearly demonstrates his ultimate

madness:

Pass? Pass? [. . .] Good Lord, child, how come you can ever imagine such a crazy idea? Pass? Me? Jim CrowHarris? Nigger Jim Harris become a full-fledged member of the bar! Why, the mere notion of it is enough to kill you with laughing! It'd be against all natural laws, all human right and justice. It'd be miraculous, there'd be earthquakes and catastrophies, the Seven Plagues'd come again and locusts'd devour all the money in the banks, the second Flood'd come roaring and Noah's fall overboard, the sun'd drop out of the sky like a ripe fig, and the Devil'd perform miracles and God'd be tipped head first right out of the Judgment seat! (He laughs, maudlinly uproarious (p. 339).

The behavioral regression as determined by racial factor in the paly not only creates crises

and severe maladjutment in their personal lives, but equally leaves them incapable of

fostering meaningful social bonds as well. Jim is frustrated and develops self hatred on

the prospects of passing the examination. It leaves him in a situation where it would not

be possible for him to be a healthy member of the society or play a meanigngful part in its

natural development.

Emperor Jones like Gods Chillum dramatizes the regressive psychic effect of

racism. For the black in USA it was a great feast as prior to this no black person had ever

played a key role in the American theatre. Charles Gilpin, the black community's very

best actor was chosen to play the lead role, and its immediate success made the managers

move it from the Players' theatre in the Village to Broadway. It was also hailed by the

black intelligentsia and had a tremendous impact on Harlem Renaissance. The play has

attracted diverse responses from the critics. Colakis [414] interprets the play as a Seneca

tragedy. Poole [415] refers to the play in terms of black and white discourses associated

with the native and the western civilization respectively and as an encounter between

Modernism and African Culture”. Abdo [416] disagrees with the social nature of the play

and its protagonist and strongly stresses on Jones individuality, who denies his racial

heritage and attempts to successfully make his mark on the world. She looks upon his life

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as a struggle against the demands of collective African experience imposed upon him and

ultimately struggles to retain his selfhood as an individual. Floyd [417] argues that the play is a

milestone in its portrayal of white persecution, a landmark drama, not only in conception but

also in production. Bogard on the other hand while acknowledging the richness O’Neill

imparted to his black characters, feels that the playwright fell prey to white prejudice. He

believes that the character of Jones is by present-day standpoint an improper typecast of the

Negro in terms of a crap-shooting, razor-cutting Pullman porter. “The fact that Jones was

the first important role written for a Negro actor does not redeem the play; such theatrical

excitement only serves to disguise the essential racism of a play which can no longer command

respectful attention”[418]. Pfister [419] similarly contends that although progressive and

sympathetic to the plight of African-Americans, O’Neill’s depiction of blacks merely

mirrors the stereotypes found in the American history of racist iconography.

There is no doubt that the play does address the racial factor in terms of

stereotypical nature of both black and white. For instance Jones’ success in establishing

his control on the islanders in West Indies substantiate stereotypical impression of black

being ignorant, superstitious and culpable to control and exploitation. Their superstitious

nature has been highlighted. Jones succeeds in establishing his control on the islanders on

a superstitious belief that he is only vulnerable to silver bullet, and nothing can harm him.

Then in the first encounter between Jones and Smithers, the play confirms the same

stereotypical characteristics of both black and white. That the blacks are devoid of

rational and logical thinking is manifested in Jones false sense of security, stability and

control on on the islanders. He is utterly ignorant of a serious uprising against his

authority among the islanders. Smithers’ announcement to this effect surprises him.

Equally ridiculous seems his manner of calling his guards, “He reaches below the throne

and pulls out a big, common dinner bell which is painted the same vivid scarlet as the

throne. He rings it vigorously_ then stops to listen. Then he goes to both doors, rings

again, and looks out” [420]. Smithers own sense of superiority over the black Jones and

the native islanders on the other hand establishes negative impression of belonging to a

particular class and race. For instance, Smithers in the first scene expresses doubt about

Jones’s claim that he killed a white man before coming to the island: “from what I’ve

’eard, it ain’t ’ealthy for a black to kill a white man in the States. They burn ’em in oil,

don’t they?”[421]. Smithers himself exemplifies white racist attitudes that were there in

O’Neill’s society. Sporadic reference to Jones as a hateful black is made obvious through

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O’Neill’s own words. O’Neill definitely qualifies him with some affirmative qualities.

But he clearly excludes either Jones’s black identity or his "typically Negroid" features

from these affirmative features. On the contrary black is absolutely loathed and derided in

the characterization of the protagonists of the play. Smithers, for instance addresses the

old native woman as "yer black cow", and Lem, the native chief, is "a heavy-set, ape-

faced old savage of the extreme African type," "dressed only in a loin cloth". Even when

Jones is described as having "strength of will," "a hardy, self-reliant confidence in himself

that inspires respect," and "eyes alive with a keen, cunning intelligence," his patronizing

manner is noticeably underscored in "not altogether," yet certainly "ridiculous’

terms[422]. Jones’ flight into the dark forest to die in misery there is symbolic in many

respects. It symbolically represents crises that the black faced in a racially biased 1920s

American culture.. The crises is physical as well as psychic the physical manifestation of

the crises is possible death, while the psychic is related to perpetual fear of persecution,

and death. Expressionist technique has been used to lay bare this crisis in Jones’

personality. Quite brilliantly O’Neill juxtaposes Jones state of mind with the loud and

persistent beat of the drum. The beat also symbolizes dark and persecutory racial forces at

work in American culture of that period. The persistency beat also signifies the deep

rooted repulsion against the black. At deeper level, Jones is conscious of his racial

background and the loud beat of the drum reinforces the fearful and persecuting racial

forces that are after him. His flight in this context is not a heroic adventure or struggle to

save life from the threatening forces. It reveals the terrible personality crises and sharp

and clear regression in that environment that continues till he meets his natural end in this

situation. His flight also signifies that for black the uppermost thought in the prejudiced

culture is to struggle for life’s security, but fear is constant factor in his struggle for

safety. The ever audible beat reinforce that death is nearby, and he could feel its presence

through the regular beat of the drum. Gradually O’Neill matches rhythmic beat of the

drum beat with increasing possibility of Jones psychological collapse and death. The

terrible flight from impending death starts as Smithers informs him that the natives have

begun a dance of rebellion for killing the emperor. Smithers tries to instill this fear in

Jones by referring to the natives’ intention to send ghosts after him into the dark forest. At

the moment Jones is firmly placed in his confidence and retorts by saying that he’s not

afraid of ghosts and that by nightfall he will be out of the reach of the natives. His flight

starts very causally through the forest at 3:30 in the afternoon. Drum beating has already

started. When it is first heard, Jones “starts at the sound,” and “a strange look of

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apprehension creeps into his face for a moment as he listens.” Then he asks, “with an

attempt to regain his most casual manner: What’s dat drum beatin’ fo’?” He is “a tiny bit

awed and shaken in spite of himself”, the real test of endurance starts at the forest. Here

he undergoes the terrible disintegration in his mind as well as body. His mental

disintegration can be examined through his fears in the forms of horrifying hallucinations,

while the physical disintegration starts with his inability to find food that could sustain

him in the ordeal. Furthermore his gradual discarding of the torn and tattered uniform,

stifling heat, physical exhaustion, inability to rest for the reappearance of ghosts and

hallucination and increased beat of the drum represent his typical psychic disintegration

that would only lead to his death, “that is inevitable and too obviously anticipated by the

extreme characterization of the protagonist”[423] and as an act of self immolation:

Brutus Jones dies because he has been unable to recognize and, consequently, reconcile both his communal and personal past with their present manifestations. Every time Jones shot a figure of his hallucinations, he killed a part of himself and therefore, by shooting the crocodile with the silver bullet reserved for him, he performs a ritual of self immolation as demanded by his rejection of his true image and history (Carme 2005).

Brietzke [424] explains his death as an, "inevitable collapse of confidence into despair

that is hinted at in the initial scenes and that steadily erodes in the succeeding scenes". It ,

writes Brietzke “the limitations of Emperor Jones and the play exhausts itself "in one

act". Moreover his regression and disintegration is also marred by stripping of his illusion

of safety, greatness, strength and superiority symbolized through the silver bullet. After

he becomes “emperor,” Jones thinks of himself as being separate from and superior to the

natives of the island, whom he characterizes as “de low-flung bush niggers,” “dese fool

woods’ niggers,” and “black trash.” He sees himself as civilized, and he is contemptuous

of “dis raggedy country.” In Scene IV, as he is recovering from his vision of Jeff, Jones

says to himself, “Is yo’ civilized, or is yo’ like dese ign’rent black niggers, heah?” And

Jones is also contemptuously racist toward Smithers: “Talk polite, white man! Talk polite,

you heah me! I’m boss heah now, is you forgettin’? But this illusionary sense of

superiority totally disintegrates in the night long ordeal in the forces to leave him

exhausted and collapsed.

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5.2.3 MECHANIZED CONDITIONS AND BEHAVIOURAL DISORDERS:

Mechanization or control of machine over human emotions and sentiments is

another factor in modern society that can generate deviant behavior. Hairy Ape is a

classic example that brings out the harrowing account of the effect of dominant culture on

individual and group psyche this kind of effect. It was first was first produced on March

9, 1922, by the Provincetown Players. It can be as Berlin [425] writes “considered the

first important play that attacks the materialism of American society”. Berlin, however,

suggests that the play goes beyond condemnation of capitalist society and is more

“metaphysical and spiritual than social and is concerned with man’s struggle with his own

fall” and Bigsby [426], terms it a play of “social alienation.” In Orr’s opinion [427] the

play reveals the alienation of “an individual estrangement of the authentically primitive

from the falsely civilized”. Rundle [428] analyses the play as study of Darwinian

Evolution that O’Neill stages “out of the ordered confines of the museum”. Psychological

and metaphysical dimensions are no doubt present in the play, but they are the product of

a particular and dominant culture and not vice versa. It is the machine and the production

that determine the ultimate psychology and metaphysics here. Anxiety, neurotic

sufferings, and guilt are the price that is paid for accomplishments and the triumphs of

modern society. The painful psychopathological conditions do not result from human

instincts in such circumstances, but from the particular way in which human instincts of

love, preservations, enlightenment, and procreation are channeled and directed in the

machine dominated culture. It is a play about that culture which writes Gabriel [429]

“even Marx may have found difficult to anticipate”, a culture that has forced “the

domination of machine (dead labor) over man (Living Labor). In the first scene stage

direction, O’Neill establishes machine dominance over human to an absolute degree – a

state of animalism - where man has virtually lost his natural disposition and even shape to

look like caged apes with hairy chests and long powerful arms, “and low receding brows

above their small, fierce, resentful eyes.” [430] Yank is the representative of this group /

class, forced to the submission of machine and mechanized society to serve its objectives.

The absolute control of the machine power over the human is made manifest right

from the beginning of the play. Early scenes dramatize mechanized dominance on human

beings through mechanized sounds that has engulfed the workers even in spare time. The

description of the sailors gathered in the forecastle of the ship exemplifies this

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expressionistic approach. The room is crowded with men, shouting, cursing, laughing,

singing and confused, inchoate uproar swelling into a sort of unity, a meaning the

bewildered, furious, baffled defiance of a beast in a cage [431]. The inhuman of the men

is further highlighted in another stage direction, which indicates that the men themselves

should resemble those pictures in which the appearance of Neanderthal man is guessed

at. All are hairy-chested, with long arms of tremendous power, and low, receding brows

above their small, fierce, resentful eyes. The sailors’ animated mood is harmonized by

"a mechanical, regulated recurrence” of "the monotonous throbbing beat of the engines”

Similarly, the "Voices" of the stokers in scenes one, three and four display mechanical

order. They use short phrases and sentences which are overwhelmed by the noisy

machine. For instance when Yank tries cynically to "t' ink" in the opening scene, all the

men "with the same cynical mockery" repeat "Think!" The repetition is focused, and

demonstrates that properties which distinguish man from beast are constantly hated and

loathed by the machine dominated worker. Dominated by machine, they seem to have

lost understanding of these civilizing and humanizing characteristics. Here lies the irony

of the play is, that man's amazing science and technology have resulted in the

dehumanization of a large segment of the race - producing a distorted human environment

which generates s behavioral disorders and ridicule all that makes man human. The

workers are helpless before the dominating machine factor and must surrender before it in

any form to exist. These descriptions also reveal the worker have little chance to develop

their ego or self in a constructive manner. Yank sense of belongingness to this world is

even higher than his companions:

I am de ting in noise dat makes yuh hear it; I’m smoke and express trains and steamers and factory whistles; I’m de ting in gold dat makes it money! And I’m what make iron into steel, steel dat stands for the whole ting! And I’m steel- steel – steel! I’m de muscles in steel, de punch behind it.

Yank’s fellows show the same tendency to accept the machine dominance. Their voices

outbursts and response to metallic machine sound substantiate their helpless existence in

non human condition. The noises of his fellows reinforce the smugness of this subhuman

being in non human environment. Signals, gongs and whistle are commands for the

mechanized work condition to the helpless workers to resume their working. Their impact

on workers like Yank is irrigative and at times as in scene three "drives Yank into a

sudden fury". His brutal reaction to the irritating whistling sound has terrifying effect on

timid and terrified Mildred. The same sounds are carried on into the city to substantiate

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the control of the machine by the urban civilized world as well, and when he lands in jail

he hears again the "hard, barking laughter" of brutes dehumanized by modern society.

Yank's subsequent death at the Zoo again finds him surrounded by steel and animal

voices. When the gorilla tosses him into the cage, "a great uproar of frightened chattering

and whimpering" erupts from the monkeys in the background. Even his attempt to rid

himself of the environment is abortive. It was his encounter with enfeebled Mildred

Douglas who calls him a filthy beast that produces self-consciousness in him and even

provokes him to seek her out with revenge in mind. He never finds her, but proceeds to

attack other authoritative forces of which (he comes to believe) she is an agent. His first

target is the bourgeoisie of Manhattan; but when he physically assaults them, nothing

happens. Rather it is he who retreats after each collision until he is arrested and

imprisoned by a platoon of policemen for making a man miss his bus. His devotion to

machine is also reflective of misplaced sexuality in a mechanized society. As referred

above( chapter 4, section 4.2) masculinity goes to the machine which is assumed as a

“substitute to life giving feminine principle . Yank for instance uses very suggestive

sexually charged language for machine:

Yank. . . .Dat’s the stuff! Let her have it! All togedder now! Sling it into her! Let her ride! Shoot de piece now Call de toin on her! Drive her into it! Feel her move! . . .Drink it up, baby! Lets see yuh sprint! Dig in and gain a lap! Dere She go-o-es .

