Eugene O’Neill and His Ghosts of the Past, Present and Future
Loading...
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
“The past is the present, isn’t it? It is the future too. We all try to lie out of that but life won’t let us” (1989:75) remarks Mary Tyrone, the heroine of Long Day’s Journey Into Night. In the play, considered to be O’Neill’s opus magnum, the writer directly confronts the ghosts that have kept the cycle of his family trauma intact for generations. Tyrones’ / O’Neills’ family home continuously haunts its inhabitants, which results in their increasing alienation and inability to emotionally grow or connect. O’Neill translates this deeply personal process of breaking illusions, healing and forgiving against all odds into a cruelly authentic, literary portrayal of the human condition. In this article, I will argue that personal struggle is a signifcant notion not only in O’Neill’s drama but also generally in contemporary literature. The notion of trauma has been extensively interpreted by scholars in the social, anthropological and historical context. I will investigate, with O’Neill’s life and work as primary references, the personal / universal aspect of trauma, my primary research question being: to what extent can the ghosts of trauma be restrained by means of literature?
Description
Keywords
ghosts, past, time and space, trauma, biography
Citation
Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, Vol. 14, pp. 167-179
Collections
Endorsement
Review
Supplemented By
Referenced By
Creative Commons license
Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Poland