This sexually charged language symptomatizes the masculine sexuality that has gone

wasteful and slided in wrong, destructive courses. His aggressive attitude is also reflective

of Freud’s views on the destructiveness of misplaced sexuality. In his discussion on

culture Freud frequently refers to the displaced libidinal desires to be the cause of

increased aggressiveness and severity of intolerance; “the more man controls his

aggressiveness, the more intense his ideal’s inclination towards aggressiveness against his

ego.30 The description of Mildred and her aunt, on the other hand, contrasts with what

Yank’s character suggests. Here in the delineation of these characters lies O’ Neill’s

vision of inert, sapless, lifeless, artificial mechanized culture that contrasts with “the

beautiful vivid life of the sea all about. O’Neill in his stage directions describes Mildred

as a “girl of twenty, slender, with a pale pretty face marred by a self conscious expression

of disdainful superiority. She looks fretful, nervous, and discontented, bored by her own

anaemi.”.

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5.3 CONCLUSION

The study in this section analyzed that certain factors in a society can create

abnormal and deviant psychic traits in individuals. The study concentrated on religion and

racism in particular as producers of different behavioral disorders. In the sphere of

religion, it was analyzed that religion through its ideology of control and inhibition can

create negative behavioral trends from mild to severe one. The study debated it with

particular reference to his Mourning Becomes Electra and Long Day’s Journey into

Night. O’Neill’s concern with religion assumes specific importance in the present day

global situation. It appears here as a force that renders human behavioral growth

problematical and intricate through creating regressive and negative thoughts and

personality disintegration with negative effects for the society as well. But the role of

religion in O’Neill is free from its political aspects. Similarly impact of racial factor on

the personalities in the analyzed plays is substantially regressive and in God Chillum in

particular, the characters regress into factual madness. The psychic disintegration in

Emperor Jones has been subtly executed through expressionistic technique and effective

imagery. But it equally reflects the personality crises of a black in the backdrop of racial

issue and culture. However, far from treating these as stereotypical projections, the

particular behavioral pattern in these plays needs to placed in the overall context of his

art. O’Neill is characteristically inclined to dramatize acute emotive and psychic states

with unparalleled persistency that could be found in the entire range of his art. In early

sea play, O’Neill has dramatized low human conditions in terms of the quality of life and

its outcome. The crews of the ships are predominantly inclined to violence, drink and

prostitution in an apparent move to live out their existence. In Desire Strange Interlude

and Mourning Becomes Electra Life is a sexual hell with pronounced emotive and

psychic collapse of the principal characters (chapter 4). In Long Day’s journey and A

Touch of Poet the psychic collapse is treated through subtle juxtaposition of Freudian

Oedipal myth with domestic/familial conflicts (chapters 3 and 4). In Iceman Cometh

several deranged are seen living out their existence in illusion and “pipe dream” (chapter

6). Here in plays like Chillum, the personality crises spring from a particular cultural

factor, but in terms of intensity and regression it equals the other plays and connects the

wide range of his plays in uniform thread.

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CHAPTER 6

PSYCHOANALYSIS, READERS AND TRAGIC AFFECT

6.1 INTRODUCTION

O’Neill’s art has attracted substantial critical response, but the bulk of the

criticism has been directed at the thematic and structural aspects of his works. Little

efforts have been made to analyze what could be the effect of his grim tragedies on

readers, particularly of diverse cultural backgrounds. Similarly little has been written

to analyze and debate the therapeutic and cathartic aspect of his art on the readers as

they interact with the text. This study here in this section attempts to analyze what

could be the psychological effect of a characteristically regressive world view on the

modern readers and how far it differs from the cathartic effect of the classical.

6.2 TRAGIC EFFECT/CATHARSIS

Tragedy is indeed the supreme art that has been made available to the world. By

dramatizing the role of certain conditions in shaping human actions in concrete instances,

tragedy serves as a precious resource for reflection on diverse aspects of life. Barbour has

discussed the importance of tragic art with reference to its moral dimensions [432]. He

basis his arguments on the issue that tragedies direct attention to certain aspects of moral

experience which usual understanding of ethics can not explain. Tragedy shows, he writes

how a person's virtue can lead to the greatest sufferings. One aspect of the moral structure

of tragedy, he writes is a sharp discrepancy between our good intentions and its disastrous

consequences. Tragic literature, writes Barbour, “shows how moral notions are bound up

with broader human aims and capacities so that not only the intellect, but the emotions

and the will, are actively and affectively engaged in trying to live according to a particular

vision of the good life”. He further writes that tragedy raises all our “lingering doubts

about the connection between happiness and virtue and arouses the fears and uncertainties

that we moralistically deny in order to reassure ourselves”. He emphasizes that the tragic

spectacle does not put our minds to rest;

it makes us question the adequacy of our theoretical (philosophical and theological) explanations for the good man's suffering. By raising such doubts, tragedy not only functions as an incentive to further reflection but may help us perceive more compassionately the misery of others. The humanizing potential

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of tragedy lies in its ability to shatter settled notions about blame and responsibility by presenting in poignant detail the suffering of others [433].

This explanation establishes relation of abiding interest between the art and the readers.

Tragic effect theory as initiated by Aristotle address the intellectual, emotive and

psychological dimension of tragic art effect on the readers. Aristotle’s ideas on ideas on

Cleos (pity) and Phobos (fear), and the catharsis of such emotions have continued to

attract critical debate. One obvious factor in the whole debate is that the concept of

catharsis with all its provisions of pity and fear is directly related to the reader/audience.

Aristotle did not use the word aesthetic pleasure to explain the function of tragedy and his

theory catharsis is part of the definition of tragedy: an imitation of an action "with

incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions”.

This is the only passage in the text of Poetics which explicitly mentions "catharsis” and

makes it one of the most widely debated passages of the whole work. Scholars have

however not agreed on either the exact meaning of the term or the range of its application.

What does the term catharsis mean? Some commentators believe it is a moral or

intellectual clarification or enlightenment for the audience, while others take it as a

medical term having potential to relieve the audience of distressing emotions. The

diversity of speculations about catharsis can be divided into three basic categories:

clarification, purgation, and cleansing. Each of these views has strong supporters and

admirers. The first interpretation stresses catharsis as a process of clarification or

enlightenment. Gassner [434] believes that it is the intellectual and moral clarification we

experience while watching a tragedy which separates this form from melodrama and

enables the catharsis to take place. House [435] interprets it in terms of moral

cleansing/balancing. “Goodness”, writes House, does not lie alone in the adjustment of

qualities of pleasure, anger or fear, but in the balance and rightness resulting from such

adjustments”. Tragedy by first arousing the twin emotions of pity and fear from

“potentiality to activity by worthy stimuli” and then “by directing them to the right

objects in the right way” makes them work “within the limit of the play” exactly like the

emotions of a good man. They, however, subside to “potentiality again after the play is

over”. Their return to what House calls potentiality is not, however, a normal course of

fluctuating between two opposite poles. The return, House believes is marked by

disciplining effects of aroused emotions. “Our responses are brought near”, writes House,

“to those of good and wise”; and we are imparted a kind of “emotional balance and

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equilibrium”, which “may well be called a state of emotional health”. The second point of

view, catharsis as emotional purgation or therapeutic relief, assumes that pity and fear are,

in many respects, disturbing and uncomfortable emotions. Therefore, they should be

eliminated. Somehow, in viewing a tragedy, these affections are raised to a pitch, and

when they are finally relieved, the morbid element is thrown off. Butcher [436], for

example, contends that "as the tragic action progresses, when the tumult of the mind, first

roused, has afterwards subsided, the lower forms of emotion are found to have been

transmuted into higher and more refined forms". The homeopathic understanding has

much to recommend it. According to Berys [437] tragedy expels cathartic emotions, fear

and pity and perhaps others from the spectators. But “catharsis is not an intellectualization

or cleansing of the emotions” argues Berys, “but a purgation of them” and “tragedians

thus heal the soul much as doctors, often, heal the body: by getting rid of bad things in it”.

The third understanding, catharsis as cleansing or purification, identifies the concept as a

function of plot or a product of mimesis. Schaper [438] among others believes that "it

would be entirely un-Aristotelian to think of the telos of something in terms other than

structural."It is her contention that a "therapeutic interpretation" forces us to "shift from a

structural analysis to descriptive psychology, and to regard tragedy as a means of

achieving a certain end". Kitto [439] considers catharsis an aesthetic "cleaning up" of the

"distressful" "raw material" of the tragic event, or an artistic representation which

removes the "uncertain, contingent, [and] purely accidental," so that the action is rendered

"clear-cut and significant." Kitto explains that "the mimesis clears away everything but

what is meaningful. ... It works this catharsis of the event by evoking our pity and fear

and cannot work such catharsis on events which resist pity and fear-such as excite nothing

but revulsion. It is because the mimesis does this that it makes the distressful event a

source of pleasure to us; an event that moves our pity and fear is one of deep significance

to all”.

The debate over Aristotle's meaning is not only unresolved, it also shows no

perceptible evolution. In the preface to the original (1651) edition of Nicomede, Corneill

comments on the singularity of his play, and argues that it aroused admiration rather than

compassion [440]. He also discusses the role of the marvelous (to thaumaston) and of

surprised astonishment (ekplexis) and both can be used to heighten pity and fear. There is

thus an Aristotelian basis for including admiration in the category of the tragic emotions.

In post modern theatre, catharsis continues to occupy importance in dramatic theories and

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performance. Antonin Artaud’s experiment in theater [441] emphasizes different view of

effect on the audiences. He is strongly critical of Renaissance drama especially

Shakespeare and Racine for what he call “ purely descriptive and narrative theatre”

where the actor are on one side and audience on the other side, divided by the stage. This

made the spectator “into perverse ‘peeping tom’ of the character psychology at a safe

‘disinterested’ distance. . .”[442]. He did not also believe in the effectiveness of cathartic

power of plays like Sophocles Oedipus Rex for the contemporary audiences. He is all

praise for presence of plague epidemic in the play, “but its poison is ameliorated by ‘a

manner and language that have lost all touch with the rude and epileptic rhythm of our

time’”[443]. “Up until the time of his confinement in 1937, Artaud espoused theatre as an

instrument of civilizational catharsis, and he equates theatre with plague, alchemy,

metaphysics, and cruelty—doubles all” [444]. The core of his theoretical belief regarding

catharsis and theatrical effect is based on “philosophical axiom that the complete

liberation of evil forces (even beyond the libido) would bring about the good” [445]. He

put greater emphasis on action, stage effect to shake the audience and show the full

impact of evil. Action is and remains the focal point of Artaud's productions. He called

for a theatre of participatory action:

We need above all a theatre that wakes us up: nerves and heart. ... In the anguished, catastrophic period we live in, we feel an urgent need for a theatre which events do not exceed, whose resonance is deep within us, dominating the instability of the times [446].

Conceiving a Theatre of Cruelty, Artaud outlined its function in relation to its audience:

The Theatre of Cruelty proposes to resort to a mass spectacle; to seek in the agitation of tremendous masses, convulsed and hurled against each other, a little of that poetry of festivals and crowds when, all too rarely nowadays, the people pour out into the streets. The theatre must give us everything that is in crime, love, war, or madness, if it wants to recover its necessity. In a word, we believe that there are living forces in what is called poetry and that the image of a crime presented in the requisite theatrical conditions is something infinitely more terrible for the spirit than that same crime when actually committed [447].

What did Artaud say specifically about the relationship between the theatre and the

spectator? According to Artaud, the Theatre of Cruelty would be

a theatre that induces trance ..... furnishing the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of life and matter, even his

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cannibalism, pours out, on a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior[448].

While admitting man's perversity and the existence of evil in the world, Artaud believed

that man's nature was basically heroic. The Theatre of Cruelty would ennoble society by

purging it of its irrational appetites.

The action of theatre, like that of plague, is beneficial, for, impelling men to see themselves as they are, it causes the mask to fall, reveals the lie, the slackness, baseness, and hypocrisy of our world; . . . and in revealing to collectivities of men their dark power, their hidden force, it invites them to take, in the face of destiny, a superior and heroic attitude they would never have assumed without it [449].

Artaud's conception of the “place” where the Spectacle of Horror would be presented is

spectacular:

We abolish the stage and the auditorium, which will be replaced by a single site, without partition or boundary of any kind, and this will become the theatre for the action. Direct communication between spectator and spectacle will be restored.... We will take some hangar or barn which will be rebuilt by methods which have resulted in the architecture of certain churches or holy places, and of certain Tibetan temples [450].

Artaud continues to argue that special positions will be reserved for the actors and for the

action at the four corners of the room. However he continues to write , there will be a

central area set aside, which, although not strictly speaking a stage, will permit most of

the action to be concentrated and to be brought to a climax whenever that is necessary

[451]. He also writes of the spectacle:

The spectacle ... by elimination of the stage ... will physically envelop the spectator and immerse him in a constant bath of lights, images, movements, and noises. ...And just as there will be no unoccupied point in space, there will be neither respite nor vacancy in the spectator's mind or sensibility. That is, between life and the theatre there will be no distinct division, but instead continuity. Anyone who has watched a scene of any movies being filmed will understand exactly what we mean [452].

In 20th century interpretations, the term catharsis has assumed therapeutic orientation for

the clinically sick in hospitals and other such places. In “Catharsis in Healing, Ritual, and

Drama”, Scheff [453] regards catharsis as "the discharge of the distressful emotions . . . as

largely internal, involuntary processes with invariant external indicators, such as weeping,

shivering, cold sweating and so on". Scheff's description of the cathartic process has three

parts: the arrangement of the stimuli, which are optimally distant; the participant’s

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response; catharsis; and decrease in tension. Jones [454] in his book Drama as Therapy:

Theory Practice and Research works on drama as a therapeutic technique, effective not

only in theoretical position but also in practice. He defines drama therapy as

“involvement in drama with a healing intention”. The healing process is defined as a

relationship “between the enacted fictional self and the client’s usual identity, and this

dynamic, active relationship is seen as the basis s of therapeutic change in role based

work within drama therapy”. Drama therapy primarily involves actor/character. But the

same may be extended to the audience as they interact with the actor, show understanding

of his crises or distance themselves from his predicament as it clashes with their social,

cultural values and beliefs. Accentuating the loss through performance and stage

representations would not shake /cleanse the reader/audience, actor out of the alienated,

psychopathological self. As a therapeutic technique, drama can achieve its therapeutic

effect through creating empathy and not antipathy and through the appeal to human

emotions and not straining them through the representation of loss, anxiety and deviant

behaviors. As crises of discreet nature and dimension have affected human life adversely,

revival of therapeutic art /literature has become need of the hour. The readers’

expectations of cathartic relief through the process of art are frustrated in O’Neill as it

presents psychic disintegration and loss for various reasons and of various shapes as

analyzed in the previous chapters instead of relieving it through effective strategies.

6.3 O’NEILL AND TRAGIC AFFECT

O’Neill’s theatre is a powerful medium of affecting emotions, but the effect is not

one of purgation, clarification or purification. On the contrary it is one of psychic strain,

depressiveness, at times disgust and inability to feel empathy with the sufferer as the

dramatic action unfolds. No doubt violence, death, and use of strong emotions also

govern the thematic and structural aspects of the classic Greek art, but the overall impact

is not depressive. Violence and use of strong emotions for instance could be seen in

Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Rex. In Antigone [455] Antigone faces a grim dilemma.

The Chorus (society) and Creon are in unison on death penalty for the one who

transgresses the royal law. While Ismene refuses to challenge the authority, Antigone

emphatically declares that “I will go heap; the earth above the brother that I love”[456]

defies the law, and gives dead Polynieces a proper burial; thus earns Creon wrath and

faces ultimate death. A tempestuous exchange of dialogue ensues between Creon and

Antigone after she is found guilty of breaking the law. Creon anger burst out as he sees

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Ismene after Antigone had been awarded death penalty. When Haemon comes to plead

with his father against the penalty, the Chorus announces a foreboding of his hopes of

marriage denied on the tragic excess. In the following scene, Sophocles gives one of

many striking examples of his irony in the speech in which Creon bids his son reject

Antigone and send her off “to get a husband in the world below” [457]. This

foreshadows Haemon's own doom i.e. he himself will be with the dead Antigone. In the

long dialogue with his father, Haemon gives a warning that Antigone's death may involve

someone else. But Creon's for want of judgment misses the warning. The most specific

threat of all, however, is found in Haemon's parting words—the last line he speaks in the

whole play: “And never; will you set eyes upon my face again”. As he departs the Chorus

say: “Sir he is gone; his anger gives him speed, young men are bitter in their agony”. As

the drama moves on to its conclusion the promises and reports of violence continue.

Teiresias foretells the death of Creon's son. The messenger reports the death of Haemon

by his own hand and once more brings in a reference to Haemon's wrath at his father for

the death of his beloved Antigone. The messenger describes the scene of Haemon’s death

in vivid detail. Creon had sent his followers to explore the cell and they had found

Antigone hanging by the neck and Haemon embracing her dead body “His arms flung

around her waist, grieving aloud; for his bride lost in death”. Then Haemon hears his

father's agonized voice crying: My son my son; what have you done/ What are you

thinking of doing/ voice and realizes that the cause of all his grief is close at hand.

Sophocles describes the effect on the young man in brief and vivid phrases. He is mad

with rage; in fact his eyes are described as those of a wild beast. In a fit of anger he spitts

in his face, and then tries to kill him. But his own anger and Creaon’ flight to the door

prevents his attempt. Instead of pursuing his father, he carries out his intention of suicide

and dies with his arms about the body of Antigone. Thus Haemon fulfills the promise he

had made that his father's eyes should never gaze on him again alive, and at the same time

express his supreme disrespect and hatred for his father. This violent scene is followed by

terrible psychic and mournful condition of Creon, accentuated further by his wife’s

immediate suicide. But the most violent episodes in the play are tied to Haemon’s suicide

after Antigone’s death and the series of death and shock that are initiated in the Creon’s

households. Some conclusion that the dramatization of these events provide pertain to

Sophocles’ artistic technique. The first is that Sophocles allows tragic irony to work

subtly and appear again and again, the significant lines are never idly spoken. So it is

here. Haemon’s warning to his father prompts his own vicious action in the last moment

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of his life. Then Sophocles never left loose ends in his dramas. The other point t is that

most shocking episodes were performed off the stage.. It is an act of violence like the

attempt of Haemon on his father's life and his own suicide or the subsequent suicide of

Eurydice. Such things Sophocles carefully bars from his stage. It is true that he shows the

dead bodies of Haemon and Eurydice on the stage in the Antigone, the slaughtered

animals in the Ajax, the dead body of Clytemnestra in the Electra, and Oedipus with

blood dripping from his ravished eyes in the Oedipus Tyrannous. But the horrible deed

like Antigone hanging herself, Haemon killing himself around her body, Jocasta hanging

herself, Oedipus blinding himself take place off the stage. Hence the spectator’s emotions

are not strained with gruesome act of violence (For violence and its implications in

Medea see Chapter 6).

In O’Neill Readers consistently face an absolute preoccupation with a world on

the decline in his plays. In chapter 3, the study analyzed O’Neill’s creativity in terms of

confrontation with personal crisis, loss and anxiety that inform his world view with

“depressive attribution style” [458]. It was debated that the ultimate impression that his

creative art construct is one of personality disintegration, loss and anxiety that create

several problems relating to representative dimension of art. In chapter 4, the study

analyzed several behavioral disorders in O’Neill’s dramatis personas. Chapter 5 analyzed

the role society plays in generating behavioral disorders in O’Neill. The most prominent

constituents of society that generate such disorders were religion and racism. Plays like

Desire under Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra and Long Day’s Journey were analyzed

to highlight the terrible and depressive role of religion to create certain abnormal

tendencies; and in All Gods Chillum Got Wings and Emperor Jones, such cultural

elements as racism were focused to effect of racism on human behavior. In all these

situations, the reader has to confront repetitiveness of particular human behavior, fixed

thought processes, and confined emotive states as discussed earlier in the study that have

a determinable regressive effect on readers’ thoughts and imaginative sensibilities. The

study here focuses on two other areas for analyzing non cathartic effects of O’Neill’s art.

They are moral crises and O’Neill’s use of language/interior monologue:

6.3.1 MORAL/ETHICAL CRISES AND PROBLEM OF TRAGIC EFFECT

The Twentieth Century across the globe as referred above saw numerous

catastrophic upheavals and changes, “crises of thought and speech” [459] having

determinable effects on all aspect of the society. One major setback that it received

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pertains to the decline of faith and religion in human affairs, generating spiritual chaos

and profound sense of loss at all levels in the society. This sordid phenomenon owes a lot

to the rise of Western philosophical discourses in such areas as psychology, materialism

and secularism. Freud with his theories that focused extraordinarily on erotic/sexual

desires as integral to the development of child/adult identity became instrumental in

challenging the traditions and religion. He argued that difficulties in the realm of

sexuality were the cause of mental disturbances: Clashes between the demands of sexual

drives and the internal resistances they raise encourage repression, which in turn creates

neurotic symptoms [460]. Nietzsche [461] has remained another prominent influence on

modern thoughts concerning human existence and metaphysics. His theoretical stance on

God’s existence and morality in fact challenged the traditional faith and attempted to

nullify all theological and spiritual dimensions of human existence itself. Earlier

Kierkegaard (1813-55), the forefather of existentialism strongly asserted the necessity of

individualism, especially in relation with God about whose existence he himself was very

anxious. Theories of Darwin (1809-82), and their translation into social science by

Herbert Spencer and the rise modern science further threatened the religious thoughts and

theories. The upsurge of secularism itself speaks of the deep decline in religion in human

affairs at all levels [462]. Modern drama generally reflects this rise of secularism and

moral emptiness. O’Neill’s modern drama is one clear instance of these crises of the

modern age. Nevertheless, little has been written to explain what the specific nature of

this crisis is? How does it emerge in his tragic art? How far it adheres or differs from the

tradition of tragedy? And what role this crises plays in diminishing cathartic effect on the

readers?. The study takes into consideration these to explore various dimensions of

ethical crises in O’Neill’s modern theatre.

6.3.1.1. PERSONAL CONTEXT AND ETHICAL CRISES

Ethical crises in O’Neill owe a lot to his personal context. As referred earlier (see

chapter 3 and 4) he was born and brought up in a rigid Catholic environment and family

culture. Its determinable impact could be seen on his rebellion against the very catholic

codes that he was taught to practice and believe. Depressed and sullen by “such

misfortunes as mother’s sickness “he found it harder and harder to keep faith”, and when

he got undeniable evidence of mother’s addiction, he “gave up all pretence of fidelity to

religion”. He became an ardent reader of “mordant poets: Dowsen, Swinburn, Wilde,

Rosette, Baudelaire, and Poe (‘whore mongers and degenerates’), committing “every

possible prank”; and “incurring the lethal risk of alcoholism and debauchery that ended in

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suicidal depression. Cynical, angry, and blasphemous, Eugene sought out the

companionship of the world’s drop outs: drifters, losers, whores and hoodlums”[463].

This life pattern is a clear example of possible disequilibrium between the indoctrination

along specific lines and the real existing conditions. Particular domestic environment and

the crises in O’Neill’s case become one major force to question faith in deity/religion.

Besides some intellectual influences that coincided with the artist’s sullen state of mind

accentuated his personal, moral and religious disintegration. The most significant

influences were those of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Strindberg and Freud. Schopenhauer’s

[464] The World as Will and Representation is a strongly pessimistic account of human

life and nature where he makes pain and suffering a stark human reality: “suffering is

essential to life, and therefore does not flow in upon us from outside, but every one

carries around within him its perennial source.” The gist of his argument is that all

existence and life generally are characterized by ceaseless struggle, resulting in inevitable

destruction, and involving incessant suffering of one kind or another. The completely

human affair, to him is pointless as nothing of any value is achieved and man finds

himself confronting an inner emptiness and sense of nothingness. His views on sex and

procreation are equally pessimistic. Anticipating Freud he writes, “Indeed, it may be said

that man is concrete sexual impulse, for his origin is an act of copulation, and this impulse

alone perpetuate . . . his phenomenal appearance.” Schopenhauer’s tragic vision is equally

grim. To him tragedy is an exposure of worthlessness of life; its content is the horrible,

sorrow of man, and the triumph of evil. O’Neill’s dramatic world is in multiple ways a

thorough embodiment of what has been referred to in the work and thought of

Schopenhauer. It is replete with emotive and psychic decline with little possibility of

resolution of the impending decline. Commentators have found close similarity between

O’Neill drama and Schopenhauer worldview [465]. Nietzsche was another determinable

influence on O’Neill’s mind and art and number of his plays are reflection of Nietzsche’s

arguments concerning human existence and metaphysics [466]. He was even implacably

hostile to the whole of morality as it has historically existed and his program is to sweep

it away and replace it with the opposite and true values of nature and self-assertion”[467].

Moreover, the majority of humankind for him is characterized by slave mentality brought

into established mode by the established church and the state. Since what he called the

death of God, the slave ethics has become unstable. Hereafter, each man of worth, he said

must begin to create his own values and meaning by taking control of his world, and if he

is to achieve true stability and fulfill his creative potential, man must forget his old

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morality and devise a new basis for authority. In addition, this is what O’Neill’s several

characters do. His men and women work out their course of life with little concern for

what ethics or morality sanctions. Some of them are also explicit in their denial of God

and create their own mother God (as for instance Nina in Strange Interlude). However,

O’Neill has taken “those ideas and perceptions that meet his own psychological needs;

the work as a whole has not been rationally pondered and re-patterned in his mind.” Thus,

the personal context matters a lot in the depiction of moral chaos in his art. However, the

perceptibility of such influences in O’Neill’s does not mean mere appropriation of ideas

or modeling plays on them.

6.3.1.2. ACTION DEFIES MORAL IMPLICATIONS

Shaughnessy contends that regardless of his so-called contempt for religious

values, especially Catholicism, “he did not truly elude religion’s net” [468]. His catholic

training strongly affected his creative and imaginative sensibilities which is reflected

principally in the choice and treatment of certain themes, revolving around those of sin,

guilt, confession and redemption, without being “an apologist for ‘clean living’”[469].

Nevertheless, despite this stress on sin, the ways things turn out in the plays have

enormous impact on the overall sequence of action. Therefore O’Neill’s art may carry

moral implication; and may imply the consequences of the sin as has been suggested by

Shaughnessy, or may lead to redemption, but their manifestation in action in a particular

fashion contradicts moral implications of the deed. In scores of his plays, the readers face

performers’ total immersion in constrained, recognizable and easily definable

sexual/incestuous drives in the familial context. This is apparent in such diverse

conditions and forms as father-son conflict as in Desire under Elms, Mourning Becomes

Electra and Long Day’s Journey, father-mother conflicts as in Desire under Elms and

Mourning Becomes Electra, and daughter-mother conflict as in Mourning Becomes

Electra. One of the most vocal expressions of daughter-mother rivalry having sexual

orientations is to be found in Christine’s words to her daughter Lavinia in Mourning

Becomes Electra, “I know you, Vinnie! I’ve watched you ever since you were little,

trying to do exactly what you are doing now! You’ve tried to become the wife of your

father and the mother of Orin! You’ve always schemed to steal my place! [470] Besides it

could assume demoralizing and bitter jealousy between brothers for the desired mother as

in Beyond Horizon and Long Day’s Journey (See Chapter 3). What emerges out of these

incestuous conflicts and relations in the plays is a perfect example of psychic,

psychobiological derangement and exhaustion. Jamie for instance in Long Day’s Journey

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driven mainly by his incestuous/oedipal inclinations becomes sexually pervert,

embittered, cynical and destructively jealous. His younger brother Edmund becomes

direct victim of his deranged and jealous disintegration in the play. Direct admission of

responsibility for attempting to ruin younger brother Edmund comes in the last act. “Nix,

Kid! You listen! Did it on purpose to make a bum of you. Or part of me did. . . . Made my

mistakes look good. Made getting drunk romantic. Made whores fascinating vampires

instead of stupid, diseased slobs they really are. . . .Never wanted you succeed and make

me look even worse by comparison. Wanted you to fail. Always jealous of you. Mama’s

baby, Papa’s pet”[471]. Orin in Mourning Becomes Electra also undergoes the

psychobiological decay in the course of play (See Chapter 4). In Strange Interlude,

O’Neill dramatizes similar low and demoralized human conditions of all the principal

characters: biologically exhausted (Nina Leeds) sexually frustrated (Nina, Marsden,

Darrel) or charged for heterosexual contacts (Nina). In Iceman Cometh, one of his master

works several human deranged are seen trying to sustain themselves with last chance

delusions. Their behavior as explained below is an embodiment of psychic inertia and

complete immersion in their individual pipe dreams without any hope of improvement in

the precarious conditions that surround them from the beginning of the play (explained

below). Moreover, in Long Day’s Journey, all members of Tyrone family live out their

pitiful and useless lives in the Tyrone’s summer home in New England. The mother is a

dope addict, the father a destroyed parsimonious actor, one son a drunkard, sexually

pervert, jealous of his younger brother to the extreme, and the other son a tubercular,

hopelessly morbid expressing sense of life’s utter worthlessness. They all suffer from

guilty conscience for betraying each other in the past. They realize that they must live on

in their slow movement towards death that creates a painful impression of life’s

continuity in pain and affliction. A cursory glance at the central thematic concern of all

his plays including the early ones would reveal a strong pull towards depressive and

deathly life patterns. Death is the ultimate image in most of his early plays (See Chapter

3).

6.3.1.3. LACK OF PROGRESSION OF ACTION

Action in O’Neill’s art as dramatized on the stage is not built upon the movement

of plot to ultimate resolution with improved imaginative, intellectual insight and

understanding. Tragic action as Porter contends is a movement from guilt through

suffering to purgation and insight [472]. This factor characterizes Shakespearean tragedy

in profound sense of the term. Hamlet, for instance effectively exhibits how a character

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undergoes a progression process from such negative mental states and psychic conditions

as grief, pain, or “madness” to achieve positive psychic and emotive conditions and levels

of intellectual relief and development in understanding/insight. This change is

imperceptibly and naturally transferred to the audience and readers. Jorgensen analyses

the progression in this play in terms of therapeutic effect, which is about his regaining of

sanity and moral greatness in the middle of the “of those wandering on crooked ways of

hypocrisy, dissimulation, and untruth. . . .” [473]. Jorgenson underscores the close

relation between his thought processes, therapeutic relief, improved understanding of his

predicament and his soliloquies. He contends that the process of recovery in the prince

works through his grand soliloquies. His first soliloquy, writes Jorgenson is a reflection of

deep-seated grief disturbing rational thought processes. In speaking to his mother, for

instance writes Jorgenson he is unfeelingly polite and the tone of the soliloquy and its

principal direction points to self-punishment. This self-directed anger becomes much

more evident and direct in the second soliloquy, but without his ability to convey it to

others, “a dull and muddymettled rascal,” “an ass”. However, the change starts coming

over, contends Jorgensen as the plot proceeds to its resolution. “To be, or not to be”

soliloquy (III.i.56-88) Jorgensen writes is crucial in this progress. The soliloquy, writes

Jorgensen is usually interpreted as a contemplation of suicide. “It is certainly, but not

totally. Hamlet is still more grieved than angered, more intent upon punishing himself

than upon punishing others”. The change however appears to be setting in at this vital

stage, and is to be observed in the contrasting thoughts revolving around “suffer” or “take

arms” in the soliloquy. From this point onward, writes Jorgensen Hamlet’s anger begins

to assert itself outwardly. He is found lashing against Ophelia and women, clearly

indicating the object of his anger and pain. The anger is against his mother, though it is

first misdirected against Ophelia and all women. By the end of III.ii, a significant change

has set in as Jorgensen asserts. He “is no longer a victim of melancholia, because he has

turned the frightening force of his hatred upon the one person who has most cruelly

betrayed him and his father”. When he is next seen in the closet scene, he is now not

talking to himself, as was case so far, but to another personality who happens to be his

mother. Jorgensen terms it the most successful dramatic scene in the play; “Except for the

soliloquies, it contains Hamlet's most heartfelt lines where the anger is not so painfully

disguised”. In the final Act, however, writes Jorgensen, “Hamlet regains full potential by

directing his anger against the aggressors, and not against himself”. He calls it a new

insight that the hero develops in the course of his aggression against the aggressors that

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shows his therapeutic recovery from initial shock as well as his moral nature. Jorgensen,

however, has not hinted at the transference of the same therapeutic progression to the

readers. It is important as the whole sequence of act (physical as well as psychological)

that unfolds on the stage keeps the readers occupied as well, and they are bound to feel

the same as the hero undergoes the process of change. In O’Neill’s plays, on the contrary

a static impression imposes itself on the personas conduct and structural pattern of the

action on the stage. Unlike Hamlet, a self-developed and self-sustained progression in

thought, feelings, moods and action is obviously lacking in many conditions. What

specific progression, for instance terrible Tyrones in Long Day’s Journey achieve in

difficult to assert. A paralysis hangs over the thoughts and feelings that all the four

characters reveal on the stage. The memory of Mary’s suicide attempt, death of young

Eugene and knowledge of Mary’s addiction continue to haunt the family up to the last

Act and denotes a renewal of the cyclic process of pain and sufferings along the same

lines. Had she not uttered the last sentence “that was in the winter of senior years”, writes

Chotia, the play might have ended and reached “some kind of resting place, however,

dismal” [474]. That is not the case and the play seems to have obvious revival of earlier

depressive mood and communicative pattern. Mary’s metal paralysis springs from her

post marriage terrible experiences with James that clashed directly with her pre marriage

ideal of a happy married life. Constant traveling with her actor husband, living in cheap

and dirty hotels and giving birth to babies there in extremely unsanitary conditions, death

of Eugene, all have created a traumatized hold of the past on her mind. Therefore, her

present life is consistent return to these past moments for all the ills in the present

condition. Past for her becomes the Present and “it is the future too” [475]. Next to Mary,

Edmund is the most important persona in the play and represents the determining grip of

all pervasive and constrained thought processes without ample opportunity or inclination

for self-initiated and self-sustained improved vision of their predicament. He has

“sardonic temperament grins contemptuously and provocatively and that too frequently

and grows violent when teased and confronted towards his father, mother and brother

equally”. His sense of gloom is equaled by his strong desire utter aloofness from the

impending environment. Repeated recitation of what Golub [476] calls “decadent poetry”

amply reflects his sullen state. Tyrone terms his recitation of lines from the poetry of

Dawson and Baudelaire as “morbid nonsense”, “morbid filth”, and “filth, despair and

pessimist”. The impending crises create severe desire for liberation from bodily existence

reflected strongly reflected in his desire to loose himself in the midst of fog and sea:

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The fog was where I wanted to be . . . . . Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted -- to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if, I had drowned long ago. As if I was a ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within the ghost [477].

Later on Edmund burst out his inner longing for death in other memorable expression: “I

will always be stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not

wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death” [478] .

Liewise in Mourning Becomes Electra, the personas suffer from an intellectual and

emotional malaise that makes them victims of unending process of self-torture. The non-

conclusive malaise even denies them the opportunity to grow positively in their

predicament. Shaughnessy analyses the play as spiritually lethargic, and the relationships

dramatized here in his views lack the “dynamic power that permits normal growth and

development. Enclosed in a climate of hatred and distrust, resentment and guiltiness,

understanding and vigorous exchanges are frustrated again and again. It is in Lavinia’s

ending, however, that the destructive unending process of torture and denial emerges so

effectively [479]. Alexander sees in Lavinia a clear instance of “the most passionate

affirmation” of love among all and imparting a true classical grandeur “worthy” of this

Electra figure. In her desperate cries of love, she reads exaltation of her tragic grandeur.

Shaughnessy regards her as impressive as Antigone and having that “implacability of her

resolve” [480]. However, what she chooses at the end only the bond with the dead which

concludes the play. This ending helps to understand the play’s message in its entirety.

While, all the characters live and die to show definite psychic entrapment in their past and

drives, Lavinia lives to exemplify the living of that very mode even after the death of all

other family members. Importantly before she decides to lock herself in with the dead

Mannons, she undergoes a virtual physical and psychic transformation from a religious to

very sensual, and in the process, she assumes Christine like appearance. This

phenomenon of personality transformation expresses her increased inner association with

the sensual Christine. Her trip to Pre-moral Island with Orin as analyzed above (Chapter

5) reveals her sensual self so clearly that it even shocks Orin. As she returns from the

island trip, she reveals complete sensual part of the self in her last meeting with Peter.

The furies of lust overwhelm her at the end to the disgust of Peter. He is simply shocked

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by her frenetic expression of “Kiss me! Hold me close! Want me!. . . Take me in this

house of the dead and love me! , but the disclosure of her sexual initiation with the native

at the Island repels him, “(shrinking from her aghast brokenly) Vinnie! You’ve gone

crazy! I don’t believe you - you – Couldn’t! Her bold reply, “Why shouldn’t I? I wanted

him! I wanted to learn love from him—Love that wasn’t a sin! And I did, I tell you! He

had me! I was his fancy woman! Simply horrifies him and he grows convinced of her

evilness. She is left alone to her furies of lust to punish herself declaring, “It takes

Mannon to punish themselves for being born!” [481]. His Iceman Cometh dramatizes

another form of inert and paralyzed mental and psychic conditions of all the performers

that naturally block the plot from achieving meaningful resolution. The play is painfully

concerned with several human deranged trying to sustain themselves with their last

chance delusions. One thing that ties them together is that they all have betrayed causes

they had individuality upheld in the past, but now appear to them lost and suspended in a

“timeless void” [482], they have given themselves up to drunkenness to deny

consciousness as it causes them pain of their failure and betrayal. Importantly, they have

given themselves up to this kind of existence “a self-imposed reductivism” [483] which

create a vast cleavage between the outer world and the personal world of avoidance and

stasis. They have no option, but to remain in that abysmal condition, holding on to their

illusive “pipe dreams” of faith in tomorrow. Hickey is an outsider to this world of stasis.

His previous visits to these dwellers were always a source of merriment and in a sense the

continuation of their statuesque in that bar. This time he comes with an avowed aim to

liberate them from their destructive pipedreams. He presents himself as a man who has

found peace in his own life by getting rid of his pipe dream of alcohol and adultery

sustained by constant forgiveness of his wife. He tempts them to rethink about their

respective pipe dreams and compels them to come out of these to face the outer realities.

His premise is that once they get rid of their pipedreams in the forms of illusions, they

would have the happiness in their life. Hickey’s enthusiasm forces them to leave their

cherished illusions for the time being, but the result is quite demoralizing and self-

defeating. They realize that life for them without their illusions is unendurable. In fact it

takes out the very will to live, and therefore without illusions their life assumes a steady

movement towards death. Only return to their erstwhile condition of avoidance and stasis

could ensure their existence. Hickey, the so called liberator is terribly mistaken in

thinking himself as a person liberated from his own pipe dreams. In fact his life is a

movement from one illusive pipe dream to another one . The last pertains to his illusions

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about his love for hid deceased wife. He is robbed of this illusion as well with the

realization that he actually hated her and wanted to get rid of her. When this realization

strikes him, he cries out in despair that he has not ‘got a single damned lying hope or pipe

dream left” and declares himself ready for “the chair” (Act 4). He appears virtually

wrecked, murderer and a lunatic who is bent on driving others to destruction through

robbing them of what sustains them in their ruined lives. The need of illusion may be a

necessity for some to live, but in themselves they do not amount to a reality. Similarly

they do not constitute a universally observable human paradigm. On the contrary, they

signify a crisis of soul and spirituality. Shaughnessy [484] contends that a true catholic

meaning appears in what these derelicts project. “The greatest sin” in O’Neill’s universe

is neither drunkenness nor adultery, as it is rather to rob the other of his hopeless hope”

[485]. Hickey in this sense commits this greatest sin as he comes to rob and shatter the

false sense of hope that the Harry Hope’s inmates have accumulated over the years. There

may be a reflection of O’Neill’s abandoned catholic brought up in the play, but like other

examples discussed here, the human predicament here in the play is not accompanied by

improved insight and understanding of the personas as well as the readers. The ultimate

impression is thoroughly depressive and nihilistic, and the readers’ predictability to this

end is hardly in doubt. Bloom has rightly termed it the play where “harsh expressionism

dominates . . . where the terrible confessions are not made to priestly surrogate but to the

fellow sinners, and with no hope of absolution. Confession becomes the other station on

the way to death, whether by suicide, or by alcohol, or by other modes of slow decay”

[486]. In his Lazarus Laughed, a different kind of spiritual/ethical stasis governs

personas' thought processes. Quite differently this play is about a kind of unprecedented

and unusual liberation from death and fear of death, which as O’Neill writes is the root of

all evil, the cause of all man’s blundering unhappiness” [487] and herein lies the ethical

crisis of the play. Liberation from fear and death finds eloquent expression in the play’s

protagonist and other performers’ repetitive declaration of “death is dead”. O’Neill does

not deny relationship between pain and death. Therefore, Lazarus’ proclamation of “death

is dead” [488] becomes a slogan to liberate people from death and the associated fear and

sorrow. The affirmation of life that ensues from repeated chant of Lazarus and his

followers generate a feeling of life’s ultimate triumph in the face of ever threatening

death, murder, massacre; rather Lazarus’ follower throw themselves laughingly on the

swords of the legions and stab themselves in a mood of exhilaration. It simultaneously

expounds their liberation from the perpetual fear of death and extinction. Lazarus’ pre-

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resurrection life had its substantial share of gloom and sufferings. He had suffered from

the pain caused by the death of his children, barrenness of his wife Miriam, loss of

father’s wealth after he had taken over the management of affairs. Nevertheless, post

resurrected state bears no impression of any pain that had beset him in his first life phase.

His faith in life is so strong in this second phase that he even declares in the midst of the

burning flames that there is only life. His last words to Caligula are: “Fear not Caligula!

There is no death”. Secondly, message that Lazarus spreads associates life with laughter

and life’s ultimate triumph over death. In reality, laughter assumes the position of

necessary corollary to condescendence to what Lazarus proclaims among all segments of

society, nation and groups. Larner [489] terms his laughter as “liberating laughter” which

is a window to the “eternal round of life in which man dies, but Man lives, and death is

dead”. However, the stress on liberation from death or fear of death may not be taken here

as an affirmative treatment of faith in life as such an approach would contradict the

artist’s persistent concern with death in the entire range of his dramatic career. In fact, the

repetitive chant of death is dead far from establishing glorified and optimistic faith in

eternal life reflects a teasing preoccupation with a mood that denies the existence of death

as essential to life process. Berlin [490] contends that the yes for life in the play is too

excessive even for the dramatist who thrives on repetition and usually makes it effectively

serve his purpose. Thus the play denies opportunity to grow positively and develop

insight that would mean living with a natural faith in life and death as essential parts of

process of life.

6.3.1.4. LACK OF SOCIAL DYNAMISM

Moral aspect also demands wider and broader perspective of the tragic experience

that instructs the play with broader implications. Drama is by nature a social art and it

encompasses audience as representative of society and the actor/characters owns his/her

social responsibility to them. Greek dramatic art provides as an instance of relation

between the stage and the society. It helped in developing audience association with the

actor and develops essential affiliation with his pangs or sufferings for necessary tragic

emotions of pity and fear. Burien [491] writes that conflict in tragedy is not confined to

opposition as it may involve “welfare of the community, even the ordering of human life

itself may be at stake”. Hall [492] looks upon the social aspect of Greek tragedy in terms

of producer and consumer. One particular example of actor/society relation is to be found

in Euripides Medea. Hamilton [493] studies Medea from Athenian audience perspective.

The play writes Hamilton is replete with extremes of violence made prominent through

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infanticide worked out in a particular fashion. “Today's audiences can consider and

understand Medea's motivation while simultaneously dismissing it as both a work of

fiction and as part of a past culture”. But for the fifth-century Athenian audience, Medea's

act would, “under the circumstances, make perfect sense”. Greek civic life contrary to

modern civic traditions valued the social bonds over the individual self. That is why

Medea is so much disturbed, shows so much dismay at having nowhere to go after Creon

banishes her. Moreover writes Hamilton, the Greeks considered “guilt a kind of

contamination that spread through contact or through inheritance”, therefore Medea’s

children innocent in their youth, they would surely manifest her evilness when they grew

up because they were polluted through inheritance. The city that hosted them would bring

down upon itself the wrath of the gods. Medea's killing the children while they are still

innocent, then, serves as a kind of sacrificial act that purifies the city of Corinth.

However, despite the preponderance of violence, these tragedies managed to have

cathartic effect on the audience as the research on different aspects of this Greek tragedy

substantiates. In O’Neill the personas live a life of estrangement; alienation and aloofness

that naturally de-link the personas from social association and appeal. For instance, early

sea play as analyzed previously introduce this phenomenon provides insight into the

socially detached behavior of the crew. In Desire Under Elms, Mourning becomes

Electra, Long day’s Journey, Touch of Poet and Iceman the different behavioral patterns

unearth the characters’ social detachment as well as a restricted range of emotional

expressions. In Desire the mood of separateness is established through Eben’s description

whose eyes “remind one of wild animal’s in captivity”, but carrying un-subdued spirit

[494]. But the determining factor in advancing theme of social detachment in the

individuals is one of governing desires and emotions bordering on sexuality and lusts.

Similarly in Mourning Becomes Electra the characters reveal their social detachment

through their split and guilt ridden personalities and preoccupation in the realization of

their incestuous desires. In Long Day’s Journey drunkenness, irritability, guilt, alteration

between empathy and hatred keep them in narrow cells that necessitate total withdrawal

from the outside world. Absence of social connectivity in turn mars the readers’ emotive

responses with psychic detachment and estrangement from the pangs of the personas and

their existence and relation in the course of the plays. They are not compelled to feel

sympathy (suffering with/feeling with) a person or situation, whether in life or in art,

something that readers and audiences feel for Oedipus. One important reason for such a

feeling might be the social integration of Oedipus pangs and torture and his being part of

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the society that he helped to come out of sphinx crises ( For further textual examples see

Chapter 4).

6.3.2 LANGUAGE AND TRAGIC AFFECT

Language has a great deal to do with the desirable tragic effect. It is in fact one

strong component of dramaturgy serves different purposes of communicating emotive and

psychological level of the personas to the audience/readers. It also helps in transferring

the readers core knowledge of working of their consciousness. It also plays a part in

arousing requisite level of imaginative and emotive responses of the readers / audience to

the protagonists struggle.

Modern development in expressionist and psychoanalytic theories has also

greatly initiated a paradigmatic shift from delineation of objective reality to the subjective

domain of individual’s personality. Increased focus is on what lies at the deeper level of

human consciousness and unconsciousness. Role of language in this context assumes

meaningful strength as an effective tool of accessing inner domain of human personality

and behavior. Drama being subject to stage limitations relies on effective and appropriate

language as a means to communicate protagonists’ subjective experiences and thought

processes to themselves, to the fellow performers on the stage, and to readers/ audiences.

In Chotia [495] views “it must present us with a continually developing action as each

speech emphasizes, or modifies, or alters our perception of what has gone before”. As the

consciousness moves on uninterruptedly, rhythmic language alone can reach and express

it or measure the depths of psyche. Any inadequacy of speech would only disappoint the

free expression of the fluid thought processes. The vitality of the language uncovers the

inner life of the personas with greater power and effect that keeps the readers’

sensibilities and imagination intact with possible tragic effect. Shakespeare’s tragedies are

matchless examples of this kind. Here the dialogue, asides and soliloquies effectively

show and reveal the psychic matrix in perfectly rhythmic and fluent manner [496-498].

With each passing moment, the reader comes to feel modification of the characters’

thought processes, and the level of pain or pleasure in their lives. Macbeth is an

appropriate expression of this rhythmic expression of Macbeth’s continuously increasing

torture and restlessness after that blood-spattered assassination. It is generally considered

to be one of Shakespeare's finest tragedies, often praised for its artistic coherence and the

intense economy of its dramatic action, which is replete with vivid scenes of carnage and

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treachery. Regarded as one of Shakespeare's most profound and mature visions of evil,

critics of Macbeth often study the play's extensive violence, its terrifying atmosphere, and

the inscrutable nature of its hero. The fierce, violent and vicious nature of the protagonists

deed equally provide an opportunity to read his mind as it works in those conditions and

how it carves a course for its survival there. Jacobi [499] describes Macbeth as a

sensitive, highly intelligent, imaginative, articulate man, quite unlike the brutal killing

machine) of the battlefield. With reference to his soliloquy, “naked like a new born babe”

Jacobi highlights his poetic sensitive imaginative nature that could find expression only

through beautiful imagery and expressions. “His head is full of the mixture of good and

evil. At this moment the evil side of him, which we all possess, is getting the upper hand

and in order to balance it he brings up the best, the purest, the most innocent of the

images, of angels, and new born babes, and the sky”. Language in any form: dialogue,

asides and soliloquy become an effective medium of the capturing the protagonist’s

overall preoccupation with death murder pain and fear. There is no gap between what the

protagonist continues to feel and the verbal expressions. Apart from this rhythmic

expression, the character matures in our perception. He passes from recognized status of

“too full of milk of human kindness” whose heart pounds on the slight thought of any

unnatural deed to a hardened criminal who continues to feel the scruples of the gory

deeds to man who stares death bravely and dies fighting.

Language in O’Neill bears close relationship with the structures of mind and

thought processes of his personas. It has been explained here that Language in O’Neill is

characterized by unprecedented repetition, omissions, gaps and even stasis. But this

pattern should not be taken as a failure of language on his part. On the contrary it is

realistic and it realistically communicates what lies at the bottom of his personas

consciousness. As the consciousness is affected by a deep seated malaise, their language

pattern unearth it affectively and point out the underlying psychopathology. At the out

set it needs to be emphasized that O’Neill use of language developed throughout his long

creative years. Chotia has treated this development in her classic work on O’Neill’s

language in his plays. For the purpose of showing O’Neill development as an artist who

searched for form and language, she divides his entire career into three distinct periods:

The early plays written before 1925 period are analyzed as plays with low colloquial

American English “as a kind of poetic diction [500]. Here she writes “O’Neill finds in the

speech of uneducated man model through which he can show un-accommodated man

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locked in to himself but unsure, because of the limitations of his communicative faculty,

of what that self is”[501]. The plays of the middle period (1924-34) are analyzed as plays

where O’Neill “abandoned the low colloquial in favor of Standard American English or,

as it is more properly called, General American” [502]. This form she writes is used in

two ways: rhythmical prose or quasi poetic chant and the idiomatic for. The first form is

used in the early plays of this period that include Fountain, Lazarus Laughed, Great God

Brown, Macro millions, while the idiomatic English is used in Welded, Strange Interlude,

Mourning Becomes Electra, Days Without End. The so called idiomatic language is used,

writes Chotia to “probe and project individual psyches of the character he has created”

[503]. The late master pieces are characterized by what she calls variety and

appropriateness of speech that contrasts this period with that “monotony of the middle

period”[504]. The concern here in the study is of course not to discuss the quality/kind of

the dialect, but to highlight the underlying connectivity between the thought processes

and the verbal utterances/language that is common in plays of all periods and its effect on

the readers/audience. In O’Neill, speech or dialogue in plays of middle and even late

phase suffers from what Chotia calls with reference to Mourning Becomes Electra

monotony, repetition, internment around certain thoughts that develop predictability and

anticipation about the next moment is largely responsible for non cathartic effect of

O’Neill tragic works [505]. Marsden is right when he thinks of what he has to remember,

“the devil!. . .what beastly incidents our memories insist on cherishing! . . . The ugly and

the disgusting . . . the beautiful things, we have to keep diaries to remember! . . . [506].

This is what the reader would experience in respect of all the characters. In Mourning

Becomes Electra as already discussed in the preceding chapters, the dramatic structure is

built on psycho-sexual conflict in the familial context with very pronounced

disintegrative effect on the individual mind and family relationships. O’Neill

captures/dramatizes the inner conflict through expressed dialogic pattern with obvious

violent, repetitive and confined expression. Whatever variation takes place in these

dialogues is only within the psycho-sexual conflicts. The readers in this situation have to

undergo the strained process of confronting the conflict with almost uniform pattern of

expressions within the family members. Such an experience could hardly be aesthetically

rewarding, and therapeutically tragic/cathartic. Mourning Becomes Electra likewise has

the clear concordance of the inner stasis and the verbal one. Free from the cumbersome

and much hampering asides, the play based on Greek Orestia myth, captures and unravels

the inner psychopathology in absolute terms. The language does justice to the inner state.

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When the focus of entire inner being revolves around certain drives, and all actions spring

from them and are shaped by them, any fluid, rhythmic language and expressiveness

would have seemed unreal and unnatural. Christine, Orin and Lavinia, all express

themselves in a form that allows readers with the passage of time to adopt greater degree

of predictability about their unexpressed emotion and expressions. Chotia explains that

“the dominant method of Mourning Becomes Electra is repetitious activity, prepared for

and explained in lengthy dialogue whose thought is limited by the clichés in which it is

couched” [507], which she writes fails to involve the audience whole attention, and fail to

engross them. In fact O’Neill’s attempt to couch Orestia’s myth in modern psychology

connects the past and the present in necessary and irrational drives and limitations.

In Long Day’s Journey there are moments when Edmund achieves poetic eloquence

[508], but the overall speech pattern reflects same speech constraints as observed in other

plays. Free from predominant erotic conflict and speeches, the play dramatizes speech

pattern that moves around ambivalent moods of love and repulsion characterized by

vehemence and repetition. Here words are said and immediately taken back; accusations

are hurled, but instantly followed by apology and polite excuses; hateful expressions are

immediately contradicted by love, respect and empathy. The speech patterns build up an

environment of denial and contradictions and determine the familial bonds and

relationship. A forceful instance of these ambivalent exchanges of words and moods is to

be found in Act I. Here James Tyrone and Jamie are locked in heated debate on

Edmund’s health and character ruination. James accuses Jamie of corrupting Edmund’s

character and brought up:

the less you say about Edmund’s sickness, the better for your conscience! You’re more responsible than any one! Jamie responds vehemently, “That’s a lie! I won’t stand for that papa! But Tyrone goes on accusing him, “It’s the truth! You’ve been the worst influence for him. He grew up admiring you as a hero! A fine example you set him! If you ever gave him advice except in the ways of rottenness, I’ve never heard of it! You made him old before his time, pumping him full of what you consider worldly wisdom when he was too young to see that your mind wasp poisoned by your own failure in life . . .[509].

Jamie retorts vehemently, “That’s rotten accusation, Papa. You know how much the kids

means to me, and how close we’ve always been” [510]. It forces Tyrone to withdraw his

accusations politely, “I know you may have thought it was the best Jamie. I didn’t say

you did it deliberately to harm him” [511]. This mode of speech governs the dramatic

form and plot structure of the play.

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The most astonishing and irritable account of ambivalent discourse is apparent in Act

IV when Tyrone undergoes unpremeditated and rapid fluctuation in speech on such trivial

issues as switching off an extra bulb in the room. He begins his speech in extreme anger,

“Listen to me! I’ve put up a lot from you because from the mad things you’ve done at

times I’ve thought you weren’t quite right in your head. I’ve excused you and never

lifted my hand to you. But there’s a straw that breaks the camel’s back. You’ll obey me

and put out that lights or big as you are, I’ll give you a thrashing that’ll teach you” [512] .

But this anger subsides quickly; “suddenly he remembers Edmund’s illness and instantly

becomes guilty and shamefaced. Forgive me, lad. I forgot_ you should not goad me into

losing my temper” [513].

The most teasing moment of this contradictory communication is to be observed later

in the same Act when Edmund mad talk of “to hell with sense! We‘re all crazy. What do

we want with sense?”[514] and “Be always drunken. Nothing else matters. . . “ [515] with

profuse quotations from writers like Dawson and Zola brings out Tyrone’s strong

condemnation . He categorically rejects Edmund’s philosophy as “morbid nonsense”

“morbid filth” (filth, and despair and pessimism”[516]. Irritability between the two

reaches its high water mark when Edmund charges him of “damned stinginess” at the cost

of family care [517], “if you’d spent money for a decent doctor when she [Mary] was so

sick after I was born, she’d never have known morphine existed! Instead you put her in

the hands of a hotel quack who wouldn’t admit his ignorance and took the easiest way out

. . . All because his fee was cheap! Another one of your bargain” [518]. Again “after you

found out she’d been made morphine addict, why didn’t you send her to a cure then,

while she still had a chance” [519]. He further charges him of providing no decent home

that could have helped her stay away from addiction, “for money! That is, for nothing, or

practically nothing”. Persistent and sharp accusation brings the equally intense reaction.

First Tyrone furiously castigates Jamie for poisoning Edmund’s mind, “That drunken

loafer! I’ll kick him out in the gutter! He’s poisoned your mind against me ever since you

were old enough to listen!” [520], and “more morbid ness! Your brother put that in your

head. The worst he can suspect is the only truth for him” [521]. But the mood gives place

to sad and depressed account of his own past life and what made him extra careful in

spending money. He dilates upon his miserable past and hardship he had born in his

childhood. Pedigree of personal loss and compromises melts Edmund heart and ends in

what could be temporary truce between the two. Edmund appreciates Tyrone narrative,

I’m glad you’ve told me this, Papa. I know you a lot better now” [522]. But keeping in

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mind the past track of the nature of familial conflict, repetition and accusation, it can not

be taken as the final settlement of conflicts and is possibly a kind of lull before another

storm of accusations, conflict, apologies and confrontation. The play in fact has no ending

and as Chotia [523] declares, “we are made painfully aware that the time will never be

ripe, that opportunities will always be missed, because O’Neill also juxtaposes some of

the cruelest denials with moments of brief sympathy, frustrating the expectations of

change which are beginning to be shaped”. The verbal rotation of the same model

highlights more than anything else the constrictive dimension of thought processes. It

reflects their inability to move out of it or grow to develop any permanent understanding

of the familial predicament for possible resolution of the crises. Mary also represents a

terrible conflict of language for all the other characters in the play. One particular

instance of her rapid and unpremeditated language fluctuation /conflict could be seen in

her feelings for sons. As the readers interact with the text, they find persistently

complaining of being alone and alienated from social contact. She yearns for social

contact and repeatedly vents her feelings in dialogues. It could be seen in one of such

moving expressions as, “If there was some place I could go to get away for a day, even an

after noon, some woman friend I could talk to_ not about anything serious, simply laugh

and gossip and forget a while_ some one besides the servants” [524]. But the mood is not

constant and she grows sick of her sons’ company and presence around her. In one of her

monologue she expresses her happiness as they leave her at the end of the second Act,

“You wanted to get rid of them. Their contempt and disgust aren’t pleasant company.

You’re glad they are gone. In Act III, her initial reaction on their return home is one of

irritation. “Why are they coming back. They don’t want to. And I’d much rather be

alone.”(108), But a moment later she is relieved on their return and her expressions

contradicts this irritation and gives way to a mood of relaxation, “Oh, I’m so glad they’ve

come! I’ve been so horribly lonely” [525]. O’Neill records the change in his stage

direction as, “suddenly her whole manner changes. She becomes pathetically relieved

and eager”. Similar conflict of expressions determines her psychic state with respect to

her attitude towards religion, married life and child bearing. Apart from conflicting

speeches, characters mind and thought processes are overwhelmed by the bitter memories

and past itself that compels them to repeat it despite its painfulness with unusual

frequency and intensity (see Chapter 4 for further discussion on their state of mind).

Their speeches are characterized by use of quotations, and impulsive outbursts to express

what lies at their deep inside. Törnqvist [526] notes, “The very things that should not be

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mentioned are mentioned, because the characters cannot get away from themselves; even

when talking about other things, they keep thinking about their own fate”. Then their

buried thoughts, sense of guilt, their irresponsible deeds in the past continue to surface in

their speeches with teasing avoidance and denial. Therefore they are usually found

avoiding discussion on their faults as an attempt to avoid personal guilt. For instance,

when Tyrone initiates discussion on Jamie’s expulsions from college, Jamie retorts, “Oh,

for God’s sake, don’t drag up that ancient history”. Likewise, Tyrone tries to avoid

talking about his own scandal in the past: “For God’s sake, don’t dig up what’s long

forgotten”. Their psychic entrapment and constrictive modes of expression is further

revealed in all characters constant admonition to each others. They are regularly seen in

admonishing each other to “shut up,” “be quiet,” etc. Then parents appear suspicious of

their children. Tyrone thinks his children are planning and working thing maliciously

against him, “I’ll bet, they are cooking up some new schemes to touch the old man”

[527]. Likewise Mary rebukes Jamie for staring at her too much: Mary. Why are you

staring, Jamie? (Her hands flutter up to her hair). Is my hair coming down? It’s hard for

me to do it up properly now. My eyes are getting so bad and I never can find my glasses.

Limited as the language is with commands to be quiet, phrases such as “Shut up” are

frequently used. Characters express their disgust with repeated phrases and arguments,

revealing that their issues are not new. Edmund stems Jamie’s taunting their father with,

“Oh, shut up, will you? I’ve heard that Gaspard stuff a million times” [528].

6.3.2.1 INTERIOR MONOLOGUE

The same speech constraint can be seen in his use of interior monologue technique

in Strange Interlude. Humphrey [529] in his analysis of the stream of consciousness

novel, defines Interior monologue as: "the technique used in fiction for representing the

psychic content and processes of character, partly or entirely unuttered, just as these

processes exist at various levels of conscious control before they are formulated for

deliberate speech”. O’Neill [530] argues that “the technique is concerned with the

portrayal of character through the content of the mind and also with the processes or

devices for simulating the stream of thought”. He divides it into three categories: direct,

first-person; indirect, third-person; and combination of first and third person. In the first

category, he writes, “explicit author control is absent, and the monologue is thought

through in the solitude of the subject's psyche.” The speaker is alone in this situation and

the monologue is interior “because it represents the actual texture of the psychic state by

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simulating its incoherence and fluidity. Freely associated thoughts flow through the mind,

and the portrayal of this flow is one of the primary concerns”[531]. The second category

of the monologue on the other hand makes provision for the intervention of the writer

between the subject and the reader by presenting thoughts as if they were coming directly

from the consciousness of the subject.

In the field of drama two different conventions of aside and soliloquy were used,

particularly in Renaissance drama to reveal human consciousness and the flow of

thoughts in a variety of situations.

The establishment and maintenance of the conventions governing soliloquies did not require the distribution of a document in the theatre at each performance explaining the conventions to playgoers. The conventions were established and maintained simply because they operated explicitly so often that playgoers became extremely familiar with their operation. . . . They were assumed to be in operation unless explicitly overridden. . . . Shakespeare exploited the dramatic potential of these conventions throughout his career in a wide variety of situations in all genres and for a wide variety of particular dramatic purposes [532].

Critics, however, are divided on the exact nature and magnitude of these conventions and

their importance in overall dramatic form. Asides as Szondi [533] explains are mere

“passing suspension of dialogue” and have “no tendency to destroy dialogue”. They may

suspend the dialogue, writes Szondi [534], but in themselves they strengthen “the dialogic

stream”, and despite their presence in dramatic form over the years they can not disprove

the primacy of dialoguing as a recognized principle of dramatic form. In Hirsh [535]

opinion, the use of these conventions in Shakespeare dramatic art, however, was regular

part of dramaturgy and they represent speeches by characters rather than their unspoken

thoughts. And he describes Shakespearean Soliloquy as representation of speech rather

than their unspoken thoughts, and therefore part of the dialogic patter and not additional

to it. Hirsh [536] writes that Shakespeare adhered to this feature throughout the career;

“Shakespeare's plays contain numerous passing comments by characters that explicitly

indicate that soliloquies represented the speeches of characters rather than words passing

through the characters' minds”. He gives example of soliloquy in The Two Gentlemen of

Verona, Julius Cease, and Hamlet to explain his point. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona,

it rationalizes Proteus infidelity to Julia in, First he calls her "bad" and then chastises his

tongue for doing so, Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad.(2.6.14). In Julius Caesar

Anthony, when alone with the corpse of Caesar also uses his tongue, Thy wounds ... /

(Which like dumb mouths do open their ruby lips / To beg the voice and utterance of my

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tongue (3.1.259-61). Hamlet's long soliloquy at the end of II.2 indicates that Hamlet's

words represent speech rather than unspoken thought. Likewise Newell [537] in his The

Soliloquies in 'Hamlet': The Structural Design looks at the whole of Hamlet, taking the

twelve soliloquies in their dramatic contexts as the key to the play's meaning. In Newell's

reading of Hamlet, the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy shows Hamlet at his most 'rational,

dispassionate, contemplative'. It is something of an 'academic exercise', 'cast in an

intensely intellectual mode of discourse'. Levin writing about the importance of

soliloquies in Shakespeare’s Hamlet writes:

Hamlet was consciously designed by an author to produce a tragic effect, which means that the parts of the play, including the soliloquies, will have functions that are intended to contribute to this effect. I also assume that this effect depends upon creating the illusion that the play is the representation of a human action, and that this in turn depends upon our accepting Hamlet as individual within "interiority" like our own.

Regarding the role that these play in Hamlet’s life pattern he writes:

There is, finally, another sense in which these soliloquies are dramatic, since they help not only to characterize Hamlet but also to trace his career in the play. Our conception of this career is derived primarily from his interactions with other people, of course, yet the soliloquies contribute to it. . . . but they do exhibit a common pattern (except, again, for the anomalous fifth) that helps to shape our conception of Hamlet's tragic career. It is very significant that they all end on an up beat--on a decisive note that allows Hamlet to feel very satisfied with himself and with his progress toward revenge [538].

6.3.2.1.1. O’NEILL’S USE OF INTERIOR MONOLOGUE

One of O’Neill’s remarkable experimentation in the middle part of his dramatic

career pertains to the use of interior monologue technique in Strange Interlude. It is

important as the technique had already been used by such prominent stream of

consciousness writers as Virginia Woolf in her fiction. Mandl describes his Strange

Interlude as an ideal play for the use of the technique. Being a play of thoughts it is

preoccupied with “record of the atoms as they fall on the mind in the order in which they

fall” [539]. Here he “interwove his characteristically comprehensive stage directions and

dramatic dialogue with soliloquies in a major effort to represent thought as process”

[540]. O’Neill also “distinguishes” argues Mandl [541] “effectively between the various

consciousnesses of his characters in the play, crafting each inner self with as much

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distinctiveness as he does his characters social speech or behavior. Each consciousness

has its characteristics, proprietary and knowledge”[542].

The technique, however, serves more to highlight limitations of the thoughts and

their unusual fixed pattern. Human consciousness in normal condition is characterized by

a consistent flow of thoughts. This is what the modern exponent of interior monologue

like Virginia Woolf has demonstrated in their fiction. In drama as referred above, the best

reflection of dynamic mind and consciousness could be identified in Shakespearean

tragedy that depicts a dynamic thinking pattern of the protagonists thinking in response to

any compelling factor or deed done knowingly or in ignorance. Besides, the thought

processes of all the principal characters reflect a diseased pattern that disrupts their

normal thinking and keeps it confined to what may be called zones of reflections. It is

unusual that all the principal figures have similar zone of reflection that moves around a

particular person, mood or desire without any recognizable variation and development in

the nature of reflection in the whole play. Marsden’s thinking on Professor Leed’s library,

“He hasn’t added one book in years . . .” [543] in fact represents the range of thinking

pattern of all the principal figures in the play. The very next moment, he is fond reflecting

on his personal failure, “I won’t go to Europe again . . . couldn’t write a line there. . .” ,

and later in Act seven, he clearly comes out with thoughts on personal failure, “I’ve been

a timid bachelor of arts, not an artist!. . .” [544]. Then these reflections are repeated with

mechanical format reflecting a static mind and thoughts with negative and non cathartic

impact on the readers’ thoughts sensibilities. The readers need to feel the level of inner

torture though their imaginative involvement in the whole dramatic process and dramatic

action. They need constant sparks emanating from the protagonist’s dynamic response to

a situation to develop association with him/her. Their static conditions and responses on

the other hand do restrain the readers; imaginative capabilities and strains their

sensibilities to create impact that are contrary to cathartic effect.. Then these reflections

are repeated with a teasing persistency that assumes a mechanical format for easy

predictability of the readers. Thus an impression of stasis in thoughts manifests itself on

these thinking patterns with negative impact on the readers’ sensibilities, and imagination.

It is also very significant that their thinking processes go along with characteristically

negative, depressed, and irritable states of mind. O’Neill consistently uses such

adjectives and phrases as “agitated” , “guiltily”, “sneeringly” “resentfully” “bitterly”

“thinking in agony” “bitingly “ “in strange agony” [545] and so on and so forth about all

the personas thought and reflection. Marsden’s words, “the devil . . . what beastly

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incidents our memories insist on cherishing!. . . the ugly and disgusting . . .the beautiful

things we have to keep diaries to remember! . . ” [546] represent these moods as the

reader goes through the play.

Zones of reflection of each of the main male character predominantly move

around voluptuous Nina Leeds with similar intensity. Marsden is initially found reflecting

on sexuality and disgusting teen age sexual experience with fat, short legged, thick

ankled, lumpy Italian girl. But the reflection also reveals his oedipal neurosis in

depressive remembrance of the deceased mother and biter self condemnatory thoughts.

He terms the encounter as betrayal to the mother who is sobbingly remembered. But he

gets back to the remembrance of sexual encounter with a feeling, “Ugh! . . . Always that

memory! . . . why can’t I ever forget?. . . as sickeningly. Clear as if it were yesterday . . .

prep school. . . Easter vacation . . . fatty Boogs and jack Frazer . . . that house of a cheap

vice . . . one dollar! . . why did I go? “ [547]. His self disgusting thoughts continue to

crop up in his mind and reflection in this part. In such reflections as, “What Charlie has

done? . . . nothing . . and never will . . .” [548] , he reveals his pernicious neurosis and

neurasthenia. But from Act two onwards his thoughts with temporary remembrance of the

mother revolve around voluptuous Nina with hyper desire for her possession and

sensuous attachment that refuses to settle down or undergo any degree of variation.

Occasionally oedipal longings and loss merge into each other to show him thinking of

mother and Nina simultaneously: she’s [Nina] hard . . .like a whore . . . tearing your heart

with dirty fingers nails! . . . My Nina . . . . .I’ll scream out the truth about every woman!

No kinder at heart than dollar torts! . .”, and instantly he is found thinking, “forgive me,

Mother! . . .I did not mean at all” [549]. But, principally it is Nina who occupies his zone

of reflection. It in fact stretches back to her very childhood when she would sit on his

knees, …. Some times the scent of her hair and skin . . . like a dreamy drug . . . dreamy! .

. . there’s the rub! . . . all dreams with me! . . my sex life among the phantoms! . .” [550],

and as the play closes, Marsden remains preoccupied in the same mood and desire, “Rest,

dear Nina. (then tenderly) It has been a long day. Why don’t you sleep now__ as you used

to, remember?—for a little while?, and Nina words of Thank you father . . . dear old

Charlie? Marsden recoils with pain, (reacting automatically and winching with pain—

thinking mechanically) God damn dear old . . .

Darrel likewise suffers from the same malaise in thought and feelings. He remains

submerged in thinking of Nina from particular sensuous perspectives with utmost desire

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of her body possession for sexual orgasm: Christ! . . . Touch of her skin! . . . Her

nakedness! . . . those afternoons in her arms! Happiness! reflect this intense

preoccupation. Inability to procure her body for sexual gratification makes him bitter, “.

. . her body is a trap! . . . I’m caught in it! . . . she touches my hand, her eyes get in me!, I

lose my will! . . [551]. Mandl has also referred to this paralysis in Darrel’s thoughts:

There is a gap between Darrell's first scientific speech, in which he had advocated Nina's mating with a healthy male (treating people like guinea pigs, or trying to do so), and his current thoughts. His hedonist speech signals the end of what had been a more or less feigned indifference. The initial reasons for their meetings have long since been forgotten. What prevails now is the remembrance of a physical union in which they were able to reach a state of happiness. Love is not mentioned. Darrell only remembers the union of their bodies and carnal pleasure without guilt or shame. Nina's nakedness symbolizes the success of their union[552].

Evans zonal reflection is marred by the same figure of Nina. Early in the play before

he is married to Nina, he is found thinking of what would be the possible nature of his

relation with Nina if they get married: . . . Ned is my best friend . . . doing all he can

to help me with Nina . . he thinks she’ll marry me in the end . . . God, if she only

would! . . . I wouldn’t expect her to love me at first . . . be happy only to take care of

her . . . cook breakfast . . . bring it up to her in bed . . tuck the pillow behind her . . .

comb her hair for her . . I’d be happy just to kiss her hair! . .” [553]. The reflection

unlike that of Darrell reveals a contrary personality and mind set. Quite unlike Darrel’s

robust reflection of a full sexual contact with Nina, Evans is found timid and overawed

by Nina personality and stature. It also reflects neurasthenic lack of sexual energy and

strength to live with full realization of robust sexual relation with her after their

marriage.

Nina herself depicts another instance of constrained psychic conditions. Her

thoughts and their constrained nature have been analyzed in detail in terms of

traumatized existence and post traumatic stress disorder( see chapter 4). The readers

are made aware of this possession from the very beginning. Only she has to unravel it

in her dialogue and asides. This psychic fixity and the consequent cramped dialogue

and speeches only ventilating these repeat itself in the play. Other aspects of the use of

interior monologues are closely related to constrained reflections in the characters. It

appears unusual at the outset that reflections seem to represent the obvious choice to

all the characters in the play as each of them slips uninterruptedly into her thoughts.

The dramatist has to interfuse dialogue and monologue to highlight this tendency

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among his characters. As the play progresses the uninterrupted flow of the thoughts

assume mechanical pattern in the form of asides/monologues and readers develop easy

predictability of what could be the subject of thoughts. This mechanical patter deprives

the play of its imaginative strength and also leaves the readers dry and unresponsive to

the plight and pain that each of them undergoes. Secondly the use of interior

monologues establishes a concordance between the spoken and the unspoken in the

play. As the thoughts are predominantly replete with agonized, irritable, bitter

reflection, dialogues as well as the monologues reflect the same. It makes interior

monologue as a regular part of O’Neill’s dramaturgy and not something which is

additional to the dialogue pattern.

It is concluded here that the technique of Interior monologue realistically unearths

a deep psychopathological (neurasthenic and neurotic) malaise in the personas personality

and behavior. His use of technique also vastly differs from the stream of conscious

technique as propounded by its illustrious proponents. It denies what William James and

other stream of consciousness writers upheld that “the self in our stream of consciousness

changes continuously as it moves forward in time even as we retain a sense that the self

remains the same while our existence continues” [554]. Far from projecting human

consciousness as a process, O’Neill’s use of technique highlights a mental paralysis that

governs the thought processes and subsequent expressions. In fact it points out serious

and severe limitations of the thought process. It also links all the principal characters

together as for as the subject matter of thought processes is concerned. Now as drama is

about interaction with the audiences/readers and communicating the experiences with the

readers/audience, the effect on the readers in this case could hardly be aesthetically

pleasurable, cathartic and therapeutic. In fact use of interior monologue technique creates

typically un-cathartic psychic strain and depressiveness as the readers go along repetitive

and strained monologic patterns in the whole play.

6.4 CONCLUSION

The objective in this chapter was to highlight the effect of O’Neill’s plays on

modern readers and determine the areas that could negatively affect readers’ imagination,

intellect and sensibilities. It was analyzed that psychopathological regression and pattern

as outlined in the author, his personas and certain cultural parameters create an image of

behavioral decline and disintegration caused differently either by loss, depressiveness,

guilt, or incest could hardly be cathartic and therapeutic for the readers. It could only

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produce psychic strain, depressiveness and psycho-spiritual stasis. Two specific areas that

this chapter highlighted for regressive effect were ethical crises and use of monotonous

language. O’Neill’s dramatic representations of the self and the characters do carry

psychopathological dimensions. In the process, however, it reveals lower depths of

human character in the given situation, and most importantly this mode is kept

consistently present in the plays of all periods. The overall impact is one of regression,

and disintegration at the personal and familial level. Importantly the themes and the

treatment of behavioral modes may find proactive response from the audience of a

particular class or a group in a particular condition of western culture, its wider across the

culture acceptance cannot be taken for granted. Traditional socio-cultural set up, high

reservation about western modernism in this part of the world is most likely to arouse

rejectionistic attitude to the wider appeal of such a work as Desire under Elms, Mourning

Becomes Electra, Strange Interlude and even Long Day’s Journey that can in the given

conditions easily be dismissed on account of increased concern with irreligiosity,

sexuality, ethical crises and destructive familial pattern. No doubt in history one can

observe the universal validity and acceptance of literary work belonging to opposing

state, but the reason was the corresponding/similar experiences and expressions of

feelings and emotions generated by the literary works among the opposing states. The

analogous helped emotional release/catharsis and establish identical cathartic responses.

But in the present state of world and regional affairs and the particular frame of

traditional culture and reservation to western entity in the region, O’Neill’s art with its

own strong and imposing Westernized outlook is sure to increase not only intolerance, but

also enhance rejecting public and national response. There is a need of literature that is

universal but that does not destroy national roots.

Pakistani society is predominantly averse to increased military and political role

of America in and around the country. There has been consistent rise in anti-Americanism

in the print and electronic media, religious classes, religio-political parties and middle

class moderately educated civil society. Being predominantly a religion oriented set up,

American liberalism is not very welcome among the majority moderately educated

middle class and lower low/moderately educated and religious class [554]. This

development coincides with shift from British literature (popularly termed English

literature) to American literature at graduate and postgraduate levels courses across the

country. In the past, British Literature and English Language propagation as an

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international language [555] served the British imperialist cause of accentuating cultural,

intellectual and literary hegemony on the subjugated class and nation in South Asia and

elsewhere. One of the corner stone of American foreign policy also works on the same

note of expanding control and hegemony through language and literature. As per this

policy, American missions in Pakistan encourage greater level of American study courses

in Pakistani universities and colleges. However, the peculiar nature of moral crises, and

reflection of modern philosophical idea as propounded by Nietzsche Schopenhauer and

Freud and their impact on O’Neill and succeeding American writers is directly in conflict

with the majority civil society beliefs [556]. The universality myth is no longer in practice

when it comes to this level of crises in American art. Resultantly, there are chances of

accentuation of conflict and rise in anti-Americanism in the traditional Pakistani society.

However, there is a need of further research into the area. The teachers responsible for

teaching modern American Literature develop guidelines for teaching American literature

in changing global perspective to their students. Through these activities, they will be

able to frame questionnaires, and respond to the area meaningfully.

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CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION

The study aimed at investigating and tracing regressive psychopathological

patterns in O’Neill’s selected plays. The pattern of investigation and analysis diverged

into diverse notional concepts about the author, his characters, society and

reader/audience; each converging solely on the psychopathological archetypes. This

convergence and confluence marked central research concern of the study. Investigation

into these areas was taken up in separate chapters that formed four tiers of

Psychopathological archetypes in O’Neill art. It proceeded from discussion on art-author

relation and the role/significance of author’s personal life, subjective experiences,

personal affliction and psychopathology in his creative process. O’Neill personas were

taken as second tier of the pattern of research. The study focused on his personas as

having independent existence in his art and not mere autobiographical representations. It

was also argued that despite O’Neill’s strong and overwhelming emphasis on

representation of the essentially subjective painful experiences he powerfully

demonstrates adverse effect of certain social factors human behavior and thinking

processes. At the end it was argued that the type of art that O’Neill created with strong

subjective and grim image of human life and, entrapped and regressive behavioral

patterns can not produce cathartic effect. It can only produce such regressive effects as

psychic strains and depressiveness or give rise to alienated thought processes. First tier of

the research pattern investigated O’Neill’s psychopathology with reference to creativity

and psychological explanation of the creative processes as they shape in the artist’s

conscious or unconsciousness. It was argued that development in modern psychoanalysis

has facilitated the conclusion that it is difficult to avoid the role of psychopathology in the

production of great works of art. Besides, the role of personal affliction and

psychopathology can not be limited to the extant of providing fundamental inspiration for

artistic creativity. These in fact determine the very structure and stature of the work of art.

Analysis into four tiers of psychopathological archetypes highlights certain concerns that

carry significance for O’Neill’s art and literary aestheticism.

1. It was concluded that the artist/author despite strong reservation on the part o f

the new theorists continue to remain the centre of analysis. In 20th century growth of

theories like New Criticism, Formalism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, have

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challenged the very role of author as the originator of textual meaning. Belsey in her

Critical Practice (1980) has discussed all such trends in modern theories. She analyses

their stance as threat-full to what she call “common sense” approach to a literary text.

Belsey defines common sense as an approach which assumes that “valuable literary texts,

those which are in special way worth reading, tell truths ___ about the period which

produced them, about the world in general or about human nature ___ and that in doing

so they express the particular perceptions, the individual insights of their author. Common

sense also offers this way of approaching literature not as a self conscious and deliberate

practice, a method based on a reasoned theoretical position, but as the ‘ obvious’ mode of

reading, the ‘natural’ way of approaching literary works” (3). Belsey terms this kind of

approach inadequate and empirical without any systematic theoretical framework, and

which has been challenged by theorists of structuralists and post-structuralist school.

Ferdinand De Sassure in her views was the first structuralists who challenged the above

outlined prevalent notion vis a vis reading and comprehending literary text. Other term

that she elaborates is that of “Expressive Realism.” Expressive realism like common

sense approach is a way of comprehending the text in terms of “the author’s ideas,

psychological state or social background. Books about authors often begin with a brief

biography discussing the influence of the family, the environment and the society . .

.”(13). However role of the artist/author as the originator of meaning as well as the

originator of the text holds its place. Various critical and analytical studies as referred in

chapter 1 and 2 substantiate this approach to reading a reading literary text. Similarly the

author’s emotional and psychological moods and disorders continue to find projection in

the works in its different aspects. O’Neill’s subjective drama stands as a clear instance of

attempts to defy the particular role of author as a centre of analysis and psychological

investigations.

2. O’Neill’s subjective drama is also an instance of what options are left to the

modern writers in the modern society that provides little nurturance for the art and artist

who is being increasingly put under pressure to cater to the popular tastes. With the

incessant explosion of intellectual and artistic production catering to the popular culture

and tastes, the creative writer can only satisfy his imaginative craving and intellectual

stimulation or create art by turning his imagination, impulses, thoughts, drives, and

emotions upon himself to find both inspiration and raw material for the works and if the

author’s inner self has experienced, and sustained pain of various categories, that pain

finds outlet in his creative works.

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3. O’Neill’s subjective art as an instance of psychobiography was placed and

analyzed in the light of different theoretical notions on creativity. It was argued that the

nature of creative process that shapes a work of art has been debated and analyzed

frequently to bring out what exactly determines a particular work, and how far it adheres

to certain principles in this regard. The study analyzed different theoretical notions

regarding creativity that were divided into two broad though not thoroughly exclusive

groups of subjectivism and objectivism. Each determines the specific role of the author

in what he/she creates While objectivism support the “disinterestedness” on the part of

the artist to impart objective dimension to his/her created phenomenon, the subjectivists

strongly support the art to be the medium of artist personal emotional, intellectual and

imaginative reflection and therefore what he/she creates carries a strong

personal/subjective impression of the artist. However, none of the theories explains the

role of the artist psychology in what h/she creates. Modern development in

psychoanalysis, however, helps the reader to have better and broader understanding of

this factor. Freud articulated initial theoretical connection between creativity and

psychoanalysis, which has been carried with approval or disapproval by such theorist as

Klein and Kristeva who have further developed these thoughts on sublimation and artistic

creativity in the middle of crises and psychological traumas further (see chapter 3). The

debate, however, is not conclusive and difference persists on the role of artist’s interior or

relation between psychopathology, neurosis etc and creativity. Schneiderman) Bower and

Pizzato studies substantiate close relation between the personal psychopathology and the

creative works (see Chapter 3).

The study argued that there is a definite co-existence of close relationship between

personal afflictions and O’Neill’s creative urges. The nature of affliction is predominantly

related to familial context. Creativity, in O’Neill’s case, therefore, assumes the nature of

restructuring the relations in the family. Freud’s oedipal dynamism has consistently been

found in O’Neill’s works and therefore investigated by various scholars/writers. The

study substantiated the presence and working of oedipal dynamic in O’Neill’s life and art,

but added Klein’s positions on mother-child relation to highlight existing

psychopathological fragmentation in the author.

It was argued and concluded that O’Neill’s preoccupation with affliction was not

for any attempt to overcome/resolve the impending crises. The affliction is paramount

and resists settling down for resolving the life-long subjective crises. In fact the absence

of proper closure technique in majority of plays of his dramatic career point to the

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subsistence of the pain and crises and their role in his structuring his creativity. One

common element that bears testimony of the persistency of affliction, sense of loss or

other related moods is repetition of death theme in his plays. Importantly death assumes

such terrible positions in human relation as murder, suicide, or perpetual movement

towards death through prostitution, drinking, or lust. This factor determines the crux of

his vision or his worldview.

It was also analyzed that a major writer with his/her intellectual and imaginative

explorations assumes a definite position on matters relating to human life, relation and

factors influencing human personality, relationships and existence. In fact it is imperative

for a major writer to have a worldview that addresses the just outlined areas of human

life, more so because his/her art is likely to cross geographical borders and move across

different cultures and regions with substantial impact on the mindset and attitudes.

Shakespeare for that matter is a supreme example as he has been able to appeal to the

cultured people of all ages and regions indiscriminately. O’Neill is undisputedly the

major voice in American literary heritage and western modernism. But his dramatic art is

problematic for variety of reasons. One there is a persistent conflict in O’Neill’s own

avowed desire to establish modern drama on footings parallel to the Greeks. Tragedy as

O’Neill himself categorically states is concerned with the highest ideals of greatness and

sublimity, something that he believes the Greeks endeavored to achieve. But his own art it

was argued fall short of such ideal and reflects painful preoccupation with the painful and

lower human predicament. Besides his persistent fusion of modern psychological

perspectives into the thematic areas proved to be the reversal of what he probably wanted

to achieve. He could write tragedy in a new emerging paradigm, but he could not wish to

have access to the readers’ approval across the cultures. The response to a major writer

grows deeper and deeper, and it evolves and alters always with respect to something that

is truly the most persistent and the deepest in it. O’Neill world’s image does not appear to

be without the consistency that is required of an artist of his type. On the contrary it is the

same depressive, traumatic and terrible human behavior and predicament spurred on

mostly by the inner impulses and the same “Despoliation of nature ad lives” that

characterize the essence of his tragedies.

O’Neill’s preoccupation with affliction signifies the need to discuss further the

role of pain in creativity. It can not be said that personal grief results in deploringly dark

vision of the entire human life and nature. The creativity generated by pain is not

necessarily subversive, dehumanizing, degenerative, and static. In O’Neill, personal crises

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and painful subjective experiences structure the entire thought pattern on the same lines.

His dramatic art and the theoretical position that emerges there, therefore creates aesthetic

dilemma. There is a possibility when the writer transcends the confines of personal pain

to create an image of aesthetic beauty that is artistic, imaginative, and inspirational and

transcends the confines of time and achieve the highest degree of objectivity. O’Neill’s

depressive attribution style on the other hand generates only the most painful that reflects

the neurosis of the author himself.

It was analyzed and concluded that predominance of subjective representation in

particular fashion as analyzed, however, creates its own archeology of limitation that

carry implications for the art its self. Studies on O’Neill (see chapter 2) particularly the

one focusing on autobiographical aspects have ignored the analysis of these limitations.

The greatest limitation is related to that of representation as an aesthetical concern of the

tragic work of art. O’Neill’s dramatic art needs to be placed in the broader field of

aestheticism and creativity in particular to determine its nature and representative quality.

Importantly it needs to be debated that what particular limitation psychoanalytic account

creates for that work and show far they affect the representative nature of the art itself.

The study explained these in the following areas.

It has been discussed that preoccupation with loss, mourning and

anxiety checks the sociological perspective of art. It was argued

that the origin of literature may lie either in the artist’s own inner

self or in the search for broader and varied subjects of general

nature; it must enlist the wider appeal, application and acceptability

at the social levels to become a public document. The art of

subjective writers, it must be emphasized despite their concern with

exploring their own imaginative, intellectual and emotional factors

in their art, does not neglect the social factor of art’s reception.

O’Neill’s obsession with the inner, and the resultant pessimism

instruct the plays with constrictive representation quality for

reasons discussed below.

Genuine art precludes opportunity for the readers to undergo a

process of transformation from a position of unintelligibility to

intelligibility of intellectual, emotive and imaginative faculties.

O’Neill’s treatment of the interior of the mind with specific angles

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and point of view greatly undermine this desirable process of

transformation. There is a teasing persistency of moods and verbal

expression. This aspect contradicts the very functioning of thought

processes as outlined by the pioneers of stream of consciousness

technique. The absence of this phenomenon account largely for the

absence of moral/ethical concerns in his drama.

It has also been discussed that the persistency of the affliction as a

mobilizing agent restrains the artist's imagination, creating total

absorption in the personal/ private to the dismemberment of the

higher aesthetic ideals of universal application and appeal that

tragedy is capable of. O’Neill was a keen experimentalist as well

as a reflective artist. There is as Tornqvist comments a curious

blend of mystical, scientific views and metaphysical language in

his plays that establish some sort of corollary between the classic

and the contemporary idioms in tragedy. The fusion, however, far

from creating harmony between the two, highlights important

contrast between the classic and the modern. Action for instance in

Greek tragedy proceeds from the character as a complex of human

traits shaped by past human experience or as the product of

working of metaphysical forces such as a reaction against human

breach of cosmic order. But the action whatever its shaping spirit

may be remains recognizable, rationalistic and continue to reflect

the laws of human experience. Besides, the ultimate expression of

the human predicament in the given trying conditions in these

tragedies is far from self destructive, defeatist and enfeebling.

O’Neill’s concern with the internal merges too much with modern

scientifically interpreted, but anti-rationalistic psychological forces

(as referred above) that have counter effects on human endeavor to

live and his struggle assumes self destructive, defeatist and

enfeebling effect on the character’s behavior without any

possibility of the resolution of the situation, undermining the art.

If we understand and believe that human mind is a

conglomeration of disparate impulses, emotions, and

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thoughts and emits variety of shades/messages

simultaneously, we would not fall to an understanding that

structures the mind around certain emotive states and thought

processes. It was also emphasized that human consciousness

is never working on a certain modes. It’s in constant state of

change and movement which make human consciousness

non-representative in its nature. It is strictly individual and

isolated phenomenon. This factor has totally remained

unexplored in studies prone to psychoanalytic interpretation

of the artist life and art. O’Neill’s preoccupation with

confronting loss and the afflicted stance has its own impact.

It keeps the creative art confined to peculiar psychic mode

that is regressive and psychopathological.

Then it was concluded that the representation of tragedy as a

pinnacle of art is to be judged on the touchstone of

experience which creates the fundamental difficulty of

experiencing the peculiar mental states that O’Neill creates

for the reader across the culture. Besides, a persona’s plight

due to his neurosis or fragmentation may arouse our

curiosity, but not our personal experience and moral sense.

In the sphere of sufferings too O’Neill’s art symptomatizes

constriction and not representation. The sufferings that

O’Neill highlights have their store house in either in the

characters’ total absorption in the realization of certain

personal desires of erotic nature or in some other extreme

modes such as loss, fear and anxiety springing from a man’s

disposition to repeat them with a high degree of ambivalence.

This type of approach has given rise to the question that how

far these sufferings are liable to invite emotional and as Peter

Lamarque (2004) writes “sympathetic involvement” of the

audience? In Lamarque’s understanding it is our sympathetic

involvement that embodies the sufferings with ethical

dimension. Self indulgent, wantonly cruel, pornographic

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representations, writes Lamarque (2004), do not merit out

sympathetic involvement and are therefore not fit for a

tragedy. Importantly such sufferings do not carry the element

of transference from the stage to the audience. Drama by

virtue of its stage production does embody the vibrant

presence of the audience and their periodic emotive

involvement at different stages denotes general applicability

of that very production.

It was also emphasized that audience need not be confined to

a time frame say of the artist’s own age. The timelessness of

the art necessitates the measurement of response of the

audience of different ages and regions. Overt sexual

indulgence or its suppression and the resulting neurasthenia

may have the emotional interest of a group at any particular

time period and area, but such like ideas and dramatized in

very peculiar form as in O’Neill would not ensure any

emotive involvement except that, life without suffering of

frustration and loss is impossible, which implies achievement

of death, alienation and self inflicted.

Besides it was argued that the play(s) where

psychopathology is upper-most, which begin with the present

and advance by returning into the past in a repetitive fashion

as discussed above can be stimulating and stirring

experiences, but they fail to create intellectual absorption that

has remained the essence of real tragic drama. Shakespeare’s

Hamlet was referred again to show the intellectual level of a

great tragedy.

The study also analyzed diverse behavioral disorders of O’Neill’s personas in his

plays that substantiate playwright’s personal psychopathology. It was argued that his

dramatis personas have their own behavioral disorders that they reveal with a

characteristic intensity and consistency in different conditions. These disorders were

analyzed from such diverse angles as trauma and post traumatic stress disorder, multi-

personality disorder; sexuality related disorders and alienated selves. In case of trauma

159

and traumatic stress disorder, it was argued that O’Neill’s personas appear visibly

traumatized and their behavior is reflective of post traumatic stress disorders that

determine their conduct in the plays. Secondly the study argued that though the treatment

of past has been emphasized in different critical studies on O’Neill, what has not been

adequately appreciated and analyzed is that how far O’Neill’s art stands as a reflection on

trauma and traumatized memory performance generally. It is important to note that the

traumatized behavior has a lot to do with the past that is replete with torturous and playful

memories that continue to impinge on their life in the present. The study focused on this

factor for two reasons: one the past that determines their present is individual and not

collective and second it is always painful, and personas conduct is rendered abnormal due

to its traumatized effect at the time of occurrence as well as in their life to come. It was

argued that the preoccupation with the individual/subjective past is another strong

element of O’Neill’s modernism as the past that post-modern theatre represents is

collective and not the individual. It was also argued that O’Neill’s treatment of trauma

through art carries one very significant limitation which is that of failure to provide

possible strategies for coping with the trauma, stress disorder and PTSDs. Classic

tragedies substantially cater to this and provide substantial opportunity for coping with

the trauma that impart therapeutic effect to them. Classic tragedies like Oedipus

Tyrannous and Hamlet possess this element of proving therapeutic strategy for copying

with the trauma, both for the personas and the audiences in a marked degree. The

strategies are not superimposed on the plot and structure of the play, rather they are

inbuilt and are apart of the very development of the plot and the characters. O’Neill’s art

as the textual analysis substantiates lacks the so called therapeutic strength for allowing

the protagonist to cope with the superimposed crises. The ultimate impression is one of

psychological impasse that leaves the protagonist paralyzed and neurasthenic the end.

Sexuality in O’Neill has also been analyzed as other major factor of causing

abnormal behavior. In sexuality related disorders, O’Neill’s personas reveal the same

disintegration and regression in behavioral conduct. It needs to be emphasized that sex as

a biological activity contains multiple aspects from pleasure to pain, and from ravishment

to conjugal bliss; thus having the normal and abnormal elements. His treatment of human

sexuality is an illustration of his dramatizing extremes of emotive and psychological

states with predominant regressive pattern in human conduct and attitude towards

sexuality. The study, however, highlighted such areas of human sexuality as marital

sexuality, male sexual abstinence/wastefulness, female heterosexuality, prostitution, and

160

neurasthenia with reference to selected plays of different dramatic career to emphasize

that there is predominant pattern of behavioral regression in all these areas of human

sexuality that has its negative bearing on human behavioral pattern and conduct. Other

behavioral disorders of the personas that were analyzed were those of having multi

personality disorders and personas propensity to alienation, and social detachment with

characteristic repetitive behavioral modes.

The study also focused on the role of certain social and cultural factors that are

capable of exciting abnormal behaviors. It was analyzed here that certain factors in

society can have negative effect on personality development and human behavior. The

study peculiarly referred to religion and racism as potentially powerful tools of affecting

human behavior negatively and destructively. His concern with religion in his modern

theatre is important from diverse angles. It emerges here as a serious force that like the

power of emotions and desires render human behavioral growth problematic and

complex. But it must be noted that the role of religion in O’Neill is free from its political

aspects as it affects the individual in particular at social and familial set up. It was argued

that in O’Neill’s plays with particular reference to Desire Under Elms, Mourning

Becomes Electra and Long Day’s Journey into Night, religion affects human behavior

through its discourse of regulation either on its own or in coalition with certain pre

existing psychic factors like anxiety and depression. This makes O’Neill’s drama a

reflective medium of the possibility of this terrible coalition between life of the individual

and religion to create negative behavioral trends. The analysis moved from O’Neill’s own

life to the plays like Mourning Becomes Electra. But this factor associates O’Neill with

current global concerns in addressing this area of vital national and global peace and

stability. However, at a time when religiously charged social conflicts are prevalent

around the globe, social science research is rising to the need to analyze the role of

religion in these events. O’Neill’s plays highlight this concern and reinforce the need to

understand the factors that may cause disruption at individual and communal level. The

scenario also leads to generate thinking on developing understating of this vital problem

how to solve the present problem of religious radicalism in some part of the world that

have aroused international concerns. In the analysis of racism as a social phenomenon

capable of generating abnormal behavior, it was emphasized that the behavior the

personas’ conduct here in this section was in line with O’Neill’s predominant methods of

character revelation and therefore bring the plays like All God’s Chillum Got Wings in

line with other plays of his dramatic career. No doubt both Ella and Jim under terrible

161

life denying racial pressure in this play regress into madness, but more than that it shows

a marked degree of similarity in psychopathological derangement that is to be found in

other plays in other sphere as discussed previously. In plays like Desire under Elms,

Mourning Becomes Electra, More Stately Mansion, Iceman Cometh, Moon for The

Misbegotten, the characters show common elements of behaving abnormally differently

in different conditions. The cause may be New England Puritanism, incestuous love,

illusions, Jealousy, etc, but the result is the same i.e. extreme of behavior and the mental

fixity around the preeminent thought or emotion. In Chillum the circumstances are

exterior, but the behavioral trend is the same. Thus the overall psychopathological image

remains constant in plays of all periods and only the circumstances may change that in

turn reflect author’s own psychopathology of showing the extreme in human conduct.

Finally the study analyzed the effect of O’Neill’s plays on modern readers to

determine the areas that could negatively effect readers’ imagination, intellect and

sensibilities. It was argued that psychopathological regression and pattern as outlined in

the author, his personas and certain cultural parameters create an image of behavioral

decline and disintegration under emotive and psychic strains caused differently either by

loss, depressiveness, guilt, or incest could hardly be cathartic and therapeutic for the

readers. It could only produce psychic strain, depressiveness and psycho-spiritual stasis.

Three specific areas that this chapter highlighted for regressive effect were ethical crises,

and monotonous language. O’Neill’s dramatic representations of the self and the

characters do carry psychopathological dimensions. In the process, however, it reveals

lower depths of human character in the given situation, and most importantly this mode is

kept consistently present in the plays of all periods. The overall impact is one of

regression, and disintegration at the personal and familial level. Importantly the themes

and the treatment of behavioral modes may find proactive response from the audience of

a particular class; group in a particular condition of western culture, its wider across the

culture acceptance can not be taken for granted. In this part of the world, where a terrible

upsurge of extremist activities sadly associated with religious radicalism has threatened

the socio-political stability of the whole region, such literature replete with a particular

Westernized outlook can easily become a weapon of igniting further intolerance against

the culture and society of that part. The traditional socio-cultural set up, high reservation

about western modernism, and the hype in extremist trends and intolerance is most likely

to arouse an attitude of rejection of the possible wider appeal work like Desire under

Elms Mourning Becomes Electra Strange Interlude and even Long Day’s Journey that are

162

charged with increased concern with irreligiosity, sexuality and ethical crises. No doubt

in history one can observe the universal validity and acceptance of literary work

belonging to opposing state, but the reason was the corresponding/similar experiences and

expressions of feelings and emotions generated by the literary works among the opposing

states. The analogous helped emotional release/catharsis and establish identical cathartic

responses. But in the present state of world and regional affairs and the particular frame

of traditional culture and reservation to western entity in the region, O’Neill’s art with its

own strong and imposing Westernized outlook is sure to increase not only intolerance, but

also enhance public and national denunciation. There is a need of literature that is

universal but that does not destroy national roots.

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